Giovanni Antonini

Born in 1965, the flutist and conductor Giovanni Antonini studied in his native Milan at the Civica Scuola di Musica and in Geneva at the Centre de Musique Ancienne. In 1985, he became one of the founding members of the chamber orchestra Il Giardino Armonico, which he has conducted since 1989. He performs with this ensemble, and also as a soloist on the recorder and transverse flute, throughout Europe and the United States, as well as regularly in Canada, South America, Asia, and Australia. He is also Artistic Director of the Wratislavia Cantans Festival in Poland and Principal Guest Conductor of the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg and the Basel Chamber Orchestra. Giovanni Antonini has worked with such eminent international artists as Kristian Bezuidenhout, Isabelle Faust, Sol Gabetta, Katia and Marielle Labèque, Julia Lezhneva, Viktoria Mullova, Emmanuel Pahud, and Giovanni Sollima. He enjoys a close partnership with mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, with whom he recorded a Grammy-winning Vivaldi album in 2000 and also created the Sacrificium project in 2009. Antonini has been a guest conductor with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the London and Chicago Symphony Orchestras. Opera productions have taken him to the Salzburg Festival, where he conducted Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Bellini’s Norma, as well as to La Scala in Milan, the Theater an der Wien, and Zurich Opera. In the spring of 2023, he conducted concert performances of Mozart’s Così fan tutte in Hamburg, Paris, and Luxembourg, and in the fall he will present Haydn’s Orlando paladino in Madrid and Barcelona. The oeuvre of Haydn is currently at the center of Antonini’s activity: to mark the 300th birthday of this founding father of Viennese Classicism, he is recording the complete symphonies under the title Haydn 2032 with Il Giardino Armonico and the Basel Chamber Orchestra.

Lucerne Festival (IMF) debut on 31 August 1993 with Il Giardino Armonico in a program of works by Vivaldi, Castello, Scarlatti, and Sammartini.

July 2023