The highlight of the Musical Meditations (July 30–Aug. 7), which will present music composed between the Renaissance and the late Baroque periods, will be the traditional complete sequence of J.S. Bach’s Six Cello Suites, assigned this year to the German Alban Gerhardt, at the Hermitage of Santa Caterina del Sasso in Leggiuno. Rendezvous for connoisseurs too with La Colombina, which will interpret Ad Vesperas by Tomas Luis de Victoria; Cappella della Pietà de’ Turchini, conducted by Antonio Florio and committed to a programme with music by Benevoli and Pergolesi, and with Enrico Pieranunzi, who will offer his Pieranunzi plays Scarlatti. The central part of the Festival, which this year is entitled Visions, presents precious and less familiar works by celebrated composers from the late 1700s and the early 1900s. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann will be alternated with Tchaikovsky and Dvořák, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, Skrjabin and Richard Strauss, composing an ample and suggestive musical offering, through performances of high interpretative value thanks to the presence of artists celebrated the world over.

The opening concert will be offered by the Sydney Symphony, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy, which will perform Sibelius’s Rakastava Suite, Skrjabin’s Symphony No. 3 and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, Daniele Petralia soloist. On August 24 the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conducted by the violinist Rachel Podger and with viola soloist Pavlo Beznosiuk, will perform music by Haydn, Mozart and Spohr, while on August 27 Gianandrea Noseda, Artistic Director of the Festival, will conduc the European Union Youth Orchestra in a programme with music by Karlowicz, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky. The Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by its Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, arrives in Stresa on August 29 and here it will close its European tour performing Schubert’s Symphony No. 4 and A Hero’s Life by Richard Strauss. The Stresa Festival Orchestra, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, will perform twice on the stage of the Palazzo dei Congressi. On September 2, Mozart’s Idomeneo in semi-staged form is proposed, boasting a vocal cast of international acclaim, composed of Francesco Meli, Laura Polverelli, Alessandra Marianelli, Barbara Frittoli and Alessandro Liberatore, accompanied by Marco Berrini’s Ars Cantica Choir. The Festival Orchestra will close the 2010 season on September 5 with Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, performed by Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos and Dvořák’s “The New World” Symphony. Performances by prestigious ensembles the Brunello Baroque Experience (August 23), Ensemble Berlin (The Berliner Philarmoniker’s Soloists – August 30) and the Borodin Quartet (August 31) and soloists internationally renowned such as Thomas Zehetmair who, on August 28, will perform the entire Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin by J.S. Bach, and the pianist Piotr Anderszewski (September 3). Finally, on  September 4 the closing concert of Stresa Music Academy2010: the singers chosen from “Giovani all’Opera” held by Natale De Carolis will undertake the semi-staged opera Il matrimonio segreto by Cimarosa, accompanied by the Orchestra Giovanile Italiana conducted by Andrea Battistoni, a young talent made a name for himself in the Conducting Masterclass last year.

Among the unique venues of the festival, on Lake Maggiore and its surroundings, some of the most noteworthy are: the Hermitage of Santa Caterina del Sasso, perched on a rock overlooking the lake, the magnificent Tapestry Hall in Borromeo Palace on Isola Bella, the Loggia del Cashmere, the beautiful garden on Isola Madre, Rocca Borromeo (Borromeo Castle) in Angera, the Visconteo Castle in Vogogna, the monumental Church Madonna di Campagna in Verbania, the splendid Old Church of Belgirate and Villa Ponti in Arona.