Claudio Scimone

Claudio Scimone stood among the foremost international figures advancing both the chamber music and early music revivals. He trained under Dimitri Mitropoulos and Franco Ferrara while also devoting himself to the study of early music and its interpretive traditions. In 1959 he founded the chamber orchestra I Solisti Veneti in Padua, maintaining a close association with the ensemble for decades as it rapidly earned a reputation for outstanding quality. The year 1975 brought the group’s first engagement at Austria’s annual Salzburg Festival, after which it received yearly invitations. He further directed the orchestra on extensive world tours that reached sixty countries. While I Solisti Veneti concentrated on early repertoire, Scimone actively commissioned new pieces from Cristobal Halffter, Franco Donatoni, Marius Constant, and Sylvano Bussotti, among others.

At the same time he maintained a parallel career as one of the leading musicologists devoted to Italian music from the close of the Renaissance through Rossini. He prepared the first modern editions of Tartini’s violin concertos and sonatas, which had nearly vanished from circulation, and produced editions of many Vivaldi operas. One of his most celebrated modern revivals was the 1977 recording of Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso, featuring Marilyn Horne and Victoria de Los Angeles, followed by a live presentation in 1979 at the Teatro Filharmonico in Verona. He also created a critical edition of Rossini’s Maometto II and oversaw first recordings or modern premiere performances of several additional Rossini operas. His writings include the respected treatise Segno, Significato, Interpretazione on historical performing practice.

The Erato label issued more than 250 recordings under his direction. In addition to his work with I Solisti Veneti, he conducted at Covent Garden, the Houston Grand Opera, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, and the Verona Arena, where in 1996 he revived Antonio Salieri’s long-forgotten Les Danaides.

Scimone likewise appeared with major ensembles such as the ORTF Philharmonic, the Melbourne, Tokyo, Houston, Montreal, Ottawa, and Dallas Symphony Orchestras, the Philharmonia of London, the Yomiuri Nippon Orchestra, and the Royal Philharmonic of London. Among his honors are the Grand Prix du Disque, the Grammy Award, and the Montreux World Disc Prize.