Fabio Di Casola

When Fabio Di Càsola, at the age of 23, stepped onto the stage of the highly coveted Geneva Competition on 15 September 1990, he experienced one of the most emotional moments of his life. His faithful accompanist, who had stood at his side from his preceding four years of study to the present moment, had just passedaway. This incomprehensible, fundamentally unfathomable turn of events defined his playing at the competition. It became the emotional manifesto of his career.

Fabio Di Càsola won the first prize, the first clarinettist in eighteen years to do so.

He soon found himself invited to leading international festivals, including the Berlin Festival under Claudio Abbado, the Evian Festival under Mstislav Rostropovich, and Lockenhaus with Gidon Kremer. In the years that followed he also won the Grand Prix Patek Philippe, the Prix Suisse for Contemporary Music, and the International Contemporary Music Competition in Stresa.

In 1998 the jury and audience in Geneva voted him the “Swiss Musician of the Year.” Fabio Di Càsola has played solo clarinet with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Basel Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, and the Musikkollegium Winterthur and appears regularly in a very wide range of chamber music settings.

Today he is professor of clarinet and chamber music at the Zurich Academy of the Arts and he is the artistic director of the chamber music festival „Klang“.

www.dicasola.com