Riccardo Muti’s latest book, ‘My Journey Into Music,’ now available

The catalog of published works by Riccardo Muti has gained a new volume: L’infinito tra le note: Il mio viaggio nella musica (Infinity Between the Notes: My Journey Into Music).

In this Italian-language book, the Zell Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra examines the mystery of music, in eight lessons through music history, drawing on his long experience as a conductor. “Being a musician is a choice you make for passion; we might even say it’s a mission: it’s the continuous research of an interpretative truth, of an unattainable perfection,” Muti writes.

He discusses his teachers, including Bruno Bettinelli and Antonino Votto, the onetime principal assistant to the legendary Arturo Toscanini during his tenure at La Scala, and as well as his favorite composers, including Mozart and Verdi, along with lesser-known Italian composers such as Giovanni Paisiello and Gaspare Spontini.

Muti also reflects on his lifelong dream of creating an orchestra of young Italian musicians and an opera academy in “a country that often forgets its role in the art of society.”

Published by Solferino, the book is available on riccardomutimusic.com. It follows his previous books, the autobiography First the Music, Then the Words (2010) and Verdi, l’Italiano (2012). For now, L’infinito tra le note is available only in an Italian-language edition.