Happy Birthday Maestro Chailly!

Today Riccardo Chailly turns 70 years old.

The musicians' bond with Milan's Conductor is deep, and since his season debut with Mahler's 9th Symphony in 1991 he has taken the podium at Filarmonica della Scala for 200 concerts, half of them abroad touching all the major concert halls including a triumphant U.S. tour, debuts at the Proms and the Edinburgh Festival.

The artistic partnership that since 2015 has brought him to the position of Conductor Principal has allowed him to travel together, with new sensitivity, through great cycles of composers such as Brahms and Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and Sostakovich, Schumann and Mahler, Beethoven and Prokof'ev and to confront, following the same spirit of research, the contemporary repertoire, from the very beginning with the first performances of music by Messiaen, among them the Turangalila Symphony, by Varése and Xenakis, as in the case of Empreintes, to Berio, as with Ritirata Notturna and Festum, and again Henze, as for the Italian premiere of Five Messages for the Queen of Sheba, or the music of Gershwin and Nino Rota. Later he signed the world premieres of many Filarmonica della Scala commissions to living composers from Fabio Vacchi's Prospero to Azio Corghi's Poema Sinfonico, Mozart at Nine and Salvatore Sciarrino's Paese senz'alba e senza tramonto, Carlo Boccadoro's Piano Concerto, and again recent commissions of new music to Nicola Campogrande(Decisamente allegro) and Giorgio Battistelli(Toccata) to Ivan Fedele (Due Letture del tempo), and many others.

Without ever losing the spirit of discovery and curiosity Chailly has always pursued with Filarmonica della Scala the goal of broadening the audience, living as a protagonist the initiatives such as Open rehearsals, meetings and lectures-concerts with the youngest and finally the great Concerto per Milano in Piazza Duomo that he habitually directs every year.