Davide Botto

Biography

Davide Botto is principal double bass of the Orchestra and Filarmonica of the Teatro Regio, Turin, and professor of double bass at the city’s Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi.

Born in 1965, he studied under Elio Veniali, receiving his degree with full marks in double bass at the age of eighteen. He went on to study with Franco Petracchi, first at the Accademia Walter Stauffer in Cremona and then at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, where he obtained his Diploma di Merito and a full scholarship. At the same time he pursued studies in history and literature at the University of Turin, graduating cum laude.

In 1983 he was the only Italian double-bass player selected for the European Community Youth Orchestra (ECYO, now EUYO), with which he toured a number of major European and Asian cities under the baton of Leonard Bernstein and Claudio Abbado. As a soloist he has performed a large part of Bottesini’s repertoire, both with piano and orchestra. He is one of the founders of the bass sextet Basspartout, with whom he has performed nearly a hundred concerts. He has a wide chamber music repertoire, including the second cello part of Schubert's C major Quintet D 956.

Having held classes in many Italian conservatories and in several development courses and having successfully auditioned for the position of principal double-bass at the RAI Orchestra in Rome, the Arena in Verona, and Teatro Regio, Turin, he received the Carlo Capriata Prize in 2009, awarded annually to a distinguished Italian double bass player. As a principal double bass he has been invited to play with the Orchestra of Italian Switzerland OSI, the OSN RAI of Turin, the Orchestre Philharmonique of Monte Carlo, the Opera of Rome and the Teatro alla Scala of Milano.

In 2011 he recorded Rota’s Divertimento Concertante for the the British label Chandos with the conductor Gianandrea Noseda and the Filarmonica of the Teatro Regio Torino, receiving worldwide acclaim (BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone, International Record Review, Ritmo, Classic Voice, Internazionale, Archi Magazine, The Record Geijutsu). The BBC Music Magazine wrote that: ‘...the Divertimento Concertante...puts the instrument - magnificently played here by Davide Botto - through prodigious feats of bravura and unexpected lyric appeal.’ Classic Voice added that ‘...the Divertimento Concertante of 1973, actually a double bass concerto in four movements, finds in Davide Botto, the principal double bass of the orchestra, an uncommonly sensitive and imaginative performer.’ In 2011, for the centenary of Rota’s birth, he performed the Divertimento Concertante in the symphonic season of the Teatro Regio, again with Gianandrea Noseda and the Filarmonica Teatro Regio Torino.

For the British label Chandos he has also recorded an album of music by Bottesini, including Bottsini’s last left unrecorded piece for double bass: the Capriccio a Due Contrabbassi. This recording has been highly praised by specialised reviews. The goal of rediscovering Italian double bass music led him to record Carlo Rossaro’s Fantasia per contrabbasso e pianoforte with the label Tactus. His latest recording is Passioni Amorose by Bottesini with Catalin Rotaru and Wan Ting.

In 2013 he held classes at the home of NHK Orchestra, Tokyo, and at the University of Georgia, Athens USA, where he also gave a solo recital with some unpublished music by Annibale Mengoli, of which he made an edition for the British publisher Recital Music. Invited by Thomas Martin, he has been active several times as a guest teacher at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, UK. In 2016, at the invitation of Eugene Levinson and Timothy Cobb, he held masterclasses at the Juilliard School and at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. He is the author of La Via del Contrabbasso, an educational text about the learning process on the double-bass.