Luciano Chailly The career of one of Italy's most striking musical personalities, reviewed by RODERIC DUNNETT, who met and interviewed him

Luciano Chailly was one of Italy's musical giants. Thanks to his prodigious energies as composer, teacher and administrator, he enjoyed one of the most colourful careers in the music of postwar Italy.

Chailly managed to coincide a successful career as one of Italy's leading composers of the post-Malipiero generation with a host of important posts in music administration. For sixteen years he was at the hub of Radio Televisione Italiana (RAI), serving from 1951 to 1967 as organiser of musical programmes in first Milan and then Rome. He also composed music himself for such successful series as Giacomo Vaccari's 7-hour series Il Mastro Don Gesualdo, based on Giovanni Verga's 1880s novel, and for the acclaimed Il molino sul Po (Mill on the Po). A pioneer of music on television, Chailly was also the moving force behind the setting up of RAI's crucially influential Radiophonic Archive in Milan.

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