Symphony Concert N° 9

Riccardo Minasi

Italian conductor Riccardo Minasi currently serves as Principal Guest Conductor of Ensemble Resonanz who are resident at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, and Artistic Director of Orchestra La Scintilla at the Zurich Opera House, positions he has held since 2022. His previous appointments include co-founder and conductor of Il Pomo d’Oro from 2011 to 2016, Chief Conductor of the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra from 2017 to 2022, and Music Director of Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa from 2022 to 2025. 

In the 2025/26 season, Minasi is Artist in Residence at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie where he conducts four programmes with Ensemble Resonanz, including a concertante performance of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi and Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ. He also performs in Hamburg with Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen as part of his European tour with Beatrice Rana, followed by concerts in South America alongside James Ehnes.

Other highlights of the season include his first appearances with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, SWR Symphonieorchester, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Dresdner Philharmonie with Martin Fröst. He also leads Mahler Chamber Orchestra in Mahler’s Symphony No.3 with Marianne Crebassa in Essen, Dortmund and Köln and two symphonic programmes with the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra and Queensland Symphony Orchestra. 

Following his concert with Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra last season with Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion, Minasi returns to Accademie Nazionale de Santa Cecilia to perform the same work at Easter. Additional returns include engagements with Gurzenich Orchester Cologne and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra with Sayaka Shoji. Recent highlights  include performances with Berliner Philharmoniker, Staatskapelle Dresden (ZDF Advent concert), Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. 

His ongoing collaboration with Ensemble Resonanz takes him to Beethovenfest Bonn, Kölner Philharmonie and Concertgebouw Amsterdam and their 2024 BBC Proms debut was met with critical acclaim. Minasi returned to the BBC Proms in summer 2025 with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the new production of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro previously staged at Glyndebourne. 

Past opera performances includes Die Zauberflöte, Le nozze di Figaro and Rodelinda at the Dutch National Opera; Dialogue des Carmélites and Don Giovanni at Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía; Le nozze di Figaro and Così fan tutte for Glyndebourne Festival Opera; The Turn of the Screw, Idomeneo, Cenerentola, Beatrice di Tenda and Norma at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa; Les Pêcheurs de Perles for Salzburger Festspiele; Così fan tutte, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Turco in Italia and Orlando Paladino for Opernhaus Zürich; Le nozze di Figaro, Iphigenie en Tauride, Alcina and Agrippina for Hamburg State Opera and Carmen for Opéra National de Lyon.

Riccardo Minasi has a wealth of recording experience with the world’s top artists. In 2016 alone, he appeared on four Echo Klassik award-winning albums and most recently his Harmonia Mundi recordings with Ensemble Resonanz of Joseph Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross (2018), the C.P.E. Bach’s Cello Concertos (2019), and the Antonín Kraft’s Cello Concerto with Jean-Guihen Queyras (2024) were awarded the Diapason d’Or de l’Année. His last album with Ensemble Resonanz, Mozart: Haffner-Akademie, was released in April 2025. 

Minasi’s performances are characterised by their musicological integrity. He has acted as a historical advisor for the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. Minasi was curator and editor with Maurizio Biondi of the 2016 Bärenreiter critical edition of Bellini’s Norma, a piece he later performed with Ensemble Resonanz in Hamburg, Köln and at Teatro Carlo Felice, following the great success of the production at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in 2022.

Rudolf Buchbinder

Rudolf Buchbinder is one of the legendary artists of our time. His piano playing is an unparalleled fusion of the authority of a career spanning more than sixty years with spirit and spontaneity. 

His renditions of Ludwig van Beethoven's works are considered to be exemplary. He has performed the thirty-two piano sonatas sixty times in cycles all over the world and developed the story of their interpretation over decades. He was the first pianist to play all Beethoven sonatas at the Salzburg Festival during a festival summer.

In the 2019/20 season, for the first time in its 150-year history, the Musikverein Vienna was granting a single pianist, Rudolf Buchbinder, the honour of performing all five Beethoven piano concertos with five world class orchestras and conductors in a specially edited cycle. Buchbinder's partners in this unprecedented constellation were the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Andris Nelsons, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Riccardo Muti and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and the Staatskapelle Dresden under their chief conductors Mariss Jansons, Valery Gergiev and Christian Thielemann.