Two of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s concertos, a musical form especially dear to the composer, will be heard this week at music festivals in Italy. At the Festival della Valle d’Itria, Francesca Dego will perform the composer’s Second Violin Concerto with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Teatro alla Scala. The following day, the Pordenone Music Festival will feature Lucio Matarazzo and Giovanni Masi as soloists in the Concerto for Two Guitars as part of a program inspired by Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s correspondence with fellow composer Franco Margola.
On Sunday, 19 July 2026, at the 52nd edition of the Festival della Valle d’Itria in Martina Franca (Puglia), Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 66 (“The Prophets”) will be performed by the Orchestra dell’Accademia Teatro alla Scala, conducted by Diego Ceretta, with Francesca Dego as soloist. The concert will take place in the monumental setting of the Palazzo Ducale.
On Monday, 20 July 2026, Lucio Matarazzo and Giovanni Masi will perform Concerto for Two Guitars and Orchestra, Op. 201 at the Teatro Giuseppe Verdi as part of the 31st Pordenone Music Festival. The program pairs Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s work with Concerto di Oschiri for two pianos and orchestra by Franco Margola (1908-1992). Pordenone, in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region was recently named Italy’s Capital of Culture 2027.
Taken together, these two works span more than three decades of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s musical output: Violin Concerto No. 2 was written in Italy in 1931 and dedicated to Jascha Heifetz, while the Concerto for Two Guitars was composed in 1962 in the United States for the guitar duo Ida Presti and Alexandre Lagoya.