Press report from balarm.it, 21 Oct 2019.

Palermo export Riccardo Terzo, first bassoon with the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg, can be heard playing as a guest musician of the Sicilian Symphony Orchestra conducted by George Pehlivanian at the Politeama Theatre in Palermo on Friday, 27 October at 9:00 pm.

The first piece to be heard will be the “Abu Hassan” overture of Carl Maria von Weber’s Concerto in F major for bassoon and orchestra, Op. 75. The second part of the concert will be the Symphony in C minor (No. 0) by Joseph Anton Bruckner. The concert will be repeated on Saturday 28 October at 5:30 pm.

The “Abu Hassan” overture is a one-act Singspiel that is considered to be Weber’s seminal work. The piece was composed between 1810 and 1811. On 4 June 1811, the Singspiel was performed in Munich’s Residenztheater. It bears witness to the young composer’s ability to imitate the Turkish style that was popular at the time. The libretto is a piece taken from Carl Hilmer’s Geschichte von Tausendundeiner Nacht (Arabian Nights).

Carl Maria von Weber was commissioned to compose the Concerto in F Major for Bassoon and Orchestra Op. 75, J. 127 by King Maximilian I of Bavaria at the suggestion of Georg Friedrich Brand. Weber wrote the concert in a very short time, between the 14th and 27th of November 1811.

Bruckner started to compose his Symphony No. 0 in D minor in 1863 and extended it in 1869. This symphony continued to influence Bruckner for his whole life; he incorporated elements of the music composed for this work into various other symphonies.

27-year-old Riccardo Terzo is a young bassoonist who has already received great acclaim. He won the Gillet-Fox Bassoon Prize in the IDRS Competition – the most prestigious bassoon prize in the world, awarded by the International Double Reed Society of Georgia, USA.