The Orchestra Giovanile Italiana is just the tip of the iceberg of an extraordinary training course intent on preparing orchestral musicians. Beginning in 1980, Piero Farulli created a veritable national centre for orchestral training within the School of Music of Fiesole. The Orchestra is the musical and technical synthesis of an intensive course which includes private lessons, chamber music, section rehearsals and orchestral repertoire. The orchestra has given a decisive contribution to music, seeing that more than one thousand former members are employed in Italian and European symphony orchestras. Christened by Riccardo Muti in 1984, the Orchestra has been invited to some of the most important music festivals including Montpellier, Edinburgh, Ljubljana, Madrid, Frankfurt, Prague, Budapest, Santiago in Chile and the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, with outstanding acclaim from both critics and public alike. In 2000 the Orchestra had the honour of performing for the Italian Republic Day at the Quirinale, conducted by Daniele Gatti, with whom it made its début at the Young Euro Classic Festival in Berlin, performing the world premiere of Giorgio Battistelli’s Etude nach Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit.
On the occasion of the Orchestra’s 20^th anniversary, Daniele Gatti conducted a special formation of the Orchestra, where young students played alongside “veterans”, who are currently principals of some of the most important Italian and European orchestras, for the performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. Since 2007, the Orchestra is regularly invited by the Ravenna Festival where it has the honour of being conducted once again by Riccardo Muti, in addition to Krzysztof Penderecki. In October, 2008, the Orchestra was chosen by Claudio Abbado who conducted a joint production together with the Orchestra Cherubini and Orchestra Mozart of Berlioz’s Te Deum. In April 2010, the Orchestra performed a concert in honour of the Fifth Anniversary of the Papacy of His Holiness Benedict XVI, offered by the President of the Republic of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano. The Orchestra is a founding member of Efnyo (European Federation of National Youth Orchestras).
Its conductors have been, among others, Roberto Abbado, Salvatore Accardo, Yuri Ahronovitch, John Axelrod, Piero Bellugi, Luciano Berio, Gabriele Ferro, Carlo Maria Giulini, Eliahu Inbal, Emmanuel Krivine, Wayne Marshall, Zubin Mehta, Gianandrea Noseda, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Jeffrey Tate. The Orchestra has made recordings for Nuova Era, Aulos, Fonit Cetra and Stradivarius, and has also recorded for Rai, Radio France and for the European Broadcasting Union. Nicola Paszkowski has been the orchestra’s conductor/tutor since 2000.
The Orchestra is supported by the Regione Toscana and the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze as well as the Ministero per i Beni e le attività Culturali; the Compagnia per la Musica in Roma contributes section scholarships and the Compagnia di San Paolo provides scholarships for the winners of the competition for orchestra principals.
In 2004 the orchestra was awarded National Association of Music Critics’s Abbiati Prize.
In September 2008, the Orchestra won the prestigious “Praemium Imperiale” Grant for Young Artists offered by the Japan Art Association.