Riccardo Chailly was born into a musical family: his father, Luciano Chailly, was a composer and held a number of senior administrative posts in Italian music, including the music directorship of RAI, the Italian broadcasting service, and several top positions in major Italian opera houses. (He is not related to Jacques Chailley, an eminent French musicologist and also a conductor.) Riccardo studied composition with his father and with Bruno Bettinelli at the Milan Conservatory, and conducting with Piero Guarino in Perugia, Franco Caracciolo in Milan, and Franco Ferrara in Siena. He made his conducting debut with I Solisti Veneti in Padua when only fourteen and at the age of nineteen was engaged as assistant conductor to Claudio Abbado for the symphonic concerts given by the Orchestra of La Scala, Milan. In 1974 he made his American conducting debut with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at the Lyric Opera of Chicago; further important operatic debuts included La Scala, Milan (I Masnadieri, 1978) the Royal Opera Company, Covent Garden (Don Pasquale, 1979), the Metropolitan Opera of New York (Les contes d’Hoffmann, 1982) and the Salzburg Festival (Macbeth, 1984).
Chailly’s first major appointment was as conductor of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, a post which he held from 1982 to 1988. The orchestra had been founded after World War II as the RIAS (Radio In American Sector) Orchestra and its first chief conductor had been the immensely gifted Ferenc Fricsay. Chailly raised the performance standard of the orchestra and made several notable recordings with it of works such as Alexander von Zemlinsky’s ballet Die Seejungfrau and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7. Other appointments held in parallel to his Berlin post included those of principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (1982–1985) and of chief conductor of the Teatro Communale in Bologna (1986–1993).
In 1988 he took up the position of chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. Chailly was only thirty-five at the time of this appointment, reflecting the orchestra’s tradition of appointing young music directors. Of its three previous chief conductors, Bernard Haitink and Eduard van Beinum were also in their mid-thirties when selected, and Willem Mengelberg was only twenty-four at the time of his assumption of control of the orchestra. Chailly announced in 2002 that he would be leaving Amsterdam in 2004 to take up the position of chief conductor of both the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and of the Leipzig Opera House, with effect from 2005. While at Amsterdam he was very successful in adding the music of many twentieth-century and contemporary composers to the orchestra’s repertoire, often in the face of considerable opposition. In addition he introduced the orchestra with great success to the world of Italian opera, and maintained and developed its strong Mahler tradition, originally initiated by Mengelberg. A notable aspect of this was the successful 1995 Mahler festival: this celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of Mahler’s first concerts at the Concertgebouw with a complete cycle of all the orchestral and vocal works. In 1999 Chailly took on the leadership also of the Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra, an ensemble based in Milan for young professional musicians aged between eighteen and twenty-five.
His discography is considerable: apart from some early recordings for the small label Italia and later ones for the Dutch label Donemus, he has enjoyed a lengthy relationship with Decca that has resulted in many notable releases. His repertoire for Decca has fallen into several distinct categories: these include complete cycles of the symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler; modern music by composers such as Varese, Hindemith and Messiaen; Italian opera; and lighter music, notably by Shostakovich. Among his most outstanding individual recordings are Zemlinsky’s opera Eine florentinische Tragodie, Janaček’s Glagolitic Mass and Mahler’s Symphony No. 10. His recordings of music by Dutch composers such as Diepenbrock, Ketting and Schat are also of considerable interest.
Chailly has strong ideas about repertoire, often valuing works outside the accepted canon but well worth investigating. In an interview in 2002 he commented, ‘My successor in Amsterdam, I think, should continue in the direction of balancing tradition with the new; it is important to keep bringing forward the key composers of the 20th century — Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Hindemith, Varese.’ Chailly’s performance style is straightforward and very much at the service of the composer; he values accuracy to the written text highly. At the same time he has the power to generate considerable intensity in the concert hall. When married to the high technical standard that he demands, the results are frequently very exciting indeed.
© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Patmore (A–Z of Conductors, Naxos 8.558087–90).