ʻThe most important feature of the history of the Astrology is that it unveils the connections between the cultures in a very clear way, of which there are any similar example in other disciplines. Even if the modern man feels its manifestations ʻunbelievableʼ, it is safe that, for many millenia, it was part of the shared spiritual heritage of humanity, and its literature could be defined ʻuniversalʼ in the more comprehensive sense. Perhaps only in it that East and West, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists had no difficulty in comprehend each other.ʼ (from History of Astrology by Bell, Bezold and Gundel) The first question which came to my mind when I was conceiving this project for the Atlas Ensemble was how to put into relation these different instruments, everyone with its cultural heritage and technical peculiarities, and how to create a connection among the musicians involved. I realized that the melodic dimension could be an answer since it is an evident and shared element and this is supported by the fact that many of the represented music traditions have a strong linear connotation. The choice of Karl Heinz Stockhausenʼs ʻTierkreisʼ was the consequence […]
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‘The form and the instrumentation of Tierkreis are not defined a priori but they can be customized by every performer: this is the reason why Marelli and Pierini chose to work on only six of the melodies (Waterman, Taurus, Cancer, Scorpion, Sagittarius, Capricorn) and to aim at the timbre of the basset horn. […] The duration of the composition too is not fixed and it could change depending on the number of the melodic repetitions foreseen by the performer. Therefore we could consider it a ‘opera aperta’ and a work in progress, just as, in the purposes of its author, we perceive the need to compose a work permanently alive, able to renew itself in time and space’. (Andrea Malvano) The melodic approach developed in these pieces represents, in my opinion, a pivotal point of departure of the more recent output by Karl Heinz Stockhausen that, through the articulation of his creative curve that finds in Formel a starting moment, leads to the Formula conception of the last compositional cycles. The choice of the starsigns of this version, beyond their characters, is founded on a interval structure gathered from the reference pitches of each of […]
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EINE SPIELDOSE is a transcription of ‘Komm, Mein Liebe Zither’ K351 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a Lied scored originally for voice and mandolin, a short serenade in which the protagonist commits to the lightness of his zither the love message for the desired woman. In my version the original text by Mozart goes through a radical transfiguration: the mandolin part is set for the string quartet: using the pizzicatos and the extended use of artificial harmonics it becomes a huge and fanciful carillon from which the title is derived, while the vocal part is given to the basset clarinet and the basset horn and kept faithful to the lyrical character of the source. It is a homage to the great Austrian composer, a ‘music toy’ that, with its magic machinery, stops for a moment the flow of the time. The work is a encore that the Stadler Sextet, ensemble formed by elements of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai, commissioned me and that was performed during the ‘Domeniche dell’Auditorium’ in the auditorium ‘A. Toscanini’ in Turin.
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The eight Lieder from Schubert’s Winterreise were realized for a project included in Estovest Festival 2013, dedicated to the different forms of the voice expressions of which I was the curator that comprised Lieder by di György Kurtag, György Ligeti and Wolfgang Rihm too on texts by Friederich Hölderlin and Jacob Lenz. That of the Winterreise is an allegorical journey in which the central element is the unavoidability of the fate that leads to the dismay of the self and to the desertion of reality perceived as unbearable and inconceivable. In the poem cycle by Müller the triggering event is the loss of the beloved, last connection remained with the reality; the protagonist leaves for a long trip in the Winter, metaphysical season, during which the relationship with life gets ‘frozen’ and the subject progressively detaches himself from the ‘known world’ to bring him on the borders of the ‘universe’ and to watch into the absolute Void. The milestones of this path are provided by a selection of Lieder from the cycle that, in my version, gradually move towards the transfiguration of themselves with the progressing of the journey and that, in reaching every next stop, detach themselves from the ‘real’ […]
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THE CHASE is, originally, a piece for four-hands piano that is included in the soundtrack composed by Dmitri Shostakovich for the comedy movie ‘The adventures of Korzinkina’ (1940) directed by Klimentiy Mints. Yanya Korzinkina is a beautiful young railway clerk, always ready to help anyone. So naturally everyone loves her, including a young singer, played by the famous clown Musin, on his way to a music-competition. But when he reaches the stage conks out and is only able to whistle. After many hardships, she jumps on to the stage, kisses him passionately, and he miraculously gets his (bass) voice back, allowing him to win the contest with the performance of Musorsgkij’s ‘Song of the fly’. The work is a kind of ‘anti kino-konsert’ in which ‘Great Art’ is mocked (remarkable is the comic arrangement of the ‘Death of the swan’ by Čajkovskij and the recitation of some verses of Lermontov abruptly stopped by bizzarre events). The movie went out in the movie theaters on the November 11th, 1940 just after the completion of the score that, however, wasn’t preserved in its entirety (between the lost parts there is THE CHASE too); for this reason the music source to which I turned for […]
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‘These so-called ‘folk songs’ were written by amateur musicians who had immigrated to Palestine from Russia and Poland and were living on various kibbutzim. Among the authors of the tunes were Shalom Postolsky and Mordechai Zaira, who took lessons with Wolpe during his stay in British Mandate Palestine (1934-1938). In making arrangements of the songs before he left Palestine for the USA, Wolpe had the advantage of direct contact with the pioneers and their aspirations for a national music. The pedal sonorities, pointillistic, open textures and improvisatory style of the first part of the song mark Wolpe’s attempt to transform these ‘folk songs’ into a new language that addressed the historical moment. He avoided the ostinatos and heavy chording patterns of those who dressed Jewish folk music in European clothing in favor of spare settings inflected by ornamentation that evokes the indigenous music of the Middle East. As he wrote about his ‘Songs from the Hebrew’: ‘Whatever I heard there . . . transformed itself into new aural images, re-crystallizing itself in its encounter with a modern musical mind’. (Notes from the Stefan Wolpe Society website: www.wolpe.org) The arrangement for voice and string quartet of the ‘Four songs’ was commissioned […]
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In 2006 the cello player and musicologist Liza Wilson proposed me to arrange for ensemble some of the theatrical and stage pieces composed by Dmitri Shostakovich; the project was connected to the mise-en-scène of his opera ‘Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district’ under the baton of Mariss Jansons at the Amsterdam Opera during the Holland Festival 2006. The performance, which took place in the foyer of the Opera, had the purpose of introduce the public in the social, political and intellectual context of the Russia of those days and to offer an interpretative tool of the opera itself; to the music were added readings of different texts from russian authors and of Shostakovich himself; the stage direction of the event was by Pierre Audi, the artistic director of the Opera in that period, and the actor Hans Dagelet was in charge of the text acting. The project was repeated the same year during MITO Settembre Musica 2006 in Turin but without any connection with the opera and with the actor Eugenio Allegri; Irina Shostakovich, the last wife of the composer, attended both performances. The authors of the texts were Zaboločkij, Zoshenko, Kharms, Olejnikov, Bulgakov, Achmatova, Pushkin, Platonov, Evtushenko and Pasternak, all, with the […]
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This arrangement was part of a project I conceived for the ESTOVEST Festival 2013, of which I was the artistic coordinator, dedicated to the confrontation of very distant music ages not only from the aesthetic point of view but, and above all, to put side to side the different perceptions of the reality of the world and of the man. I made arrangements of a choice of chansons and motets by ancient masters as Jeannot de L’Escurel, Gilles Binchois, Guillaume de Machaut and Josquin des Prez for the eminent countertenor David James of the Hilliard Ensemble and the strings of the Xenia Ensemble; they were put beside works of contemporary composers as György Kurtág, Gavin Bryars and Arvo Pärt through a shocking contrast; all of them are in connection to the language of the past but contextualized in our times and, thus, taking a totally different meaning. The concert took place in the evocative frame of the statuary of the Aegyptian Museum of Turin.
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This arrangement was part of a project I conceived for the ESTOVEST Festival 2013, of which I was the artistic coordinator, dedicated to the confrontation of very distant music ages not only from the aesthetic point of view but, and above all, to put side to side the different perceptions of the reality of the world and of the man. I made arrangements of a choice of chansons and motets by ancient masters as Jeannot de L’Escurel, Gilles Binchois, Guillaume de Machaut and Josquin des Prez for the eminent countertenor David James of the Hilliard Ensemble and the strings of the Xenia Ensemble; they were put beside works of contemporary composers as György Kurtág, Gavin Bryars and Arvo Pärt through a shocking contrast; all of them are in connection to the language of the past but contextualized in our times and, thus, taking a totally different meaning. The concert took place in the evocative frame of the statuary of the Aegyptian Museum of Turin.
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This arrangement was part of a project I conceived for the ESTOVEST Festival 2013, of which I was the artistic coordinator, dedicated to the confrontation of very distant music ages not only from the aesthetic point of view but, and above all, to put side to side the different perceptions of the reality of the world and of the man. I made arrangements of a choice of chansons and motets by ancient masters as Jeannot de L’Escurel, Gilles Binchois, Guillaume de Machaut and Josquin des Prez for the eminent countertenor David James of the Hilliard Ensemble and the strings of the Xenia Ensemble; they were put beside works of contemporary composers as György Kurtág, Gavin Bryars and Arvo Pärt through a shocking contrast; all of them are in connection to the language of the past but contextualized in our times and, thus, taking a totally different meaning. The concert took place in the evocative frame of the statuary of the Aegyptian Museum of Turin.
Read More ›
This arrangement was part of a project I conceived for the ESTOVEST Festival 2013, of which I was the artistic coordinator, dedicated to the confrontation of very distant music ages not only from the aesthetic point of view but, and above all, to put side to side the different perceptions of the reality of the world and of the man. I made arrangements of a choice of chansons and motets by ancient masters as Jeannot de L’Escurel, Gilles Binchois, Guillaume de Machaut and Josquin des Prez for the eminent countertenor David James of the Hilliard Ensemble and the strings of the Xenia Ensemble; they were put beside works of contemporary composers as György Kurtág, Gavin Bryars and Arvo Pärt through a shocking contrast; all of them are in connection to the language of the past but contextualized in our times and, thus, taking a totally different meaning. The concert took place in the evocative frame of the statuary of the Aegyptian Museum of Turin.
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FOUR MELODIES FROM STOCKHAUSEN’S TIERKREIS for mixed ensemble
6 MELODIE DAL TIERKREIS DI KH STOCKHAUSEN for basset horn and string orchestra
EINE SPIELDOSE for basset clarinet, basset horn and string quartet
OTTO LIEDER (from Schubert’s Winterreise) for tenor, piano and string trio
DMITRI SOSTAKOVIC – ‘THE CHASE’ (from ‘Korzinkina adventures’) – arrangement for piano and string quartet
STEFAN WOLPE ‘Four songs of the jewish pioneers’ for voice and string quartet
LES SALON RUSSES for ensemble (arrangement of theatrical and stage music by Dmitri Shostakovich)
JEHAN DE LESCUREL – ‘A VOUS DOUCE DEBONNAIRE’ for countertenor, violin and viola
GUILLAUME DE MACHAUT – ‘DE DESCONFORT’ for countertenor and cello
JOSQUIN DESPREZ – ‘AVE MARIA’ for countertenor and string quartet