Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

Daniele Rustioni is one of the most compelling conductors of his generation both in opera and orchestral repertoire. In 2022, he was awarded “Best Conductor of the Year” by the International Opera Awards.  

Rustioni has been Music Director of Opéra National de Lyon since September 2017 and became Music Director of the Ulster Orchestra in the United Kingdom in 2022/23 after three seasons as Chief Conductor. In September 2021, he became Principal Guest Conductor of the Bavarian State Opera. Between 2014 and 2020 he was Music Director of the Orchestra della Toscana and served as Artistic Director until January 2023. 

Rustioni has been engaged by all major international opera houses including the Berlin Staatsoper, La Scala, Opéra Bastille, Opernhaus Zürich, Royal Opera House Covent Garden and Teatro Real. He made his debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2022 leading a concert performance of Lucia di Lammermoor. He returned to the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden in July 2023 taking over a production of Don Carlo for Daniel Barenboim.   

As Music Director of the Opéra National de Lyon, Daniele Rustioni conducts two new productions each season in addition to symphonic programs. He and the opera house are regular guests of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris – they performed Hérodiade by Massenet in concert version during the 2022/23 season – as well as of the Aix-en-Provence Summer Festival, where they present operas on stage as well as in concert versions. Rustioni opened the 2022/23 season with a new production of Tannhäuser, his first Wagner production and the beginning of a three-year survey of German repertoire, which will include Die Frau ohne Schatten in 2023/24 and Wozzeck in 2024/25. 

Rustioni is a regular presence at the Metropolitan Opera House where he made his debut in April 2017 with Aida and returned in 2021/22 with back-to-back performances of a new production of Rigoletto and a revival of Le Nozze di Figaro. In March 2022/23 he led critically acclaimed performances of a revival of Robert Carsen’s production of Falstaff. He returns to the Met in 2023/24 for the New Year’s Eve Gala and performances of a new production of Carmen directed by Carrie Cracknell. 

Rustioni is in-demand by many of the leading international orchestras. In February 2023, he made his Carnegie Hall debut conducting the MET Orchestra, an honor usually reserved for the Music Director of the MET. His other recent American debuts include the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in April 2023 and Philadelphia Orchestra in January 2022. In the 2023/24 season he will make debuts with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and Dallas Symphony Orchestra. He has many debuts and reengagements with major American orchestras coming in future seasons. 

Rustioni has conducted all the major Italian symphony orchestras, including the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Orchestra and the Filarmonica della Scala. His guest conducting engagements have included the London Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and the Hallé Orchestra. 

As Music Director of the Ulster Orchestra, Rustioni has developed significant activities for the ensemble including a European Union tour in May 2022 and an acclaimed performance at the BBC Proms in August 2022. Future plans include recordings and more touring activities. 

Rustioni has made regular appearances in Japan since his debut conducting Madama Butterfly at the Nikkikai Opera in 2014, including performances with the Kyushu Symphony Orchestra, the HPAC Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, the Osaka Philharmonic and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. 

Rustioni’s extensive and varied discography includes Bellini’s Adelson e Salvini for Opera Rara with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Wolf-Ferrari’s Violin Concerto on Deutsche Grammophon with Francesca Dego and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He has recorded works by Federico Ghedini, Goffredo Petrassi and Alfredo Casella with the Orchestra della Toscana for Sony Classical. The Opéra National de Lyon and Rustioni’sacclaimed performance of Barry Kosky’s production of The Golden Cockerel was recently released on DVD by Naxos. 

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.