News

Tomorrow: our annual free concert on the Rocca, a gift to our beloved city of Pietrasanta. The Orchestra da Camera Fiorentina, led by Maestro Giuseppe Lanzetta, will perform the best classic film scores by Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone, John Williams and Nicola Piovani, along with projections of film stills, to put you in that special Hollywood mood...

The exquisite Debussy String Quartet from Lyon, France, will perform two giants of the string quartet tonight: Shostakovich’s quartets n.8 and n.11, and Beethoven’s powerful quartet n.8.
Tickets: Euro 10 - 20 - 30.
Music students: Euro 5 - 10 - 15

The grand return of Maestro Bashmet! Devilish trills by violinist Leonard Schreiber and Bashmet’s own Moscow Soloists are set to enthrall Pietrasanta’s Chiostro Sant’Agostino tonight. See you in Chiostro.

Lorenzo Gatto, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and Michael Guttman join forces tonight for a vibrant homage to Italy: Paganini’s famous violin concerto n°1 and Mendelssohn’s « Italian » symphony, tonight at 9:30.

Don’t miss an update: we’ll be posting exclusive stories, photos, and videos on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We’ll also be updating our YouTube channel frequently...

Tonight: Pietrasanta in Concerto 2015!!!
We are getting ready to open the 9th edition of Pietrasanta in Concerto at 9:30. To kick off the festival, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and the Basel Chamber Orchestra will treat us to Ravel’s piano concerto, Rossini’s «Signor Bruschino» symphony and Haydn’s «Surprise». See you in Chiostro!

D-1! We are getting ready to open the 9th edition of Pietrasanta in Concerto tomorrow at 9:30. To kick off the festival, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and the Basel Chamber Orchestra will treat us to Ravel’s piano concerto, Rossini’s «Signor Bruschino » symphony and Haydn’s « Surprise ». See you in Chiostro!

The Debussy String Quartet has built a reputation graced with international acclaim through their many recordings and live performances. Since its creation in 1990, they have enlivened the chamber music world with their stylish and stimulating performances. 

Based in Lyon and honored as Winners of the Evian International String Quartet Competition, the quartet performs about 120 concerts a year all around the world (Europe, Asia, Australia, North America...). 

The quartet’s recording schedule has included the release of more than 25 CDs in 25 years with works ranging from French Music (recently, around Debussy and Caplet which enriches its collection composed of Bonnal, Ravel, Fauré, Witkowski or Lekeu) to Weber or Shostakovich with the complete string quartets recorded by Arion. It includes the acclaimed Decca label release of the landmark Mozart Requiem recording, in the 1802 transcription by Peter Lichtenthal (about which a documentary film has also been made). The quartet’s mixed chamber music repertoire includes its highly regarded CD of the Brahms and Webern clarinet quintets with clarinetist Jean Francois Verdier and a highly acclaimed collaboration with François Chaplin in several Mozart piano concertos. 

Its members are the founders of “Les Cordes en Ballade” a chamber music festival and an academy of chamber music in the South of France, where they perform and teach each summer. 
Christophe Collette, First violin; Marc Vieillefon, Second violin; Vincent Deprecq, viola; Cédric Conchon, cello.

"Creative artist", "libertarian violinist", "passionate virtuoso": such are some of the expressions used by a unanimous press to describe Lorenzo Gatto’s talent and passion and it has to be said that he maintains a vibrant relationship with his public.

A true revelation in the eyes of the greater public and international critics through his second prize and Public’s prize at the prestigious Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition (Concours Musical International Reine Elisabeth ) 2009, Lorenzo Gatto’s talent has also been recognized with his winning of many other prizes of which the first prize and Public’s Prize at the International RNCM Competition in Manchester (age 18) and first prize at the International Andrea Postacchini Competition in Italy (age 16).

Born in Brussels in December 1986, Lorenzo Gatto began studying the violin at the age of 5. At the age of 12 he joined the Brussels’ Royal Conservatory of Music in Véronique Bogaerts’ class where, at 17, he earned a diploma for violin with the highest distinction. After which he continued to perfect his playing under Herman Krebbers in Holland, Augustin Dumay at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium, and Boris Kuschnir in Vienna.

He also worked with other great musicians such as Salvatore Accardo, Zakhar Bron, Pamela Frank, Robert Mann, Midori, Seiji Ozawa, Julian Rachlin, ...

Lorenzo has also been Artistic Director of several original productions by the Brussels Chamber Orchestra and the Kamerorkest. His usual partners in chamber music are Roberto Giordano (piano), Denis Kozhukhin (piano), Eliane Reyes (piano), Denis Sungho (guitar), Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden (piano) and also Camille Thomas (cello) and Béatrice Berrut (piano) within the new Trio Saint-Exupéry.

In a more experimental venture, Lorenzo played in front of 50.000 people in the Royan open air festival “Un violon sur le sable” (“a Fiddler on the Sand”) in 2011; he also performs in the unusual trio, Trilogy, with his violinist friends Hrachya Avanesyan and Yossif Ivanov.

Lorenzo’s discography was recently enlarged with a recording of Martinu’s Concerto n°2 for violin with the Belgian National Orchestra under the direction of Walter Weller. In 2010 he recorded with the pianist Milos Popovic the works of Enescu, Martinu and Mokranjac (“Deconstructing the Wall” album), as well as Vieuxtemps’s Concerto n°4 with the Liège Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Patrick Davin. He had previously recorded Schubert’s String Trios and Trout, as well as Mozart’s String Trio “Divertimento”.

As a committed musician, in 2007 Lorenzo cofounded the Cl4ssiK association with the aim of raising young people’s awareness of classical music. An accomplished athlete, Lorenzo is also an airplane pilot and enjoys paragliding.

Lorenzo plays a 1864 J.B. Vuillaume violin.

Katia and Marielle Labèque are sibling pianists renowned for their ensemble of synchronicity and energy. Their musical ambitions started at an early age and they rose to international fame with their contemporary rendition of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (one of the first gold records in classical music) and have since developed a stunning career with performances worldwide.

They are regular guests with the most prestigious orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus, London Symphony, London Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Filarmonia della Scala, Philadelphia Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle and Vienna Philharmonic.

They have appeared with Baroque music ensembles such as The English Baroque Soloists with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Il Giardino Armonico with Giovanni Antonini, Musica Antica with Reinhard Goebel and Venice Baroque with Andrea Marcon, and recently toured with The Age of Enlightenment & Sir Simon Rattle.

Katia and Marielle have had the privilege of working with many composers including Thomas Adès, Louis Andriessen, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Philip Glass, Osvaldo Golijov, György Ligeti, and Olivier Messiaen.

The Labèques play in festivals and renowned venues worldwide including the Vienna Musikverein, Hamburg Musikhalle, Munich Philharmonie, Carnegie Hall, Royal Festival Hall, La Scala, Berlin Philharmonie, Blossom, Hollywood Bowl, Lucerne, BBC Proms, Ravinia, Tanglewood and Salzburg. A record audience of more than 33,000 attended a gala concert with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Sir Simon Rattle at Berlin’s Waldbühne, now available on DVD (Medici).

For their own label, KML recordings, they have just released Sisters with a selection of musical pieces from their personal and professional lives.

In May 2015 the new piece Star-Cross'd Lovers, written by David Chalmin, at the Paris Philharmonie. This original composition for two pianos, electric guitar and drums is based on the Shakespearean drama Romeo and Juliet. With a choreography for 7 dancers created by world-renowned break-dancer Yaman Okur.