2025 Europakonzert from Bari with Riccardo Muti

Following the Europakonzert given by the Berliner Philharmoniker and Riccardo Muti at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples in 2009, the Italian maestro is now conducting another in his home country. The venue this time is the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, which was built at the beginning of the 20th century, destroyed by fire in 1991 and reopened 18 years later.

The programme opens with Gioacchino Rossini’s overture to Guillaume Tell, a thrilling paean to freedom. The premiere of the stage work at the Opéra de Paris in 1829 sealed the composer’s reputation as the greatest living opera composer in Europe. Liberty was also at the heart of the Sicilians’ revolt against French rule in 1282 – it was a bold move for Giuseppe Verdi to try to gain a foothold in Paris, the opera capital of the time, with this very subject and his Les Vêpres siciliennes. Despite the controversial plot, the premiere was a success. The lively ballet music from the third act of the opera, which can be heard in this Europakonzert, was last performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker and Riccardo Muti in 1991 at the Schauspielhaus am Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin.

In 1878, the influential Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick wrote, “Brahms’s Symphony No. 1, introduced a year ago, was a work for earnest connoisseurs. The Symphony No. 2 extends its warm sunshine to connoisseurs and laymen alike. It belongs to all who long for good music.” The opening movement inevitably evokes associations of warmth, power and expansiveness – a showpiece for the Berliner Philharmoniker with its rich, full-bodied string sound. The adagio is characterised by melancholy, while the third movement picks up on the idyllic serenity of the first with a dance-like tone, before the finale leads to collective euphoria.

Berliner Philharmoniker

Riccardo Muti