Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

Gianandrea Noseda is one of the world’s most sought-after conductors, equally recognized for his artistry in both the concert hall and opera house. He was named the National Symphony Orchestra’s seventh music director in January 2016 and began his four-year term with the 2017–2018 season. In September 2018, at the start of his second season with the NSO, his contract was extended for four more years, through the 2024–2025 season. He leads 12 weeks of subscription concerts with the Orchestra this season, as well as their first appearance together at Carnegie Hall in New York in May 2019.

In addition to his position with the NSO, Noseda also serves as Principal Guest Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Principal Conductor of the Orquestra de Cadaqués, and Artistic Director of the Stresa Festival in Italy. In July 2018, the Zurich Opera House appointed him the next General Music Director beginning in the 2021–2022 season where the centerpiece of his tenure will be a new Ring Cycle directed by Andreas Homoki, the opera house’s artistic director.

Nurturing the next generation of artists is important to Noseda, as evidenced by his ongoing work in masterclasses and tours with youth orchestras, including the European Union Youth Orchestra, and with his recent appointment as music director of the newly-created Tsinandali Festival and Pan-Caucasian Youth Orchestra in the village of Tsinandali, Georgia, which begins in 2019.

Noseda has conducted the most important orchestras and at leading opera houses and festivals including the Berlin Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, La Scala, Munich Philharmonic, Met Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, NHK Symphony, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de France, Philadelphia Orchestra, Royal Opera House, Salzburg Festival, Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony, and Zurich Opera House. From 2007 until 2018, Noseda served as Music Director of Italy’s Teatro Regio Torino where he ushered in a transformative era for the company matched with international acclaim for its productions, tours, recordings, and film projects.

Gianandrea Noseda also has a cherished relationship with the Metropolitan Opera dating back to 2002. He returns this season to lead performances of a new production of Adriana Lecouvreur featuring Anna Netrebko, which receives its premiere at the New Year’s Eve Gala on December 31, 2018. In recent years, he has conducted Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, which received its premiere at the New Year’s Eve Gala in 2016, and a critically acclaimed new production of Les pêcheurs de perles which premiered at the New Year’s Eve Gala in 2015. His widely praised interpretation of Prince Igor from the 2013–2014 season is available on DVD from Deutsche Grammophon.

The institutions where he has had significant roles include the BBC Philharmonic which he led from 2002–2011; the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, where the Victor de Sabata Chair was created for him as principal guest conductor from 2010–2014; and the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, which appointed him its first-ever foreign principal guest conductor in 1997, a position he held for a decade. He was Principal Guest Conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic from 1999 to 2003 and Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI from 2003 to 2006.

Noseda’s intense recording activity counts more than 60 CDs, many of which have been celebrated by critics and received awards. His Musica Italiana project, which he initiated more than ten years ago, has chronicled under-appreciated Italian repertoire of the 20th century and brought to light many masterpieces. Conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestra Teatro Regio Torino, he has also recorded opera albums with celebrated vocalists such as Ildebrando d’Arcangelo, Rolando Villazón, Anna Netrebko, and Diana Damrau.

A native of Milan, Noseda is Commendatore al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, marking his contribution to the artistic life of Italy. In 2015, he was honored as Musical America’s Conductor of the Year, and was named the 2016 International Opera Awards Conductor of the Year. In December 2016 he was privileged to conduct the Nobel Prize Concert in Stockholm.

Swiss-Italian pianist Francesco Piemontesi, a native of Locarno, has over the years gained a reputation as one of the leading interpreters of the German classical and romantic repertoire. He appears as a regular guest with many of the world’s leading orchestras, in concert halls and music festivals around the globe, while still being firmly anchored on the shores of Lago Maggiore as Artistic Director of the music festival Settimane Musicali di Ascona. 

With his subtle, but mesmerizing interpretations of Franz Schubert’s piano sonatas, as well as the solo works and piano concertos of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Liszt, he has been acclaimed internationally by critics and audiences alike. His playing is characterized by sensitivity, intimacy and poetry, but also by power and brilliance. Above all, it is important to him to illuminate the scores from within: "Making music is like a second language for me. It feels like an existential necessity. I don’t want to entertain the audience, I want to let them participate in the deep dimensions of music.“ 

In addition to the classical and romantic periods, Francesco Piemontesi’s wider repertoire includes works by Bach and Handel in original versions and transcriptions, piano concertos by Ravel, Debussy, Bartók, Rachmaninov and Schönberg, as well as works by Olivier Messiaen and Unsuk Chin. Among his many important musical influences, he highlights his distinguished teachers Arie Vardi and Alfred Brendel, but above all French concert pianist Cecile Ousset. It is to her that he owes his rounded tone and a somnambulistic technique that is rooted in the French piano tradition going back to Marcel Ciampi. 

Francesco Piemontesi’s musical artistry is documented on numerous recordings that have received awards and critical acclaim, such as Schubert’s last Piano Sonatas, Debussy’s Preludes and Mozart’s Piano Concertos with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Andrew Manze. His latest release on Pentatone is dedicated to two of the most demanding pieces of piano literature: The Transcendental Études and the B minor Sonata by Franz Liszt. 

Working with fellow musicians and orchestras alike, Francesco Piemontesi’s collaborations form themselves from the nucleus of friendship, appreciation and creativity. He recently has been Artist in Residence with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Dresden Philharmonic and the Gstaad Menuhin Festival. A long-standing relationship links him to the Schubertiade Festival and to London’s Wigmore Hall: having already completed concert cycles with the integral piano works of Schubert and Mozart, he will perform Beethoven’s piano sonatas there from 2025. As adept on the concert stage as he is in smaller chamber combinations, Francesco Piemontesi appears with a variety of partners including Renaud Capuçon, Tabea Zimmermann, Leonidas Kavakos, Martha Argerich, Janine Jansen, Daniel Müller-Schott, Augustin Hadelich and Jörg Widmann. 

As a soloist, he has played alongside leading orchestras such as Berlin and Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, L’Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks Munich, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Wiener Symphoniker, the Chicago, Boston, London and NHK Symphony Orchestras, the Cleveland Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra as well as the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. He regularly collaborates with distinguished conductors such as Gianandrea Noseda, Fabio Luisi, Antonio Pappano, Daniele Gatti, Daniele Rustioni, Lorenzo Viotti, Robin Ticciati, Iván Fischer, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Marek Janowski, Joana Mallwitz, Thomas Søndergård, Daniel Harding, Roger Norrington, Karina Canellakis, Paavo Järvi, Zubin Mehta, Nathalie Stutzmann, Elim Chan and Maxim Emelyanychev. 

Francesco Piemontesi travels the world and has appeared in many prestigious venues including Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall New York and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. As a welcomed guest he was featured in the well-known festivals of Salzburg, Edinburgh, Aix-en-Provence, Luzern, Verbier and Schleswig-Holstein as well as in La Roque d’Anthéron, New York Mostly Mozart, Klavierfestival Ruhr and BBC Proms. 

Highlights of the 2023/24 season include appearances with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich and New York Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and Danish National Symphony Orchestra under Herbert Blomstedt, the Swedish and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestras under Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Hannu Lintu, Wiener Symphoniker under Joana Mallwitz and tours with the Dresden Philharmonic under Pablo Gonzales and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Jérémie Rhorer. Francesco Piemontesi will return to the Festival Aix-en-Provence and the Schubertiade and will play recitals at Wigmore Hall London,  Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Teatro di San Carlo Naples.