- Guido Cantelli
Guido Cantelli (April 27, 1920 – November 24, 1956) was an Italian orchestral conductor.
Biography
Born in
Novara ,Italy , Cantelli was named Musical Director of La Scala, Milan on November 16, 1956, but his promising career was tragically cut short only one week later by his death at the age of 36 in an airplane crash inParis ,France .In the course of his brief career, he had conducted not only in many of the most famous concert halls of
Europe but also in theUnited States andSouth Africa . The famous conductorArturo Toscanini was particularly impressed by him, and, in a note written to Cantelli's wife Iris in 1950 after four concerts where Cantelli had been a guest conductor with theNBC Symphony Orchestra , said:I am happy and moved to inform you of Guido's great success and that I introduced him to my orchestra, which loves him as I do. This is the first time in my long career that I have met a young man so gifted. He will go far, very far. [Sachs, Harvey, "Toscanini", New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1978. ISBN 0-397-01320-5]
Toscanini, who died less than two months after Cantelli's plane crash, was never told of Cantelli's death.
Cantelli left a small but valuable legacy of recordings. Among them are recordings of Beethoven's 7th symphony, Brahms' 1st and 3rd symphonies, Franck's D minor symphony (with the NBC Symphony), Mussorgsky's "
Pictures at an Exhibition ", Liszt's 2nd piano concerto withClaudio Arrau , and shorter pieces by Ravel, Rossini, and others. His one surviving opera performance is of "Così fan tutte ", from La Scala in 1956. There is also a live CD recording of him conducting the Verdi Requiem (withHerva Nelli ). The Franck, Brahms 3rd, and Beethoven 7th are among his few stereo recordings. Just before he died, he recorded the final three movements of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 for EMI, but did not record the first movement. In recent years, many performances from broadcasts with the NBC Symphony have been made available.References
External links
* [http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Cantelli-Guido.htm Brief biography]
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