This year marks the 750th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s birth: Pisa is celebrating it with Anima Mundi 2015 by including the momentous symphony Dante by Franz Liszt and Giuseppe Verdi’s Laudi alla Vergine Maria (from Paradiso) conducted by Stefan Soltesz and featuring the Carlo Felice di Genova Orchestra and Choir. The festival will open with Franz Joseph Haydn’s magnificent Creazione performed by Santa Cecilia Orchestra and Choir directed by Hartmut Haenchen. The closing will be an intense meditation on the death of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, conducted by sir John Eliot Gardiner with his ensembles. The series of seven concerts will be completed by Bach’s speculative Variazioni Goldberg, performed on the piano of Ramin Bahrami; the majestic Italian XVIII Century of Antonio Vivaldi and Alessandro Scarlatti directed by Philipp von Steinaecker and Accademia Barocca Cherubini; the vocal and instrumental virtuosity of Georg Friedrich Händel on the evening dedicated to the memory of a great singer, Margherita Durastanti, by Amandine Beyer and Accademia degli Incogniti; and a window on today’s sacred music with the winning composition from Anima Mundi’s competition and Marco Frisina’s Passio Ceciliae both performed by Nova Amadeus Chamber Orchestra and Coro Musica Nova di Roma, conducted by Flavio Emilio Scogna.