Alessandro Crudele

Alessandro Crudele is one of Italy's leading conductors, with a long list of guest conductor credits both at home and abroad. Somewhat unusually for an Italian conductor, he focuses heavily on orchestral music rather than opera. Crudele was born in Milan, where he studied violin and composition at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory. He graduated in 1997. In 1999, he moved to the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, where he studied with conductor Gianluigi Gelmetti. There, he benefited from several scholarships and graduated with a diploma with honors. He went on for further instruction from Christoph von Dohnányi and Sir Simon Rattle. In 2000, he founded the UniMi Orchestra (Orchestra dell'Università degli Studi di Milano) in his home city; he served as the orchestra's music director until 2021, and over that period, the group's ambition and reach grew substantially. He has always had a strong commitment to working with young musicians; from 2003 to 2006, he regularly guest conducted the Orchestra dell'Accademia del Teatro alla Scala, and he went on to establish ongoing relationships with the Jeune Orchestre International de Monte-Carlo and Germany's Orchesterzentrum NRW. Crudele's career is notable for the breadth of his experience as a guest conductor. He has appeared with numerous top-flight orchestras, most of them outside Italy, and generally conducting orchestral music (although he did make an operatic debut with Rossini's Signor Bruschino). These have included major ensembles in Britain (the London Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra), Germany (the Bamberg Symphony and the Berlin Symphony), and other European countries. Crudele has traveled to Brazil to lead the Orquestra Filarmônica de Minas Gerais and to Israel as the guest of the Israel Symphony Orchestra. Crudele's recording debut came in 2010 on an album by pianist Pietro Massa, leading the Berlin Symphony in performances of works by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He has a long track record in Asia, having conducted the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Hong Kong Sinfonietta, with which he has had an ongoing relationship since 2011. From 2018 to 2022, Crudele was principal guest conductor of the RTS Symphony Orchestra in Belgrade, Serbia. In 2022, he made his solo debut, conducting the London Philharmonic in an album of works by Ottorino Respighi.
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