President
Franz von Walther

Artistic Director
Gustav Kuhn

General Manager
Rosalia Bressan de Concini

The Haydn Orchestra, recognized as a concert institution by the Italian Ministry of Culture/Tourism, was founded in 1960 by the provincial government and local authorities of Trento and Bolzano. It has performed in principal Italian concert venues and has participated in numerous international festivals, including the Haydn Festival in Esterháza, the Bregenz Festival, the Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli Festival in Brescia and Bergamo, the Mozart Festival in Rovereto, the Settimane musicali Gustav Mahler in Dobbiaco, the Antonio Pedrotti Competition for Conductors in Trento, the Tiroler Festpiele in Erl and the Ferruccio Busoni Piano Competition in Bolzano.

The orchestra has toured in the United States, in Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and in Switzerland.

In its nearly fifty-year long history, the Haydn Orchestra has performed a vast number of works across all musical genres, ranging from Baroque to contemporary composers, including Dallapiccola, Nono, Berio and Donatoni, who entrusted it with the first performance of their works. It has especially focused on an often neglected repertoire, also promoting the rediscovery of precious long-forgotten manuscripts, such as the Dixit Dominus by Domenico Cimarosa, performed for the first time in the modern era at the Thirtieth Festival of Sacred Music in Bolzano/Trento, or the Messe solennelle by Hector Berlioz, of which it gave the first modern-day performance. The orchestra has appeared with many great conductors, among them Claudio Abbado and Riccardo Muti, and collaborated with distinguished soloists.
In 2003 Gustav Kuhn was appointed artistic director of the orchestra. Under his direction the Haydn Orchestra performed all nine Beethoven symphonies in the season 2005/06. This cycle has also been recorded by col legno classics and was a great success among critics and public. In December, 2007, this success was confirmed in Salzburg, where the orchestra performed the symphonies again. In summer 2006 the Haydn Orchestra debuted with Torvaldo e Dorliska at the 27th Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, where it was invited again in 2007 to perform within the productions of La gazza ladra, which was awarded with the French Diapason d’or prize, the Turco in Italia, Edipo a Colono and Le nozze di Teti e Peleo. In August, 2008, the Haydn Orchestra performed Maometto II and L’equivoco stravagante in Pesaro while in September it inaugurated the 63rd Sagra Musicale Umbra Festival in Perugia with Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, conducted by Gustav Kuhn.

In December, 2008, the Orchestra was again invited to Salzburg to perform the four Brahms symphonies, the Missa solemnis and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Mozarteum, conducted by Gustav Kuhn.

In August, 2009, the Orchestra performed La scala di seta and Il viaggio a Reims in Pesaro during the 30th Rossini Opera Festival.

The Haydn Orchestra has a busy recording schedule for Agorá, Arts, col legno classics, cpo, Dynamic, Multigram, Naxos, RCA, Universal, VMC Classics and Zecchini, and has also appeared several times on RAI (the Italian State Broadcasting Corporation), both the radio and the TV channels.

Gustav Kuhn
Gustav Kuhn was born in Salzburg, Austria. He took his first violin lessons at the age of 5 and his first piano lessons at the age of 7. He studied at the Classical Secondary School and then, at the Academies of Salzburg and Vienna, he studied composition and conducting (Wimberger, Overhoff, Swarowsky). He completed his final exams in June 1970. He also studied philosophy, psychology and psychopathology (Schwarz, Heintel, Revers, Gastager) at the Universities of Salzburg and Vienna and he received his PHD in January 1970. He took further conducting courses with Bruno Maderna and Herbert von Karajan. He was the winner of the International Conducting Competition of the Austrian Broadcasting Co-operation (ORF) in 1969 and he started his conducting career in Istanbul in 1970. He returned to Vienna after some time spent at small houses all over Europe (Holland, Italy and Germany). In 1974 he founded the "Institut für aleatorische Musik" in Salzburg. He became the first conductor in Bern and Bonn and then the Artistic director and first conductor of the Macerata Opera Festival and at the Roman Opera House.
He was the Artistic director of the Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana. He was also the founder and director of the Accademia di Montegral. He founded and directed the Tyrolean Festival Erl. He has been the artistic director of the Haydn Orchestra Bozen/Trentino since January 2003. He has worked with all of the important European orchestras. In 1986 Gustav Kuhn gave his debut as a stage director for Fliegender.
Holländer in Trieste, Italy. He has carried out numerous recordings for BGM, EMI, CBS, Capriccio, Suprophon, Orfeo, Koch/Schwann, Coreolan and ARTE NOVA. In 1993 he published his book Aus Liebe zur Musik.

Orchestra Haydn
Via Gilm 1/a.
Bolzano
Tel: 0471.975031
E-mail: info@haydn.it
P. IVA: 00665790218.