Myung-Whun Chung named Conductor Emeritus of the Philharmonic

Even more eagerly awaited this year is Myung-Whun Chung's return to Teatro alla Scala, next Monday, March 13, at 8 p.m., with Franz Schubert's Symphony in B minor Uncompleted D 759 and Johannes Brahms' Symphony No. 4 in E minor Op. 98. During this afternoon's rehearsal, the orchestra's musicians wished to seal their association of nearly thirty-five years with the Korean Conductor by conferring on him the title of Conductor Emeritus of Filarmonica della Scala.

Chung's bond with the orchestra's musicians, whom he is wont to refer to as "my friends," has distant roots: almost thirty-five years have passed since, in 1989, he conducted the first concert juxtaposing Musorgsky's Sorocinsky's Fair and Šostakovič's Sixth with Salvatore Accardo's Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, inaugurating one of the most fruitful collaborations in the orchestra's history. The very young Conductor Korean took the podium of the Philharmonic in the wake of the lessons of Giulini, who had been Chung's mentor. With a hundred and twenty concerts shared, half abroad with the tour to Asia in 2008 to the one to Spain in the 1990s, to recent concerts for the G7 in Taormina or in Piazza Unità d'Italia in Trieste in 2017, in Muscat in 2019 or at the Herodes Atticus Odeon in Athens last year, - Chung left at Teatro alla Scala memorable performances of a very wide repertoire, from Stravinsky's Sacre to symphonic works by Messiaen, Berlioz and Mahler.

"The return of maestro Chung to the podium is every time a wonderful opportunity to make music together with amazing results," said Damiano Cottalasso, vice president of Filarmonica della Scala. "But it is also increasingly the return of a friend of the orchestra, a family person, one of us. All deep relationships live on emotionally intense moments, sometimes idyllic, sometimes difficult, but it is the strength of these feelings that makes relationships so long-lived. It is not only an artistic partnership that has bound us to Master Chung for so many years, but it is above all personal and human. It is for this, and for all that we have shared in more than 30 years of collaboration, that the entire orchestra has decided to bestow upon him the title of Conductor Emeritus."

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