Biography
Winner of the Besançon International Conducting Competition in 1992 and of the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition in London in 1996, Tommaso Placidi was in 1996 also awarded the Cesare Alfieri Prize by Mrs Cristina Muti.
From 1996 to 1998 he was Assistant Conductor at the London Symphony Orchestra and worked with Sir Colin Davies, Sir Georg Solti, Mstislav Rostropovich, Riccardo Chailly and Andre Previn, with whom he shared the baton at the Euro ’96 Opening Gala Concert at the Barbican.
Tommaso Placidi has performed with numerous orchestras across Europe, including the London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Strasbourg, Liège and Luxembourg Philharmonics, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, RAI Turin, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine and many others. His conducting of the new productions of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and l’Elisir d’Amore at the Holland Park Festival in London was widely acclaimed.
Always greatly interested in contemporary works, he conducted the world première of The Creatures Indoors by Stephen Montague with the London Symphony Orchestra and of Cori Spezzati by Michel Fourgon with the Liège Philharmonic.
In 2004, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of CERN in Geneva, Tommaso Placidi conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in a Gala Concert at the Victoria Hall with soloist Maxim Vengerov.
In May 2006 he conducted Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at the Spoleto Festival in the US with Nicole Cabell, the 2005 winner of Cardiff Singer of the World. The Toronto Globe & Mail said of the performance, « Opera companies around the world should kidnap conductor Tommaso Placidi. Italian-born and Swiss-based, Placidi makes Gounod’s 1865 overly wrought music sound like the greatest opera ever written, achingly beautiful and intensely dramatic. The Spoleto orchestra is made up of young musicians culled from the best conservatories in the United States and the wannabe professionals play their hearts out for Placidi. It is the best-sounding orchestra I have heard in all my Spoleto years. Placidi reaches into Gounod and literally pulls out the heart strings ».
In 2006 Tommaso Placidi made his China debut, conducting the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra with cellist Nina Kotova.
In 2007 he also conducted Le Petit Prince by Fabio Maffei with the Wroclaw Philharmonic.
On the occasion of the 3rd World Climate Conference in Geneva in September 2009, he conducted the Vienna Symphony Orchestra with soloists Julian Rachlin, Torleif Thedéen and Itamar Golan.
In July 2010 Tommaso Placidi conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in a Gala Concert for the International AIDS 2010 Congress in Vienna with soloist Torleif Thedéen. In October 2011 he conducted in Rome and L'Aquila the very first concerts of the new austrian chamber orchestra Concertino WIEN.
Tommaso Placidi has also conducted New Year's concerts in Quebec-City and Montreal for the 2012 Salute to Vienna.
In December 2012 he had the opportunity to conduct the Vienna Chamber Orchestra in a prestigious Christmas concert for italian President Giorgio Napolitano at the Palazzo del Quirinale in Rome.
After very successful performances of Lucia di Lammermoor and La Traviata during the 2017/2018 Season at the Stara-Zagora State Opera House, Placidi has recently been committed for a future collaboration with the Mariinsky Opera in St. Petersburg.
Tommaso Placidi has a very close collaboration with Austrian composer Roland Baumgartner and has recently recorded the highlights of his new opera Maria Theresia with the Bratislava Radio Orchestra and soloists & choir of the Bratislava Opera House. Amongst future projects, he will be conducting Roland Baumgartner's Symphonia Globalis at the Musikverein Saal in Vienna.
Tommaso Placidi has recorded with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester and the NDR Hannover with clarinettist Steven Kanoff (ASV label), as well as with the Concertino WIEN, the Bratislava Radio Orchestra, the Craïova Symphony Orchestra and the Castagneri Quartet.
