Marco Boni

Born into a family of musicians, he studied the horn and cello and graduated in the latter instrument at the Milan Conservatoire under Rocco Filippini. He soon became first cello to the Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale, Bologna, and was regularly invited to perform at important international festivals together with soloists such as Salvatore Accardo, Yuri Bashmet, Giuliano Carmignola, Bruno Canino, Bruno Giuranna, Paul Tortelier and Sandor Vegh.

In 1987 he renewed a long-standing contact with Sergiu Celibidache, who had taught him the rudiments of orchestral conducting when Marco was only eleven. Marco Boni’s conducting career reached a significant turning point in 1994 when, after a successful tour of some major Italian towns, he became Principal Conductor of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra, a position that he still holds. In the same year he made his début at the Teatro Comunale of Florence with the Chorus and Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and a tour of Italy with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra culminated at the Rovereto Mozart Festival. In the Eighties Marco Boni was among the founders, and solo cello, of the chamber orchestra I Virtuosi Italiani (concerts in Italy, Switzerland and at the Turku Festival in Finland 2001). With the same orchestra he released for Chandos the first world recording of Rota’s Piano concertos.

A regular guest with some of the major European orchestras, he toured Spain with the North Netherlands Orchestra, making his début with the Mahler repertoire. With the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra he has toured France, Spain (9 tours), Italy (4 tours), Belgium, India, Japan (2 tours), Switzerland and more recently Portugal with the pianist Maria Joao Pires, obtaining everywhere unanimous acclaim from public and critics.

In 2002 he was invited to conduct at the Floriade Happening in Amsterdam, sharing the evening with Riccardo Chailly and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in a concert broadcast by Dutch television. In 2005 he was nominated Musical Director of the Wiener Kammersymphonie, a recently founded chamber orchestra formed of members of the best Viennese and Austrian Orchestras, such as Camerata Salzburg, Wiener Philharmoniker and Wiener Symphoniker, whom he has conducted on March 2006 in Spain in occasion of the orchestra début.

On September 2006 during his tour in Italy and Switzwerland Maestro Boni has celebrated the eighth of century (12 years and a half) of co-operation with Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra. His first recording of Mahler’s arrangements of the quartets “Death and the Maiden” by Schubert and Op. 95 by Beethoven was rated by the BBC Music Magazine as the best recording of this repertoire now available.Four recordings of works by Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schubert and Cajkovskij for the label Pentatone Classics have now been released in a Super-audio CD version. Each of these had flattering reviews in worldwide musical magazines. In December 2005 Boni recorded a CD of Vivaldi and Bach for the label Victor with the Filarmonici of the Bologna Teatro Comunale.

After the great success conducting the Orchestra del Teatro Regio of Parma during the Indian tour in November 2006, a double CD entirely dedicated to Giuseppe Verdi with the same orchestra, the Chorus of Teatro Regio di Parma and the bass Michele Pertusi will be released shortly.