As is tradition, great classical music returns to Porto Cervo in September: from the 5th to the 11th, the Hotel Cervo Conference Center will host the Classical Music Festival Costa Smeralda.
Now in its eighth year, the event features four concerts featuring four major figures from the international music scene, who will perform on September 5, 7, 9, and 11 at 9:30 pm (free admission). Promoted by the Costa Smeralda Consortium with Smeralda Holding as main sponsor, the festival will be conducted by Maestro Guglielmo De Stasio, who will lead the Antonio Vivaldi Orchestra of Venice, accompanying the artists throughout the four evenings.
The program kicks off on Saturday, September 5th, with the celebrated Brazilian guitarist and composer Yamandu Costa. The program will be entirely dedicated to his compositions and will include the celebrated Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, along with other pieces inspired by his homeland's musical tradition.
On Monday, September 7th, it will be the turn of one of Italy's leading figures in international music: violist Danilo Rossi, chosen at just twenty years old by Riccardo Muti as Principal Viola Soloist of the Teatro alla Scala and the Filarmonica della Scala. In Porto Cervo, Rossi—who over the course of his forty-year career has performed at the world's most prestigious theaters and collaborated with conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, and Leonard Bernstein—will perform Franz Anton Hoffmeister's Viola Concerto and Stefano Nanni's The Beatles Suite, also for viola and orchestra.
The third event, on September 9th, will feature another prominent Italian musician: Gianfranco Bortolato, oboe soloist with the Rome Opera House Orchestra, who will bring some of the most famous Venetian Baroque concertos for oboe and string orchestra to the festival, including music by Antonio Vivaldi, Alessandro Marcello, and Tomaso Albinoni, among others.
Finally, on September 11th, an evening dedicated to the great performers in the history of music will be conducted by Austrian conductor Gustav Kuhn, a student and assistant to Herbert von Karajan. Known for his particular attachment to Wagner's repertoire, Kuhn will perform two classical masterpieces: Franz Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" quartet, in the version for string orchestra, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphony No. 41, "Jupiter."
