Luigi Gaggero has been performing as cimbalom and percussion player and as a conductor at important concert halls and festivals all over Europe, USA, and China. With an endless passion for Medieval painting; Dante and Cavalcanti; the cinema of Tarkovsky and Tarr; Bach, Mozart and Kurtág; Heidegger and Nietzsche - Luigi is very sensitive to artists who express the Transcendental in art and therefore prioritizes, as an interpreter, a phenomenological approach to both classical and contemporary music. His interpretations are based on the empathic encounter between interpreter, composer and audience. This results in moving, colorful interpretations, where the classical repertoire gets colored with the typical freedom of interpretation of contemporary music, which, in turn, despite its complexity, abandons itself to the sweep of ‘classical’ phrasing.
This is also the spirit in which Luigi conducts the Ukho Ensemble Kyiv (which he co-founded as artistic and musical director in 2015), and leads the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra (of which he is chief conductor since 2018). Luigi is also guest conductor of several European Orchestras and Ensembles and, at the head of his Ukho Ensemble, has recently conducted three sold-out opera productions at the National Opera of Ukraine.
In 2012 he founded the vocal ensemble La Dolce Maniera with whom he recorded 2 discs dedicated to Monteverdi and Gesualdo. Vittorio Ghielmi wrote: “these fresh interpretations, far away from any ‘museality’, remind closely of Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro and the Baroque sculpture, letting this music powerfully come to life again before our eyes”.
As a conductor, Luigi Gaggero has recorded monographic CDs devoted to Gervasoni (Winter & Winter), Hosokawa and Andreyev (Kairos), Solbiati (EMA Vinci Records), Monteverdi and Gesualdo (Stradivarius). As a cimbalom player he recorded works by Kurtág, Eötvös, Fedele, Francesconi, Gervasoni, Hosokawa, Kurtág, Lévinas and Solbiati (Audite, Aeon, Neos), as well as the Háry János Suite by Kodály on blu-ray with the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.
Luigi Gaggero is professor of cimbalom at the Conservatoire and at the Académie supérieure de musique in Strasbourg, where he also founded the Contemporary music ensemble of the Académie.
More about Luigi Gaggero:
http://www.luigigaggero.com/
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Spoken introduction: Maya Rasmussen
Podcast artwork photograph © 2019 Philippe Stirnweiss