MiTo, the Milan-Turin music festival, opens tonight in asbestos-polluted Scala with a Yuri Temirkanov concert -- but Antonio Pappano, one of the star conductors of the festival had to pull out of two commitments due to a minor surgery that he couldn't postpone. Get well soon to our wonderful Maestro Tony, who'll be replaced by the impressively-mulleted, pomaded Diego Matheuz, rising star of El Sistema, like a Dudamel with even sillier hair.
The main event of ther festival won't be a concert -- the thing you don't want to miss is the reading by Alex Ross @ Palazzo Clerici (quite possibly Milan's most elegant palazzo) in the occasion of the Italian publication of The Rest Is Noise -- or, as the Italians say, "Il Resto E' Rumore". Pianist Alfonso Alberti will execute a selection of 20th century goodness.
Anyway, since we always hear Yuri Temirkanov's heavenly music but we never get to hear his voice, the video below -- Russian audio, Italian subtitles -- allows us the treat of hearing the kind voice of our Uncle Solly, that gentle giant of the podium (in the video he's sending a shoutout to Rimini's Sagra Musicale Malatestiana).