Instrumentalists

Piano

Formenti has established himself as one of the most interesting interpreters of the present day, particularly through his performances of modern and contemporary music.
He has performed at some of the most important festivals and institutions around the world, such as New York's Lincoln Center, the Salzburg Festival, the Lucerne Festival, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Musikfestival, the Ruhrtriennale, Wien Modern, the Ojai Festival in California, the Bregenz Festival, the AGORA Festival of the IRCAM in Paris, the Festival Musica Strasbourg, Ars Musica Bruxelles, the Berliner Festwochen, the Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Philharmonie in Cologne, the Tonhalle in Zurich, Severance Hall in Cleveland, the Philharmonie in Budapest, Suntory Hall, Oji Hall and Casals Hall in Tokyo, Rachmaninoff Hall in Moscow and the Philharmonic in St. Petersburg.
He has worked with conductors including Franz Welser-Möst, Sylvain Cambreling, Peter Eotvos, Ingo Metzmacher, Hans Zender, and with orchestras including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Orchestre Philarmonique de Radio France, the DSO in Berlin and the RSO in Vienna.
At Gidon Kremer's Lockenhaus Festival, Formenti has appeared both as a soloist and as a conductor.
The German press (Frankfurter Allgemeine and Tagespiegel) has praised his "wonderful, intimate sound" and his "dreamy concentration," and Vienna's Die Presse has written of "exciting playing" and of a "fantastic, outstanding musician"
In 2004 he made his debut as a soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, followed by a series of three recitals within a single week for Lincoln Center's "Great Performers Series" in New York, featuring works by composers including Stockhausen, Messiaen, Barraqué, Lachenmann, Lucier, Berio, Cage and Sciarrino.
In May 2003 Formenti played a return engagement alongside Pierre Boulez at the Ojai Festival, where he had already performed 3 recitals in June of 2002. In February 2001 he also returned with a 3-recital series to the legendary Monday Evening Concerts at LACMA in Los Angeles, where in the previous year he made his American debut as a soloist performing a 4-recital series. The L.A. Weekly described the event as "a state of exhilaration beyond any experience... his sheer power pinned you to your seat." The Los Angeles Times labeled him "a Glenn Gould for the 21st century" and concluded: "this nut is a genius."
Formenti has recorded for several labels including Kairos, Col Legno and BIS; his recordings have been enthusiastically reviewed by both the European and American press and won various awards.
He is a member of the ensemble Klangforum Wien.
He devotes much of his energy to projects with modern and contemporary works and to adventurous new programs, and has collaborated with some of the most important living composers, including Helmut Lachenmann, György Kúrtag, Salvatore Sciarrino, Olga Neuwirth and Beat Furrer.

Conducting

Marino Formenti studied composition and conducting in Milan, as well as at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna with Prof. U. Lajovic.
He made his conducting debut as part of a collaborative project with Gidon Kremer: the great violinist invited him to lead the Lockenhaus Festival Orchestra, and together they performed Georges Pelecsis' Violin Concerto.
Later on, Formenti worked as an assistant to conductors including Kent Nagano, Sylvain Cambreling and Michael Boder; he worked on several opera productions at venues and festivals including the Opera de Paris, the Los Angeles Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the RuhrTriennale, the Bregenz Festival, the Vienna Festival, the Opéra National du Rhin in Strasbourg, the Steirischer Herbst Festival, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the OsterKlang Festival in Vienna.
He has conducted ensembles including Klangforum Wien, the Seikei University Orchestra in Tokyo, the Junior Orchestra in Kobe, the Webern Symphony of Vienna, the orchestra "Città di Milano", Ensemble Online Vienna, Ensemble Curva Minore in Palermo and many others. As a conductor, he has given several works their world premières.
He has also conducted opera productions of the Wiener Kabinetttheater, of Sirene Operntheater Vienna and at the Neue Studiobühne in Wien; operatic works he has conducted include the Austrian première of Kurt Weill's first opera The Protagonist.