Carlo Torlontano

Principal and solo horn for many years with the RAI symphony orchestra and at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Carlo Torlontano turned that orchestral discipline on an instrument usually left to signalling: the alphorn. He plays it internationally as a soloist, has drawn composers into writing for it, and programmes historical Alpine music beside new work. He played Leopold Mozart's alphorn concerto in the Großer Saal of the Salzburg Mozarteum in 2006 and again in Augsburg in 2019, and he was the first to take the original alphorn part Richard Strauss wrote for the opening of Daphne, in Gothenburg, at the Theater Basel and at the Berlin Philharmonie; Arvo Pärt has granted him the exclusive right to the alphorn-and-string-orchestra version of Pari intervallo. A founding member of I Solisti del San Carlo, he plays baroque horn with the early music ensemble directed by Rinaldo Alessandrini and has taught horn at the Luisa D'Annunzio Conservatory in Pescara.