Hong Kong to enjoy Verdi, Prokofiev and Shostakovich programmes under one of the world’s hottest conductors
Gianandrea Noseda was booked for the Arts Festival before the recent accolade and appointment that have propelled him into the stratosphere of the classical world
Last year, Musical America, the United States’ oldest classical music magazine, voted “the fiery 50-year-old” Gianandrea Noseda conductor of the year. Last month, the Washington-based National Symphony Orchestra named the Milan-born Noseda its next music director; he will take over in the 2017-18 season.
It is good timing for Hong Kong. Even before those announcements, Noseda was already booked to appear at the Hong Kong Arts Festival for two concerts next month, conducting the orchestra and chorus of the Teatro Regio Torino in Verdi’s Requiem on March 3 and an all-Russian programme on March 4.
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We are in the backstage of the historical Teatro Regio in Turin, northern Italy, where he has been music director since 2007, just before he conducts a performance of Aida. In the background are the sounds of sopranos warming up, announcements over the PA system, and people popping their heads round the door. “Maestro …?” they ask urgently.
It will be only his second appearance in Hong Kong, he says, and the first – 18 years ago with St Petersburg’s Mariinsky Orchestra, at which he had just started as principal visiting conductor – was a whirl.
“I remember the previous day I was conducting in Madrid. So I took a plane through London. I arrived in Hong Kong at 11 in the morning. They put me in the most luxurious and beautiful hotel but I was there for just 40 minutes to take a shower.
“At two I started rehearsal with the singers, at three I had a rehearsal with the orchestra. I did the performance at 7.30. Then when I finished a car took me back to the plane as the next day I had to start rehearsals in Santander in Spain.