An evening that begins amid the mists and sea reflections of the Scottish islands, moves through the vivid and contradictory colors of Venezuela, and finally arrives in the feverish, visionary depths of a romantic nightmare.

At the Teatro Ponchielli, the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Andrej Borejko, with Gabriela Montero at the piano, presented a coherent and narrative program, capable of traversing very different sonic and cultural landscapes. The evening was dedicated to the memory of Elisabetta Carutti Gosi, a generous spirit who passed away on March 2.

The concert opened with Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides Overture: a soft and measured gesture on the podium, with a well-balanced and cohesive orchestra. From the very first bars, a compact and always controlled sound emerged, with that typically “German” clarity and solidity that would characterize the entire evening.

Gabriela Montero’s Venezuelan Concerto is a work that, as the composer herself explained, highlights the two faces of Venezuelan culture: one bright and sunny, the other suffering and constantly संघर्षing to emerge.

The writing draws heavily on twentieth-century models—from Ravel’s Concerto in G to Bernstein’s Symphonic Dancesand Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue—almost as if aiming to unite different musical traditions, both classical and popular. It is also for this reason that Montero remains a divisive figure: a strongly personal voice who has carved out her own space in the contemporary scene.

In the first movement, Mambo, contrasting colors clearly emerge through sudden changes of atmosphere: lyrical moments alternate with Latin rhythms that immediately engage the audience.

The second movement is a kind of suspended barcarolle, with orchestration rich in soloistic and chamber-like episodes and more muted timbres.

The third movement, a rondo inspired by Latin American tradition, unfolds through a tight dialogue between piano and orchestra, enriched by demanding virtuosity, almost akin to true athletic feats.

As an encore, the pianist offered one of her celebrated improvisations—“a moment in which even I don’t know what happens; the music flows spontaneously, freely”—on the theme of Va’, pensiero, reworked in multiple forms up to a surprisingly humorous ragtime-style conclusion.

The second half featured Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, a truly hallucinatory journey into the mind of an artist: from initial dreams and passions, through a ball and a pastoral scene charged with unease, to the march to the scaffold and the final witches’ sabbath, in a crescendo that transforms love into obsession and nightmare.

Borejko’s conducting stood out for its precision and clarity, with a vision that was always lucid and controlled—perhaps at times even too much so. But it was above all the orchestra that impressed: a consistently unified, confident, and technically impeccable sound machine. The sound was compact, responsive, never unruly, with a solid and recognizable timbral quality clearly rooted in a Central European tradition.

An ensemble with a relatively recent history, the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra confirms itself as an open-minded institution, unafraid of any repertoire and, even while still in search of a fully defined identity, capable—precisely through this process—of delivering performances of great quality, such as the one heard this evening.

Photo by Francesco Sessa Ventura