Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

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. 

David McCarroll was appointed concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, holding the Rachel Mellon Walton Concertmaster Chair, beginning with the 2022-2023 season.

David McCarroll has been described as “a violinist of mature musicality and deep understanding of his repertoire whose playing is distinguished by clarity of form and line” by Musik Heute. Winner of the 2012 European Young Concert Artists Auditions, he made his concerto debut with the London Mozart Players in 2002 and has since appeared as soloist with many orchestras including the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich (Simone Young, Grafenegg), Hong Kong Sinfonietta (Christoph Poppen), Santa Rosa Symphony, and Philharmonie Zuidnederland. He regularly performs in major concert halls such as the Konzerthaus Berlin, Vienna Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw, Wigmore Hall, Library of Congress, Kennedy Center, 92nd Street Y, and Carnegie Hall, while his performances have been broadcast on many radio stations including WGBH Boston, WQXR New York, National Public Radio, Ö1, BR¬-Klassik and the BBC.

Also an active chamber musician, David McCarroll served from 2015 to 2022 as the violinist of the renowned Vienna Piano Trio with whom he toured and recorded extensively. The Trio’s recording of the complete Brahms piano trios was awarded the 2017 Echo Klassik prize and in 2020 the Trio’s Beethoven recording won the Opus Klassik award.

In addition, David McCarroll has performed in many chamber ensembles with musicians including Mitsuko Uchida, Richard Goode, Miriam Fried, Pamela Frank, Anthony Marwood, Donald Weilerstein, Kim Kashkashian, Roger Tapping, Marcy Rosen, Peter Wiley, Charles Neidich, Jörg Widmann, and Radovan Vlatkovic, while he is a regular guest at festivals such as Marlboro, the Schubertiade, Heidelberger Frühling, Grafenegg, Lucerne Festival, Menuhin Festival Gstaad, Siete Lagos (Argentina), ChamberFest Cleveland, Portland Chamber Music Festival, and with the Israeli Chamber Project. Recent performances have included Stravinsky’s violin concerto at the Konzerthaus Berlin, touring with Musicians from Marlboro, and performances of György Kurtág’s “Kafka Fragments” for violin and soprano.

In demand as a teacher, David McCarroll taught a full violin class for one year at Salzburg's Mozarteum University, and has taught both violin and chamber music at Ravinia's Steans Institute, at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music, and at the San Francisco Conservatory.

McCarroll was born in Santa Rosa, California in 1986 and began studying the violin with Helen Payne Sloat at the age of four. At age eight, he attended the Crowden School of Music in Berkeley studying with Anne Crowden. When he was 13, he received an invitation to join an international group of 60 young music students at the Yehudi Menuhin School outside London where he studied for five years with Simon Fischer. McCarroll continued his studies with Donald Weilerstein and Miriam Fried at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, receiving a Master’s degree, and with Antje Weithaas in the Konzertexamen (Artist Diploma) program at the Hanns Eisler Academy in Berlin.

In addition to music, David McCarroll maintains an active interest in social concerns, including the needs of those impacted by the AIDS pandemic. He is currently working on projects of the Starcross Community to help AIDS orphans in Africa. He has performed in programs encouraging world peace promoted by the Fellowship of Reconciliation and has given benefit concerts for Doctors Without Borders. With other members of his family, he has worked to get strings to young music students in Cuba where such items are very difficult to obtain. McCarroll plays a 1761 violin made by A&J Gagliano.