Performer: Giovanni Sollima

The RSNO’s latest concert was entitled “Dvořák Cello Concerto”, but it was Thomas Søndergård's brilliant direction of Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony which proved the highlight. 

One of the pleasures of live music-making is seeing as well as hearing: one gets a sense of a performance as a multi-layered communicative act rather than solely as a sequence of beautiful sounds. In Saturday evening’s ACO concert with the extraordinary cellist Giovanni Sollima as soloist, the visual dimension contributed more than usual to the effect of the whole. 

CSO and Riccardo Muti première a newly commissioned piece by cellist Giovanni Sollima that features himself and Yo Yo Ma, with Schubert's Third and Fourth Symphonies also included.

“There is a room in my head in which dialects, languages, scales and ancient songs reverberate”: we speak to Italian cellist Giovanni Sollima about his upcoming performances at the Sounds of the Dolomites festival and his adventurous spirit.