Luigi Gaggero

Biographie

Luigi Gaggero has been performing as cimbalom and percussion player and as a conductor of contemporary music ensembles at important concert halls and festivals all over Europe, USA, and China (Philharmonics in Berlin, Paris and Kiev, Milano Musica, Carnegie Hall, Salzburger Festspiele, BBC Proms in London, Biennali in Salzburg and Venezia, Klangspuren, DeSingel...)

For 20 years Luigi has been dedicating himself to the development of new playing techniques on the cimbalom, revolutionizing the approach to the instrument. He premiered more than 40 compositions -among solo pieces, concertos and chamber music- written for him by many of the most important composers of our time, contributing to an essential widening of the cimbalom literature.

Faraway from a widespread structuralist approach to modern music, Luigi privileges a phenomenological one: with this spirit he co-founded as artistic and music director the Ukho Ensemble Kyiv, which he conducts since 2015. In 2018 he has been appointed chief conductor of the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra.

In 2012 he founded the vocal ensemble La Dolce Maniera with which he recorded 2 CDs dedicated to Monteverdi and Gesualdo. Vittorio Ghielmi wrote: “these fresh interpretations, far away from any ‘museality’, remind closely of Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro and the Baroque sculpture, letting this music powerfully come to life again before our eyes”.

As a conductor Luigi recorded monographic CDs dedicated to Gervasoni (Winter & Winter), Hosokawa, (Kairos), Solbiati (EMA Vinci Records), Monteverdi and Gesualdo (Stradivarius); as a cimbalom player he recorded works by Eötvös, Fedele, Francesconi, Gervasoni, Hosokawa, Lévinas, Kurtág and Solbiati.

He regularly plays with the best European formations (Berliner Philharmoniker, Münchner Philharmoniker, Münchner Kammerorchester, Filarmonica della Scala, Radio Filharmonisch Orkest Holland, Philharmonia Orchestra London, Orchestre du Théâtre de La Monnaie in Bruxelles, Orchestre de Radio France; ensembles InterContemporain, Scharoun, musikfrabrik, Modern, œnm Salzburg, Contrechamps and Remix) under the direction of Abbado, Barenboim, Boulez, Harnoncourt, Holliger, Muti, Nagano, Ono, Pappano, Poppen and Rattle. Luigi collaborated also with interpreters like Juliane Banse, Muriel Cantoreggi, Mario Caroli, Marino Formenti, David Grimal, Niek de Groot, Barbara Hannigan, Maria Husmann, András Keller and Geneviève Strosser.

He has studied percussions and conducting with Andrea Pestalozza -who brought him to the enthusiastic discover of the music of the 20th Century-, cimbalom with Márta Fábián and, studying with Edgar Guggeis and Rainer Seegers, was the first percussionist to receive the soloist-diploma with honors at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin.

Gaggero is professor of cimbalom at the Conservatoire and at the Académie supérieure de musique in Strasbourg, where he also conducts the contemporary music ensemble of the Académie.