Guido Cantelli
[1] He was named Music Director of La Scala, Milan in November 1956, but his promising career was cut short only one week later by his death at the age of 36 in the 1956 Paris DC-6 crash in France en route to the United States.
[1] Cantelli's career was interrupted by World War II, during which he was forced to serve in the Italian army, and then placed in a German labour camp because of his outspoken opposition to the Nazis.
Riccardo Pick-Mangiagalli, the director of the Milan Conservatory, decided it was the moment to present the young conductor to the wide public, organizing a concert at the Rocchetta Court of the Castello Sforzesco on 27 July 1945, entrusting to Cantelli the Orchestra of La Scala.
The performance immediately signalled Cantelli's "innate elegance of the gesture, the interpretative strength and stylistic purity, which, animated by the youthful momentum of the young conductor, made a great impression on the public.
The results of these stylistic studies by Cantelli maturated on 21 May 1948, with a concert that, in a way, "marked his definitive Scaliger consecration and at the same time his authoritative entry into the small number of great international conductors.
[1] In a note written to Cantelli's wife Iris in 1950 after four of these concerts, Toscanini said: I am happy and moved to inform you of Guido's great success and that I introduced him to my orchestra, which loves him as I do.
The result of such decision was a memorable Così fan tutte conducted by Cantelli at the Piccola Scala on 27 January 1956.
Cantelli, besides conducting, was also the director of the opera, the cast of which included such prominent names as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Graziella Sciutti.
Cantelli was called in the United States to conduct a series of concerts with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, but tragedy struck.
He died in the crash of LAI Flight 451 at Orly Airport in Paris, France only a week after he was named director of La Scala, on 24 November.
He performed "a very rigorous systematic analysis, noting the salient phrases of each composition in the margins of each score, also specifying rhythmic characteristics and interpretative aspects".
[1] He studied with the greatest, learning their secrets and benefiting from their experience, yet never imitating anyone, "manifesting without hesitation his artistic personality", entering, in each execution, in an "almost supernatural state that isolated him from the surrounding world".
[1] Cantelli had been made "one of the most representative figures in the contemporary directorial panorama" by the aforementioned gifts along with, among other things, his communicative skills with the orchestra and the public, the natural "limpidity" of his gesture, his magnetism, and his interpretative versatility.
There are live recordings with the New York Philharmonic of Beethoven's first and fifth piano concertos, with Rudolf Serkin as soloist, from 1953 and 1954, respectively.
