Publications
Daughter of celebrated Italian author Giuliano Dego, Francesca grew up surrounded by books and with a deep passion for literature blossoming alongside her love for music.
Francesca is a frequent contributor to specialist music magazines, penning a monthly column for Suonare News from 2018 to 2022, and has written articles and opinion pieces in the British and international musical press. In her book, issued by Mondadori Editori in 2019 — Tra le Note. Classica: 24 chiavi di lettura — she explores how classical music can be listened to and better understood today.
In 2023 she was asked to write the preface to Dario Oliveri's latest book — L'Orchestra di Auschwitz — a stirring historical enquiry about violinist Alma Rosé, Mahler's niece and Holocaust victim.
Tra le Note
A guide, in twenty-four chapters, that opens up the world of classical music to curious listeners — drawing on Francesca's own experience as a performer to strip away the dust and reveal a living, colourful, deeply human art form.
"A soloist of international renown who is equally convincing as a writer — a rare thing indeed."
"For Dego, classical music is life, alive, contemporary. Nothing abstruse, dusty or dull."
L'Orchestra di Auschwitz
Dario Oliveri returns to bookshops with a new inquiry, this time dedicated to Alma Rosé (1906–1944), niece of Gustav Mahler and a celebrated violinist, whose death at Auschwitz on 4 April 1944 remains shrouded in mystery.
From Francesca's preface
"Alma Rosé. A name, a face, a story that has haunted me forever, and one I feel even closer to since closing, overwhelmed, Oliveri's moving text. For Adorno, there could be no poetry after the camps. Alma, on arriving at Auschwitz, asks for a violin — the last wish of the condemned. Music saves her, at least for a while, and allows her to pull other women, musicians like us, from the gas chambers."
More by Francesca
"Keep it simple, stupid"
Collaborating with Sir Roger Norrington, and how the six 'S's' shaped a new album of Mozart concertos.
Wolf-Ferrari, an overlooked Master?
On why the composer's violin concerto has missed out on its rightful place in the standard repertoire.