Carlo Ponti is known for taking audiences of all ages on musical journeys of unique interpretive depth.

He is currently in his tenth season as music director of the San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra, and has been praised for raising the orchestra’s artistic level, diversifying its audience base, and developing it into a versatile educational tool.

Ponti was appointed Associate Conductor of the Russian National Orchestra in 2000 and since then has led the ensemble in Russia and on critically acclaimed international concert tours. His debut recording with the RNO was released in 2008 on PentaTone Classics. Celebrated as “a brilliant debut” (Audio and Record), it features Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Night on the Bare Mountain and instrumental selections from the composer’s operas. Forthcoming projects with the RNO include an album featuring symphonic works by Rimsky-Korsakov and, in May 2010, a historic concert at the Vatican celebrating the meeting of the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox faiths in the presence of Pope Benedict XVII and Patriarch Kirill the First.

As guest conductor, Ponti has appeared with the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta de Valencia, Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Orchestra del Teatro di San Carlo, Orquesta Sinfonica de Galicia, Pro Arte Orchestra, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Ural Philharmonic, Moscow Chamber Orchestra and Budapest Concert Orchestra.

International festival appearances include Festival d' Echternach, Festival Vancouver, Taichung Music Festival, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Bratislava Spring Music Festival, St. Petersburg Palaces Music Festival, Festival Internacional de Musica de Villena, Napa Valley Festival del Sole, Tuscan Sun Festival, and the Köln Musik Triennale.

Maestro Ponti was awarded Italy's prestigious Premio Galileo Award in 2006 for exceptional musical achievement. In the United States, he was the recipient of the 2008 Artistic Achievement Award from the Virginia Waring International Piano Competition and the 2009 Spirit of Hope Award from the Childhelp Foundation for his contributions to the development and advancement of young musical talent throughout the world.

Ponti’s performances have been broadcast across the United States by American Public Media's Performance Today program and his work has been profiled on NPR, NBC, ABC News, Leonard Lopate, Fox News, and the Associated Press.

Discography

Modest Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition. Night on the Bare Mountain. Orchestra: Russian National. Conductor: Carlo Ponti

PentaTone Hybrid SACD PTC 5186 332

Mussorgsky is famous for three compositions: the opera Boris Godunov, the fantasy Night on the Bare Mountain and his collection of solo piano pierces, Pictures at an Exhibition. What is easily forgotten is the interesting fact that none of these is famous or well known in their original form. Other composers have made them famous by their own arrangements. Here in this release we hear Night on the Bare Mountain as arranged by Rimsky-Korsakov and perhaps the most famous arrangement ever of any musical composition, that by Maurice Ravel of Pictures at an Exhibition.

There are three additional excerpts not listed above and not listed on the cover of the liner notes. All three were also orchestratred by other composers. They are from the operas The Sorochinsky Fair and Khovanshchina. It is not really fair to fault Mussorgsky, as example both compositions listed above stand alone quite excellently as composed for solo piano as will be shown on the following review below. Here the performances with Carlo Ponti conducting are quite good, very solid bringing out the inherent beauty of the melodic passages and the lyrical or descriptive passages that attempt to describe the various pictures musically. The painter was a close friend of Mussorgsky. The audio quality is quite excellent and typical of most of PentaTone's recent efforts. Absolutely full range and very low in and audible distortions, no effort was made to "hype" the sound quality by boosting the bass drum thwacks or having the cymbals jumping out of their usual place near the rear. Even though it may be a studio recording, the reproduction put me near the middle of a typical orchestral hall. Everything is simply musical and the three excerpts (from Khovanshchina and The Sorochinsky Fair ) are a frosting on this musical cake. Every orchestral section is clearly, performing quite excellently with no excessive highlighting. I will get to hear them perform these selections in West Palm Beach and Boca Raton in March if there are no schedule changes. In the meantime a solid recommendation is easily given here. —Karl Lozier

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