BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Seiji Ozawa, Music Director 25th ANNIVERSARY SEASON , Principal Guest Conductor One Hundred and Eighteenth Season, 1998-99

Thursday, April 1, at 8

FEDERICO CORTESE conducting

Please note that tonight's concert, which was rescheduled from Thursday, February 25, because of snow, will be led by BSO Assistant Conductor Federico Cortese, substitut- ing for Seiji Ozawa, who was not originally scheduled to be in Boston this week. We appreciate your understanding: tonight was the only Thursday evening available for the rescheduling of this concert. The program remains unchanged.

Federico Cortese Federico Cortese began his tenure as assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa at the start of this season, in September 1998. He made his debut with the BSO at very short notice in late September, when he was called upon to lead the first two movements of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in place of ta| the ailing Mr. Ozawa, who then took the podium for the last two

I movements to conclude the celebratory Boston Common concert

M I marking Mr. Ozawa's twenty-fifth anniversary as the BSO's music director. The following week, Mr. Cortese filled in again for Seiji Ozawa, leading Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony in this year's "Concert For the Cure" benefiting breast cancer research. Since then, in addition to his BSO subscription series debut this past November, he also substituted again for Mr. Ozawa last month, leading this week's Vivaldi /Stravinsky program as well as a performance of

Madama Butterfly. Federico Cortese is currently music coordinator of the Spoleto Festival in and associate conductor of the Spoleto Festival Orchestra. He has served as assistant conductor to Robert Spano at the Brooklyn Philharmonic and to Daniele Gatti at the Orchestra deH'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in . He was also assistant music director of the Rossini Opera Festival and assistant to the artistic director of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. He has led symphony con- certs and opera throughout Europe and in the United States, including appear- ances with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Spoleto USA, the orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, and the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Mr. Cortese stud- ied conducting in Rome with Bruno Aprea at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia and with , subsequently studying at the Hochschule fur Musik in Vienna with Karl Osterreicher and also for two summers at the Tanglewood Music Center, where he was a Conducting Fellow in 1995. While in Rome he also studied composition. Besides his work in music, Mr. Cortese pursued a broad-based edu- cation including studies in literature, the humanities, and law, in which area he earned a degree in jurisprudence from La Sapienza University in Rome.

Week 17

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