Timbral Spaces Sound Labyrinths - Edizioni Suvini Zerboni

Nicola Sani 

ESZnews 

Edizioni Suvini Zerboni - Fourmontly newsletter 

Timbral Spaces 

T 

his Autumn sees four premieres for Nicola Sani. On 

October 19 at the Teatro Verdi in Florence, the Festival 

Play It! will include the first performance of Seascapes III 

“Caieta” for orchestra. Francesco Lanzillotta will conduct 

the Orchestra della Toscana, who commissioned the work, 

which the composer describes as follows: «The relation 

with the visual image is one of the dimensions that most 

fascinates me in my exploration of sound. Not a 

descriptive correspondence, but a free association of 

timbral and perceptual relations. In a music where the 

“material” aspect of the sound prevails, the communicative 

component of the sonic message - its “dramaturgy” - is 

determinant. The investigation of natural sound, the 

exploration of its components is the point of conjunction 

with the acoustic elaboration of “timbral space”. An 

elaboration that becomes a determinant element of the 

composition and the sound dramaturgy, through the 

analysis and articulation of the constitutive parameters of 

the sound. Seascapes III stems from the need to allow 

instrumental sound to coexist with its timbral image 

elaborated and projected into space, in a set of contrasts 

and reflections. Guiding me in this transfiguration were the 

photographic images of Hiroshi Sugimoto, one of today’s 

leading Japanese artists, and in particular his Seascapes. 

The images are intense, involving and brilliant in their 

contemplative staticity in which, similar to my work on 

sound, the Japanese artist captures instances of the sea 

photographed as far as the horizon. The water and the air 

define zones of colour, in their shades of greys and of 

black and white, which at times merge and at others are in 

stark contrast. In some landscapes a third almost 

imperceptible component appears between the two fields, 

Sound Labyrinths 

rom now onwards all the new works by Aureliano 

Cattaneo will be acquired and distributed by ESZ along 

with all those withdrawn from the catalogue of his previous 

publisher, who has closed their activity. Cattaneo was 

born in 1974 and studied at the Conservatories of 

Piacenza and Milan. In 2003 he won the Comité de 

Lecture of Ircam/Ensemble Intercontemporain and in 2004 

was a finalist of the Gaudeamus Music Week held in 

Amsterdam. Formerly “Stipendiat” of the Akademie der 

Künste in Berlin and composer in residence of the 

Ensemble 2e2m, he has presented his compositions in 

some of the most important international Festivals and 

concert-halls: Münchener Biennale, Donaueschinger 

Musiktage, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Wien 

Modern, Festival Musica Strasbourg, Konzerthaus in 

Vienna, Konzerthaus in Berlin, Centre Pompidou in Paris, 

Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, as well as in Basel, 

Amsterdam, Munich, Madrid, New York, London, 

Barcelona, Rome, Milan, Stockholm, and is regularly 

performed by the Klangforum Wien, Quatuor Diotima, 

Ensemble Intercontemporain, SWR Sinfonie Orchester, 

Ensemble 2e2m, Nieuw Ensemble, Neue Vocalsolisten 

Stuttgart and the Ensemble Alter Ego. His chamber work 

La philosophie dans le labyrinthe, written in collaboration 

with Edoardo Sanguineti, was presented in 2006 at the 

Aureliano Cattaneo F 

like a line of transparent light, that of the surface of water. 

These are images of great emotional impact, that recall 

the paintings of an artist who has always deeply 

fascinated me, Mark Rothko, another important point of 

reference in my music. Seascapes III takes its starting 

point from the observation and the interiorization of these 

images, attempting to transfer them into the temporal and 

spatial dimension of sonic immateriality. The timbral 

planes of the orchestra generated by the instrumental 

sounds mirror each other in their similarity and contrast; 

within the orchestra a further element of contrast is 

triggered, consisting of the sounds stratifications of the 

wind instruments and those of the strings. The percussion 

instruments are very active and at times strongly emerge, 

emphasizing the line of conjunction and division between 

these fields of sound, constituting its limit, the horizon and 

the rough and liquid surface. The subtitle of the 

composition, Caieta, is affectionately linked to the ancient 

sea that sparked these reflections within me». On 

October 21 Aldo Orvieto and Alvise Vidolin will give the 

first performance of No Landscape for piano and live 

electronics (Production SaMPL, Padua), in the Sale 

Apollinee of the Gran Teatro La Fenice, during the series 

Ex Novo Musica, which commissioned the work. The 

concert will be repeated in December in the Auditorium 

“C. Pollini” in Padua. Sani tells us: «The timbral space of 

the piano provides the sonic material of this composition, 

“a sound landscape” onto which an image of itself is 

grafted, transposed and transfigured through electronic 

elaboration. The processes that determine the formation 

of this “other” timbral space, which distorts and transforms 

the real one with an alienating effect, are determined by 

10 th Münchener Biennale and repeated at the 

Museumsquartier in Vienna. In 2011 Stradivarius issued a 

monographic Cd dedicated to his music, featuring Petra 

Hoffmann, soprano, and the Ensemble Espai Sonor 

directed by Voro Garcia. He has received commissions 

from the Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Intercontemporain, 

Ensemble musikFabrik, Ensemble Contrechamps, 

Münchener Biennale, Berliner Konzerthaus, 

Saarländischer Rundfunk, Südwest Rundfunk (SWR), 

Akademie der Künste Berlin, Bayerische Staatsoper, 

Auditorio Nacional Madrid, CDMC Madrid, Festival Musica 

Strasbourg, MärzMusik Berlin, Musik im Wattens, Alois 

Lageder, Festival Suena in Toledo, Sligo New Music 

Festival, Festival Klangspuren Plus in Munich, Andalucia 

Region, and the French Ministry of Culture. Since 2010 he 

has taught analysis and composition at the Escuela 

Superior de Musica de Catalunya in Barcelona. In August 

he was awarded the prestigious Förderpreis 2013 of the 

Salzburg region, where the composer was described as 

«resolute, versatile and highly imaginative». Cattaneo will 

be the protagonist, together with Georg Friedrich Haas 

who also received the “Musikpreis”, at the award winners 

concert on March 1 st 2013 at the Salzburg Biennale. The 

coming months will see two first performances. On 

October 21 the Donaueschinger Musiktage will include 

59 

october2012 

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Traditional instruments 

and avant-garde technology 

in the Italo-French 

commissions of this Autumn 

ESZ acquire a new composer 

with numerous recognitions 

to his credit and imminent 

international engagements

Francisco Guerrero 

On October 20 in Brussels the 

Ensemble Sturm und Klang 

directed by Thomas Van 

Haeperen will play Ariadna for 

ten violins, five violas and five 

cellos; on November 19 in the 

Auditorium of the Museo 

Nacional Centro de Arte Reina 

Sofía in Madrid, the Smash 

Ensemble will play Erótica for 

voice and guitar on texts by 

Ben Quzman 

Sándor Veress 

Hommage à Paul Klee, fantasy 

for two pianos and strings will 

be played on December 6 at 

the Stadthaus in Winterthur by 

the Musikkollegium Winterthur 

directed by Thomas Zehetmair, 

and on December 16 at the 

Lithuanian National 

Philharmonic Hall in Vilnius by 

Ruta Ibelhauptai and Zbignevas 

Ibelhauptai, pianos, with the 

Lithuanian National Symphony 

Orchestra conducted by 

Modestas Pitrenas. 

2 

from page 1 (Sani: Timbral Spaces) 

the movements of the performer, using a complex 

interactive system realized by the Centro SaMPL in 

Padua, based on the Phase Space “Impulse” device, 

which uses the technique of motion capture. Unlike 

other signal elaboration techniques that act on the 

processes of gestural determination of the sound, the 

system used for this project uses the movements of the 

performer to literally enter inside the constitutive 

parameters of the sound, structurally modifying its 

spectral component. No Landscape refers to the 

creation of a sonic plane that is virtual and 

etymologically “utopic”, where the instrumental plane 

continuously merges within a troubled and exasperated 

image. The two fields of sound are each the expansion 

of the other and their interaction occurs following a 

destructuring logic of their co-existence. Both insist on 

the same perceptual space, thus giving rise to the set of 

sound projections. The performers (at the piano and also 

directing the sound and live electronics) determine 

through their interaction the timbral non-place of figures 

that emerge from agglomerates of sound and from their 

three dimensional condensations, triggering the actions 

in a drama that each time invents and creates a different 

concept of space». On November 13 at the Théâtre 

National de Nice, during the Festival Manca, the 

Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain directed by Mark 

Foster, will present a new piece which they 

commissioned from Nicola Sani, Deux, le contraire de 

“un” for seventeen instruments. The work will be 

repeated by the same group, but under Daniel Kawka, 

on January 18 at the Théâtre Copeau - Opéra Théâtre 

de Saint-Etienne, and on January 23 at the Grand 

Théâtre de Provence in Aix-en-Provence, during the 

Festival Présences of Radio France. The composer 

explains: «My new work for the Ensemble Orchestral 

Contemporain of Lyon is a sequence of plots and an 

exploration of the sense of the double. In an article, as 

always very thought provoking, Erri De Luca refers to 

˝two˝ as the opposite, not the double of “one”. Following 

this notion, the two movements of the work both contrast 

and attract each other, as if they were each the 

sediment of the other, but each distinguished by a strong 

identity. The first lively, dense, full of contrasts and 

internal fragmentation and the second stratified, 

extended, crossed by an interrogative dialogue. The two 

forms create a drama “through” the sound, projecting 

Luigi Dallapiccola 

This Autumn sees numerous performances of works by 

Luigi Dallapiccola. Natalia Zagorinskaya and the Asko 

Schönberg Ensemble directed by 

Reinbert de Leeuw will play the Cinque 

frammenti di Saffo for soprano and 

chamber orchestra on October 27 and 28 

at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The 

version for voice and instruments of the 

Quattro liriche di Antonio Machado will be 

given on November 2 in Zurich, at the 

Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, by the 

Ensemble Arc-en-Ciel under Simeon 

Pironkoff. It will be possible to see a new 

production of Il Prigioniero, a prologue 

and one act from La torture par 

l’espérance by Villier de L’Isle Adam and La légende 

d’Ulenspiegel et Lamme Goedzak by Charles de Coster, 

at the Teatro Real in Madrid, on November 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 

8, 9, 11, 12, 13 and 15, in a co-production with the Gran 

Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. The cast will consist of 

Deborah Polaski, La Madre, Vito Priante, Il Prigioniero 

(November 2, 4, 7, 9, 12, 15), Georg Nigl, Il Prigioniero 

(November 3, 6, 8, 11, 13), Donald Kaasch, Il 

Carceriere/Il Grande Inquisitore, with the Coro y 

themselves into a space where the events that are 

produced “may” in turn relate to one another, in a further 

macro-structure of the double in opposition. From within 

this set of timbres emerge sonic planes suspended 

between light and shade, around the limits of the 

borders of the sounds; an instinctive exploration of the 

infinite made up of indeterminate energies, tensions, 

dynamic contrasts, rhythmic and expressive, that cross 

the space like lines of light that have just freed 

themselves from obscurity». Finally, Roberto Fabbriciani 

and Walter Neri will give the first performance of Un 

souffle le soulève, les dunes du temps for alto flute and 

digital support, on November 21 at the Scuola Normale 

Superiore in Pisa, during the series I Concerti della 

Normale. The composer tells us: «Les Dunes du temps 

is a new stage in a path that embarked upon last year in 

Wrocław, following a suggestion of the harpsichord 

player Elisabeth Chojnacka and the flutist Roberto 

Fabbriciani. Un souffle le soulève is the title of this path 

that leads through archaic sonorities and erosions of 

classical form using distorted electronic sounds and 

material. In this new version, the alto flute is suspended 

in solitude over the electronic sounds, which elaborate 

elements of timbre deriving from the flute itself and from 

the harpsichord, obtained through algorithms of 

distortion, convolution and cross synthesis. The ancient 

and infinitely suggestive aria of La Folia is the scheme 

around which the entire architecture of the variations 

evolve, bringing into contemporaneity a theme exploited 

by composers of all times. The title of the composition is 

taken from a poem by Giacinto Scelsi». I binari del 

tempo for flute and magnetic tape can be heard on 

October 4 in Wellington (New Zealand), and on 

October 18 at the Conservatory in Fermo, with Roberto 

Fabbriciani, and again on October 7 in the Sala 

Accademica of the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia, during 

the Emu-Fest 2012, with Gianni Trovalusci, flute, and 

Giorgio Nottoli, sound engineer. Finally, on October 17 

at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Stockholm a soloist 

from the KammarensembleN will play the first part of the 

trilogy AchaB for clarinet, during the presentation of the 

latest issue of the cultural journal “Cartaditalia”, 

published by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Stockholm 

directed by Dr. Paolo Grossi, an issue entirely devoted 

to New Italian Music and edited by Nicola Sani with the 

collaboration of Gianni Trovalusci. 

Orquesta Titulares of the Teatro Real (Coro Intermezzo 

and Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid) directed by Ingo 

Metzmacher. The director will be Lluis Pasqual. 

The Parole di San Paolo for mezzo-soprano and 

instruments can be heard on November 9 at the 

Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, with the 

Badische Staatskapelle directed by Ulrich 

Wagner, while Commiato for soprano and 15 

players on a text formally attributed to Brunetto 

Latini, and Goethe-Lieder for female voice and 

three clarinets will be played on November 13 in 

Vienna, in the Brahms-Saal of the Musikverein 

Wien during the series Wien Modern, with Alda 

Caiello and the Ensemble Kontrapunkte directed 

by Peter Keuschnig. Finally, on December 3 at 

the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne (HEMU) the 

Société de Musique Contemporaine in Lausanne has 

organized a monographic concert including Sicut umbra 

for mezzo-soprano and four groups of instruments, 

Quaderno musicale di Annalibera for piano, and Dialoghi 

for cello and orchestra. The works will be performed by 

Noriko Kaneko, mezzo-soprano, Mariaclara Monetti, 

piano, Romain Chauvet, cello, and the Ensemble 

Contemporaine de l’HEMU directed by William Blank.

from page 1 (Cattaneo: Sound Labyrinths) 

Blut for trio (saxophone, percussion and piano) and 

orchestra, played by the Trio Accanto and the SWR 

Sinfonie Orchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg directed 

by François-Xavier Roth. The composer explains his 

new work: «Blut: blood that runs in the veins… a red 

thread that leads us inside the labyrinth... a note that 

runs all through the piece, a red thread that binds the 

structure… a liquid that takes on shape when forced 

into a container… material that takes on shape when 

placed in a structure… Three soloists, an orchestra. 

Intertwined dialogues. Music for orchestra that dissolves 

into chamber music. Chamber music that opens itself to 

the orchestra. Echoed instruments, echoes of 

instruments». On January 15 in the Studio Ernest 

Ansermet of the Radio de la Suisse Romande in 

Geneva the Saison Contrechamps will include Parole di 

settembre - Libro I for countertenor and ensemble on 

texts by Edoardo Sanguineti, commissioned by the 

same institution and performed by Daniel Gloger and 

the Ensemble Contrechamps directed by Michael 

Wendeberg. The concert will also include Sabbia for 

eleven instruments. Parole di settembre takes its 

inspiration from the cycle of fifteen poems dedicated in 

2006 by Edoardo Sanguineti to Andrea Mantegna, to 

mark the 5 th centenary of the artist’s death. A friend of 

the poet, with whom he had already collaborated, 

Cattaneo obtained his permission, shortly before 

Sanguineti’s death in May 2010, to set the poems to 

music. The vocal parts of this three-part cycle, of 

variable instrumentation, were written for Claron 

McFadden (soprano), Otto Katzameier (baritone) and 

Daniel Gloger (countertenor). The single parts of the 

cycle are linked by madrigal/frottola-like passages sung 

unaccompanied by the three soloists. At the heart of the 

poems lie twelve paintings by Mantegna to which 

Sanguineti refers, explicitly or in allusive terms. 

Cattaneo offers a more precise account: «In September 

2006, to mark the 5 th centenary of the death of Andrea 

Mantegna, an extensive exhibition was organized in 

Mantua, Padua and Verona. For the opening of the 

exhibition an event was organized in Piazza delle Erbe 

in Mantua for which Edoardo Sanguineti wrote a cycle 

of poems inspired by Mantegna’s paintings. During the 

Niccolò Castiglioni 

The 21 st edition of the Festival di Milano Musica, 

Percorsi di Musica d’Oggi 2012, will pay 

homage to Niccolò Castiglioni. The 

composer from Milan, who died 

prematurely in 1996, was a pupil of 

Ghedini and the Ferienkurse in 

Darmstadt, a teacher in the USA, Trento 

and Milan, and much appreciated by 

Ligeti, is attracting an ever-increasing 

amount of interest. The series of six 

concerts will feature top-class artists and 

will be held at prestigious venues 

throughout the city. On October 7 the 

opening concert will be held at the Teatro 

alla Scala and will include Tropi for 

chamber group, played by the Scharoun Ensemble 

Paolo Arcà 

The label VDM Records (VDM 038-55-022) has 

released the monographic Cd Spiel dedicated to Paolo 

Arcà, with the Contempoartensemble, directed by 

Mauro Ceccanti. The programme offers a chamber 

portrait of the composer, focusing on works written in 

spectacle Sanguineti recited his book of poems while 

I made a sound installation and the artist Marco Nereo 

Rotelli projected luminous images onto the medieval 

buildings of the square. Shortly afterwards I thought that 

Sanguineti’s text would be perfect for a large vocal cycle 

and I spoke about it to him, who was very happy. Then, 

for various reasons, the idea was set aside until our last 

meeting in Madrid in April 2010. After that I had no other 

chance to talk to him about it: Edoardo passed away 

and so I decided to continue the dialogue, now at a 

distance, by starting to work on these Parole di 

settembre. After much thought I decided to divide 

Parole di settembre into three parts. The complete work 

will last around an hour. In order to reflect the great 

variety of moods, registers and languages used by 

Sanguineti, this being a very important characteristic of 

his poetry, I thought of a structure that exploits the 

possibilities of the vocal and instrumental combinations 

to the maximum. In fact in Books I and III, the ensemble 

won’t be used altogether, but there will also be pieces 

featuring different combinations. The difficult thing about 

a work of this length is maintaining the tension and the 

direction, and at the same time a sense of unity. The 

choice of texts isn’t yet definitive. I’ll use all fifteen 

poems, some in their entirety, others only partially. The 

introductory madrigal and the final one will make use of 

the introduction and closing of the book. For the 

moment I’ve chosen 12 pieces for sure. Perhaps Book II 

will involve a visual installation by Alexander Arotin». 

The first complete performance of the three books of 

Parole di Settembre is scheduled for February 18 2014 

at the Konzerthaus in Vienna with the above-mentioned 

soloists and the Klangforum Wien. On October 1 st at 

the Helsinki Music, during the festival “Klang”, the Trio 

III for violin, viola, cello and electronics was performed 

by the Soloists of the Tapiola Sinfonietta. The Trio IV for 

clarinet, cello and piano can be heard on October 6 at 

the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, with the Ensemble 

Mosaik, and again on January 1 st 2013 at the 

Kestnergesellschaft in Hanover, with the Neue 

Ensemble, who will also play Visibile for piccolo and 

Seeds for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano. 

Berlin under Andrea Pestalozza. On October 17 

Massimiliano Damerini will play Cangianti for 

piano in the Auditorium San Fedele. On 

October 19 Attraverso lo specchio, a radio 

opera in one act on a libretto by Alberto Ca’ 

Zorzi Noventa will be broadcast in the Spazio 

Sirin, in the monophonic recording of the 

Archivio dello Studio di Fonologia Musicale della 

Rai in Milan. The event will be presented by 

Angela Ida De Benedictis and Carlo Piccardi. 

On October 24 at the Sala Puccini of the 

Conservatorio “G. Verdi” Gymel for flute and 

piano will be played by the soloists of the 

Laboratorio di Musica Contemporanea of the 

Conservatory. 

the space of 25 years (1987-2002), and includes Light 

Fantasy for violin and piano, Notturno a tre for flute, 

cello and piano, Spiel for clarinet and string quartet, 

Passacaglia per Giuseppe for nine instruments and 

Skool for piano and quintet. 

Luca Mosca 

The Quintetto for flute, clarinet, 

violin, cello and piano will be 

played by the Mdi Ensemble, 

on October 31 in the Auditorium 

San Fedele in Milan, during the 

Milano Musica Festival. 

3

Six premieres culminating in a 

collaboration with Heinz Holliger 

and a monographic Cd featuring 

the composer’s piano works 

Camillo Togni 

On October 31 in the Sale 

Apollinee of the Gran Teatro La 

Fenice in Venice, during the 

series “Ex Novo Musica”, Aldo 

Orvieto will play Ricercare op. 

28 b for piano, in the context of 

a collaboration with the 

Fondazione Cini that foresees 

the recording of Camillo Togni’s 

piano works on the Naxos 

label. 

4 

Alessandro Solbiati 

Solo Timbres 

S 

ix premieres for Alessandro Solbiati over the coming 

months. Epos for oboe (cor anglais) and string trio will be 

given its first performance by Heinz Holliger and the Swiss 

Chamber soloists on January 24 at the Conservatory in 

Lugano, with repeat performances on January 25 at the 

Conservatory in Geneva, January 26 in the Grande Salle of 

the Hochschule der Künste in Zurich and January 27 at the 

Gare du Nord in Basel. The composer explains: «For 

several years I have had the honour of having a relation of 

friendship and strong syntony, both musical and personal, 

with Heinz Holliger, an extraordinary musician, performer 

and composer, but also a highly generous and open person. 

Three years ago he invited me to the Festival of Ittingen, for 

which I composed Und nun, for baritone and six instruments 

and it was splendid to have him as oboist of the ensemble. 

In successive meetings the idea was born to write a piece 

for oboe and string trio for him. The project stayed in my 

mind for a long time, then at the start of 2012 the third 

movement of Alfi, a piece for a total of seven instruments, 

but made up of three movements, each with different 

groupings, the last of which is for oboe and six instruments, 

provided me with a sort of starting point, a basic idea for 

Epos for oboe and string trio. The title is linked to the 

structure of the piece, which is strongly narrative and in 

some ways also “epic”. Two quite distinct parts are in strong 

contrast: in the first, lasting just over half the piece, very 

fast, at times frenetic, and highly dramatic, a very high oboe 

summons the three strings in the same high register, but 

they relentlessly fall in pitch, trying to drag down the oboe 

with them. The oboe tries to save itself from these dark 

depths by “launching” three brief situations characterized by 

lightness, dance and song, without succeeding and so falls 

into a zone of sound-noise. A sudden climax, made up of 

multiple sounds emitted like prolonged cries from the oboe 

and taken up harmonically by the strings, leads to a turning 

back to the heart of the register, onto an E which is the 

cardinal note of the whole work. The oboe becomes a cor 

anglais, the climate changes completely and a melodic line 

emerges able to involve the strings in various 

reverberations, until reaching a somewhat bewitching 

coda». In the same period, on January 20 in the Nanko 

Sunset Hall in Osaka, a new version of To Whom? for solo 

female voice, will be performed by Akiko Kozato. «The 

soprano», says Solbiati, «asked me for a piece for solo 

voice. I’m very fond of my To Whom?, which I wrote some 

years ago for Laura Catrani, and which Akiko herself has 

sung in the original version. So I thought of adding an initial 

movement to the piece, a sort of prologue, quite different. 

The original piece has substantially no text and involves a 

truly theatrical scene, as the singer has to move down 

among the audience while singing, choose a sort of “victim”, 

return to the stage, write a message on a sheet of paper 

and deliver it to the person concerned, all following a 

musical path that culminates with that action. In the new 

prologue the performer is “only singing”, stays on the stage, 

as if the splendid verse by Campana that slowly emerges 

(«...e tu seguivi nell’aria la fresca incarnazione di un 

mattutino sogno...») makes her want to become an actress 

and a message-bearing character. On December 16 at the 

Teatro Dal Verme in Milan Bianco, the 5th movement of 

Crescendo, eight short pieces in the form of a study 

for chamber orchestra, will be performed by Daniele 

Parziani conducting the Orchestra I Piccoli 

Pomeriggi Musicali di Milano, entirely made up of 

young musicians. The new work will be played in a 

Christmas concert and this, as always, provides a 

starting point. Solbiati explains: «The snow is white, 

candour is purity (and I’m thinking of Niccolò 

Castiglioni, to whom the work is dedicated), purity is, 

in the christian image, that of Mary, who provides 

the inspiration for the other pieces in the programme; but 

candour is light and the light is that of the crib in Bethlehem, 

since that message is still, today, extremely alive and deep. 

The polyrhythm of the descending lines of the crotales, 

vibraphone, celesta and violin harmonics (this is the 

technical hinge of the piece) gradually concentrates into a 

highly marked unison, which expands and then closes 

around the next unison, forming a vibrant sequence, which 

leads to a series of strokes which give rise to fast 

arabesques (the next technical hinge of the piece). 

Technical intentions and timbres unite to paint an image». 

On October 12, at Casa Paganini in Genoa, Le sei corde di 

Nicolò for guitar will be played by Luigi Attademo, part of the 

guitarist’s project around Paganini’s Ghiribizzi for guitar. 

Solbiati defines them as «album leafs with no particular 

common denominator, each made up of the simple 

statement of a musical idea; for each of Luigi’s 

performances I add a link to my chain of short guitar pieces. 

I’ve arrived at the fourth link, the fourth out of a total of six, 

once again decontextualizing it and making one of “my” 

figures an elementary motive of a Ghiribizzo». Still on 

October 12, in the Church of San Rocco in Piove di Sacco 

(PD), Lina Uinskyte and Francesco Filidei will play Déesis 

for violin and organ, postponed from last June on account of 

the earthquake that hit the Emilia region. Solbiati said this 

about his new work: «A charming ancient organ in a small 

church near Padua, a season of organ music lovingly 

organized by my friend the composer and organist Leonardo 

Polato, a very particular duo made up of my friends Lina 

Uinskyte and Francesco Filidei, both composer and 

organist: these are the starting points for a short, very 

personal and heartfelt piece. Déesis in ancient Greek 

means “prayer”. I thought I would contrast and continuously 

set against each other four “attitudes towards 

transcendence”, the obscure and tortuous sense of 

absence, the courageous and necessary tension, the doubt 

or rather the sensation of unattainability, and the ecstasy 

dreamed of or achieved for just an unstable instant. This, 

then is a confession adapted for a non “heroic” organ and a 

small, beautiful church». A first performance in Italy is 

scheduled for October 18 at the Teatro Verdi in Florence 

during the Festival Play It!: Sinfonia terza for orchestra will 

be played by the Orchestra Regionale Toscana conducted 

by Fabio Maestri. Among the other performances of music 

by Solbiati, the Festival Musique au Temple, at the Temple 

Protestant in Tours, included, on June 15, Sphynx for eight 

solo voices, with the Ensemble Vocal 2021 directed by 

Agnès Charles. I quattro punti for twelve cellos was played 

by the Nomos Ensemble on July 1 st at the Festival “Cello 

fan” in Callian (France), and on July 3 at the Festival 

D’Aujourd’hui à Demain in Cluny, and will be played again 

by the same group on October 6 at the Château de Blandy 

les Tours (Seine et Marne). On September 9 Akiko Kozato 

performed To Whom? for solo female voice at the Festival of 

Bellagio and Lake Como. On September 16 the pianist 

Emanuela Piemonti and the soprano Laura Catrani gave 

performances respectively of Fête for piano and To Whom? 

for solo female voice, in the park of Villa Tre Tetti in 

Montevecchia, during the final concert of the sculpture 

exhibition arranged by Giorgio Riva in the park. Luigi 

Attademo gave a partial performance of Le sei corde di 

Niccolò for guitar on September 18 in Milan during the 

Festival MITO and on September 29 in Cremona during the 

series Mondo Musica. On October 25 the Sonata Felix for 

violin and piano was played at the Festival Spazio Musica 

in Cagliari by the soloists of the New Made Ensemble 

(Raffaello Negri, violin, and Rossella Spinosa, piano), during 

a concert in collaboration with the New Made Ensemble and 

ESZ. Finally, on December 2 at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna 

in Turin, during the series Musiche in Mostra, 

the Trio Albatros will play Albatros for flute, 

violin and piano. Stradivarius have released a 

Cd dedicated to the piano music of Alessandro 

Solbiati, played by Emanuela Piemonti and 

Alfonso Alberti (Alessandro Solbiati, Piano 

Works, STR 33909). The Cd includes the 

Sonata seconda, the sixteen Interludi, Fête, 

Like as the Waves (for piano solo and duet), 

and Preludio. Finally, Euroarts has released 

a Dvd edited by Roberto Prosseda entitled Mendelssohn 

unknown, which will include a video of the complete 

performance of the Sonata Felix, played by Sonig 

Tchakerian and Roberto Prosseda at the Teatro Olimpico 

in Vicenza on June 11, 2009. From October Alessandro 

Solbiati will teach at the new department of Composition 

that will be opened at the Conservatory in Tours in 

collaboration with the adjacent Faculty of Musicology.

Stefano Gervasoni 

Invitation au voyage 

T 

his Autumn opens with a chamber premiere for Stefano 

Gervasoni: on October 25 the Incontri di Musica 

Contemporanea of the Festival Pontino will include, in the 

Palazzo della Cultura in Latina, Folia (Omaggio a Aldo 

Clementi) for violin, played by Lina Uinskyte, during a 

concert dedicated to the memory of Clementi. The 

composer introduces his new work as «a spiral wandering 

with an assured return home (therefore, a wandering 

without adventure), but a home that is always a little 

foreign (never completely felt as one’s “own”). A 

wandering that is “domestic” and ambiguous at the same 

time, in which the possibility of discovery – typical, and 

declared, of the adventure trip – is not excluded, but is 

reserved for the usual objects of a usual wandering, to 

which, with the surprise of a rediscovery or the 

deciphering of an enigma ever to be unveiled, the 

curiosity of the traveller is subjected. A traveller who is not 

adventurous but alert. In a play of repetitions, variants, 

micro structural development of an initial cell and of 

appearances of new elements to broaden the “walking 

radius” of the wayfaring composer, like that of two objects 

crystallized around the notes A and C that become 

increasingly more important, almost as if being 

transformed into a person encountered on a walk and in a 

moment of dialogue with her. A typical situation of 

pilgrimage or climbing a mountain, in which history or 

nature break off from everyday reality and allow us to 

build a deep relationship with a fellow traveller 

encountered momentarily perhaps by chance and that 

one is certain to meet again». After its first performance 

last September at the Festival Musica in Strasbourg on 

commission of Les Percussions de Strasbourg, the opera 

Limbus-Limbo, “apéro bouffe” in seven scenes for six 

percussionists, three soloists, three singers, three actors 

and live electronics, on a libretto by Patrick Hahn and 

directed by Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski, now goes on 

tour. It can be seen on November 29 in Vernon, during 

the Automne en Normandie, on December 3 and 4 in 

Paris, at the Opéra Comique, and on December 15 at the 

Opéra de Reims during the festival Scène d’Europe. 

It will be performed by Juliet Fraser (Tina), soprano, 

Christopher Field (Bruno), countertenor, Gareth John 

(Carl), baritone, Corinne Frimas, Luc Schillinger and 

Charles Zevaco, actors, Olivier Darbellay, horn and alpine 

horn, Antonio Politano, flutes, Luigi Gaggero, cymbalom, 

Les Percussions de Strasbourg and Carmine Emanuele 

Cella, computer music designer and live electronics. 

On December 16 the series Ex Novo Musica in the Sale 

Apollinee of the Gran Teatro La Fenice, will include an 

evening entitled “Wanderung mit Stefano Gervasoni”. The 

violinist Lina Uinskyte and the pianist Aldo Orvieto play in 

a concert that features – with deliberate symmetry – three 

instrumental works by Stefano Gervasoni: the very recent 

Folia for violin, a triptych of piano pieces (Précieux for toy 

piano, Pré paré and Pré épuré, the latter two in their first 

performance) from the series Prés, work in progress, 

begun in 2008 that is now enriched by two new pieces, 

and the very recent Sonatinexpressive for violin and 

piano, commissioned by Ex Novo Musica 2012, this 

too in its first performance. The theme of the evening 

represents an invitation to move, to wander, to travel the 

way together. In a famous interview, the Hungarian 

composer György Ligeti, one of the important points of 

reference for Gervasoni, affirmed with an exemplary 

sense of irony that, if they really wanted to name a street 

in Budapest after him, it should be called: “wrong way 

street György Ligeti”. One of the recurring themes in the 

music of Gervasoni is precisely the idea of a “street” 

taken in a problematic sense: the “strada non presa” (“the 

street not taken”) (which is also a title of a work of his 

from 2001) or the street that “has nothing in front of it”. 

«The street», Gervasoni observes, «is also a labyrinth 

and proceeding without any goal: a metaphor of our times 

that is reflected in art with the collapse of aestheticideological 

paradigms». As far as his new works are 

concerned, Gervasoni describes his project for a book of 

Prés as being «divided into groups of three pieces (from 

one to three pages), thematically and/or musically related. 

Pré paré and Pré épuré, which should be separated by a 

Pré carré, constitute another of the triptychs of the 

second book. Pré paré (embellished meadow) and Pré 

épuré (denuded, treated, cleaned meadow) represent two 

antithetic and complementary views of the meadow taken 

metaphorically. One in which the grass species live 

together unchecked (by man) with other wild species, in a 

regime of luxurious happiness, anarchic or democratically 

natural (green as an image of multiple unity). The other, in 

which the hand of man has left its mark: in the selection 

of the grass species, reduced to one, and in the care of 

the surfaces, perfectly regular, uniform and monochrome, 

on the one hand; or in its impoverishment: the 

artificialization of the meadow, reduced to urban decor, 

until becoming arid due to drought (a “natural” meadow 

finds it increasingly difficult to survive by itself), dramatic 

evidence of climate change in which humans are certainly 

not without responsibility. In any case, an unhappy 

meadow, neither anarchic nor democratic. An image of 

externally imposed unity, depriving the green of its natural 

and joyful complexity». Regarding Sonatinexpressive 

(Inexpressive sonata – Expressive sonatina?), Gervasoni 

tells us: «The architectural development of the Sonata 

that sterilizes or dominates the expressive impulse of the 

small form; the intimacy of the album leaf, the most 

recurrent confession – and the desire to share it – for the 

impromptu, the romanza, the prelude; the strength or 

fragility of the emotions or the need for consolation in the 

intermezzo, the berceuse, the nocturne... Or else the 

fullness of emotion and elusiveness of the grammars that 

move the imagination and are inscribed in the charm and 

the discretion of a Sonatina? To allow oneself to “say”, 

but only microscopically, as from behind a veil, muted, so 

that the temptation to express and lyricize are not 

absolved but only averted, made to live alongside the 

desire to hold them back, to protect them, to allow them 

to renew themselves with even greater force. An 

indomitable force, not possible to crystallize, to sterilize 

into forms and manners that would show them in full, 

openly, reducing them for ever into discourse, emblem, 

surrogate of an active listening, for ever, which that force 

must each time seek out and rediscover... The dilemma, 

evoked by the title chosen for this piece, remains 

deliberately unresolved...». At the beginning of the new 

year Geneva will be a vital centre for the music of 

Gervasoni. The centenary of the Comédie de Genève will 

be celebrated with a series entitled “Constellation 

Musique Autour de 1913”, which interprets the year of 

foundation of the institution as a year emblematic of the 

start of modernity in all the arts, which in the field of music 

coincides with the historical premieres of the Sacre du 

Printemps and Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, Debussy’s 

Jeux, and Webern’s Bagatelles op. 9. This consideration 

has led to the creation of a programme that, keeping 

Stravinsky in the background, investigates the mature 

20 th Century through two composers that in many ways 

are distant from each other (anagraphically and 

stylistically): Pierre Boulez and Stefano Gervasoni, 

exponents of different generations able to offer «a 

different interpretation of this legacy and of contemporary 

sensibility». In this context the cycle of Poesie francesi 

reaches its conclusion and is completed by the Due 

poesie francesi di Luca for female voice and ensemble on 

texts by Ghérasim Luca and the world premiere of Due 

poesie francesi di Cheng for female voice and ensemble 

on texts by François Cheng, on February 4 at the 

Comédie in Geneva, with Barbara Zanichelli and the 

Ensemble Namascae, directed by William Blank. 

Gervasoni’s cycle of Poesie francesi based on texts 

written by authors whose mother tongue is not French, 

texts which the composer interprets by capturing all the 

semantic and sensitive wealth. Finally, Geneva again will 

feature in the tour taken by Dir - In dir for vocal sextet and 

string sextet, with the Ensemble L’Instant Donné and the 

vocal group Exaudi directed by James Week, on January 

24 in Toulouse, January 27 in the Salle du Conservatoire 

in Geneva, January 28 in Lausanne, Utopia 1, and on 

January 29 in Berne. 

Travel as a source of inspiration 

for a new work, underlying 

metaphor for a monographic 

portrait, and a real itinerary of 

two important tours 

Matteo Franceschini 

On December 2 in the Sala 

Casella of the Accademia 

Filarmonica Romana, the 

Festival di Nuova Consonanza, 

in co-production with the 

Accademia Filarmonica, will 

include Sine qua non for piano 

and ensemble, with the Freon 

Ensemble directed by Stefano 

Cardi. 

5

Chamber premiere at the 

Fundación BBVA in Bilbao 

and start of a four-year period 

as director of the Biennale 

Musica di Venezia 

Luciano Berio 

Roberto Fabbriciani will play 

Sequenza I for flute on October 

10 in Wellington (New 

Zealand), during the concertconference 

“Maderna e i nuovi 

percorsi del flauto nel secondo 

‘900”, and on October 18 at the 

Conservatory in Fermo. 

6 

Ivan Fedele 

The Unveiling of the Form 

O 

n December 11 in Bilbao the world premiere will be 

given of Fünfzehn Bagatellen for violin, cello and piano, 

commissioned by the Fundación BBVA for the Trio 

Arbós. The composer explains: «The 

Fünfzehn Bagatellen are a series of 

five musical ideas with three 

variations of each one. The idea of a 

small form seen as a “genetic code” 

of a macro form is a compositional 

option that has accompanied me for 

some time now, having almost totally 

abandoned the option of “narrative 

time” in favour of an idea of “frozen” 

time in the presentation of the 

intimate nature of the musical idea. 

That is to say, it is no longer the 

sound that “relates” a plot, but the 

sound that unveils its most intimate 

nature like a sculpture that, while remaining the same, 

reveals its more or less dense matter and/or 

transparency, its shadows cast into space, the 

smoothness or roughness of its surfaces, in different 

ways depending on the perspective or the light intensity 

that strikes the musical object. This is an approach that 

also requires the listener to perceive the sound event in 

a different manner». Peformances of Ivan Fedele’s work 

include Immagini da Escher for ensemble on September 

28 at the Shoe Factory in Nicosia (Cyprus), during the 4th International Pharos Contemporary Music Festival, with 

the Ensemble El Perro Andaluz; Études australes No. 4 

(Aptenodytes) and No. 1 (Tierra del fuego) for piano, on 

October 4 at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Paris, with 

the pianist Alfonso Alberti; Elettra for viola and live 

electronics on October 10 at the Festival di Nuova 

Consonanza in Rome, in the final concert of the 

Concorso Internazionale di Composizione “F. 

Evangelisti”, with the soloist Luca Sanzò; Paroles y 

palabras, four pieces for soprano and cello, in a partial 

performance, on October 25 at the Festival Spazio 

Musica in Cagliari, with the New Made Ensemble (Akiko 

Kozato, soprano, and Guido Boselli, cello), during a 

Biennale di Venezia 

The 56 th Festival Internazionale di Musica 

Contemporanea, in Venice, from October 6 to 13, will 

inaugurate Ivan Fedele’s mandate as director of the 

music sector of the Biennale di Venezia, directed by 

Paolo Baratta, for the four-year period 2012-2015. 

The Festival, entitled “+EXTREME–, ovvero 

minimalismi e massimalismi musicali del nostro 

tempo” will include the awarding of the Leone d’Oro to 

Pierre Boulez for lifetime achievement and the Leone 

d’Argento to the Quartetto Prometeo. The eight rich 

days will offer three daily appointments including 

concerts, sound installations, ateliers, audio-visual 

performances and musical theatre, presenting the 

public with 51 new works, 28 of which in world 

Luis de Pablo 

On September 27 at the Conservatorio Superior de 

Música, the 28 th Festival de Música de Alicante included 

Dibujos for flute, clarinet, violin and cello, played by the 

Sax Ensemble directed by José Luis Temes. On 

October 10 in Wellington (New Zealand) Roberto 

Fabbriciani will play Per flauto for flute solo, during the 

Concert-conference “Maderna e i nuovi percorsi del 

flauto nel secondo ‘900”. A concert dedicated to the 

piano music of Luis de Pablo will be given by Francisco 

concert in collaboration with the New Made Ensemble 

and ESZ; Palimpsest, 4 th string Quartet on October 27 at 

the Associazione Chromas in Trieste with the Quartetto 

Prometeo; Morolòja kè erotikà for soprano and string 

quartet on October 28 during the Milano Musica Festival 

in the Auditorium San Fedele in Milan, with Valentina 

Coladonato and the Quartetto Prometeo. On October 29 

at the Limen Music & Arts centre in Milan, a presentation 

will be given, with the participation of the Quartetto 

Prometeo, of the new Limenmusic Cd/Dvd featuring the 

music of Ivan Fedele and the book Ali di Cantor. The 

Music of Ivan Fedele, edited by Cesare Fertonani and 

published by Edizioni Suvini Zerboni in 2011. The 

Cd/Dvd contains Palimpsest, Morolòja kè erotikà and 

Paroles y Palabras, performed by Valentina Coladonato, 

soprano, Francesco Dillon, cello and the Quartetto 

Prometeo. Imaginary Islands for flute, bass clarinet and 

piano will be played in November by the Trio Luxa 21 in 

Mexico at the Museo Iconografico in Guanajuato and in 

Orlando (Florida) during the Accidental Music Festival. 

Ritrovari (Suite francese VI) for viola can be heard at the 

Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Paris on November 19, 

played by Christophe Desjardins, while the Suite 

francese III for cello will be played by Christophe Beau, 

soloist of the Ensemble Accroche Note, at the Istituto 

Italiano di Cultura in Budapest. On December 1 st in the 

Abbazia di San Clemente in Casauria (Pescara) 

Fernando Caida Greco will play the Suite francese III for 

cello. The violinist Francesco D’Orazio and Daniel 

Kawka directing the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain 

will perform Mosaïque for violin and chamber orchestra 

on January 17 at the Conservatoire Massenet in Saint- 

Étienne, during the “Concert-lecture autour de 

Mosaïque”, on January 18 at the Théâtre Copeau - 

Opéra Théâtre de Saint-Étienne, and on January 23 at 

the Grand Théâtre de Provence in Aix-en-Provence, 

during the Festival Présences of Radio France. Finally, 

the Quartetto Prometeo will play Palimpsest, 4 th string 

Quartet, at the 5 th Festival of the Ned Ensemble, Concert 

Season “Città di Desenzano”, in the Auditorium Celesti of 

Desenzano on January 27. 

premiere. The neo-director describes the 

characteristic of this year’s edition: «What strikes one 

most about today’s musical panorama is the presence 

of extreme orientations: minimalisms and 

maximalisms that wish to inhabit the same regions of 

the frontier of musical language, approaches that are 

apparently antithetic that instead share the radicality 

of their aesthetic-poetic intent, abandoning as such 

the “politically correctness” of the piece that “works” 

or “sounds right”». The Festival presents some 

important protagonists of these practices “of excess”, 

contextualized and set side by side with the “classics” 

of radicalism. 

Escoda on November 14 at the Instituto Cervantes in 

Hamburg, in collaboration with the NDR das neue werk, 

and will include Retratos y Transcripciones, 2 nd series, 

and Acrobacias. Finally, the Auditorio del Museo 

Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía will host, on 

January 21, a performance of Federico Mompou in 

memoriam for violin, cello and piano, with the Grupo 

Cosmos 21.

Aldo Clementi 

Canonic Mosaic 

O 

n October 25 the Incontri di Musica Contemporanea 

of the Festival Pontino, in the Palazzo della Cultura in 

Latina, will dedicate a monographic concert to Aldo 

Clementi, whose programme will include – alongside 

the Fantasia on fragments from Michelangelo Galilei for 

lute and the first Italian performance of Aria (Dowland) 

for female voice, viola da gamba and lute – the first 

complete performance of the definitive version of the 

Otto Frammenti, canons on a ballade by Charles 

d’Orléans on the theme of L’homme armé for soprano, 

countertenor, viola da gamba, lute and organ. The 

concert, a co-production between the Festival di Nuova 

Consonanza in Rome and L’Arsenale in Treviso, aims to 

feature works by Clementi that involve the use of 

ancient instruments and that take their material from 

preclassical sources. The performers will be Livia Rado, 

soprano, Alessandro Giangrande, countertenor, Silvia 

De Maria, viola da gamba, Elena Casoli, lute, and 

Filippo Perocco, organ, directed by Marco Angius. 

Two replicas of the concert will be given in November, 

on November 23 at the Arsenale in Treviso, and on 

November 28 in the Sala Casella of the Accademia 

Filarmonica Romana during the Festival of Nuova 

Consonanza, which in the 2012 edition will feature 

various works by Aldo Clementi: on November 18 the 

Quintetto for strings, on December 2 the Serenata for 

guitar and four instruments, played by the Freon 

Ensemble directed by Stefano Cardi, and finally on 

December 5 Cantilena for voice and doublebass, 

Blues and Blues 2 (Fantasie su frammenti di Thelonious 

Monk) and Vom Himmel hoch, both in Manuele 

Morbidini’s transcription for saxophone quartet, and En 

liten svensk rapsodi for female voice, bass clarinet and 

piano, with the LatinaEnsemble under Francesco Belli. 

The Otto Frammenti, to be given their first complete 

performance at the Festival Pontino, were written in 

1978, and have passed through two successive 

versions in two distinct phases: a new version of 

Frammenti III, IV, V and VI, performable also separately, 

was prepared in 1979 for a performance by the Five 

Centuries Ensemble directed by Carol Plantamura. 

These Frammenti, which constitute the central nucleus 

of the work and involve both voices and instruments, 

are preceded and followed by two series of purely 

instrumental canons whose definitive version was 

completed in 1997 for a performance in Borås 

(Sweden) organized by Björn Nilsson. Even then 

Clementi still forgot one canon, No. 29. Overall, 

the structure of the composition is in a mirror 

form, or rather a palindrome, built through the 

progressive thickening of the instrumental parts 

starting from a solo lute, to which two voices are 

added at the culminating point of the four central 

Frammenti, then decreasing mirror-like until 

concluding, again with solo lute, at the point from 

which it had started. The mirror form is reflected 

in the canonic and contrapuntal handling of the 

musical material, which sets the text of the 

Ballade by Charles d’Orléans Je meurs de soif en 

couste la fontaine using the famous theme from 

L’homme armé, highly popular in the 15th Century, 

especially thanks to its structural clarity, perfect for 

Goffredo Petrassi 

The series of performances of music by Petrassi this 

Autumn opens with a recital by Alfonso Alberti on 

October 4 at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Paris, 

which will include Invenzioni nn. 4, 5, 6, 8 for piano. 

On October 5 the Teatro Monumental will propose 

Ritratto di Don Chisciotte, ballet in one act, with the 

Orquesta Sinfónica de RTVE conducted by Jordi 

Bernacer. Daniele Ruggieri and Caterina Pavan will 

contrapuntal use. In line with his habit of adopting well 

known melodies as the starting points for his canonic 

explorations, Clementi presents the original material 

with extreme clarity, submitting it to all four mirror forms 

and in three different rhythmic values, without ever 

forsaking the recognizability of the theme, played in 

different tonalities simultaneously, in that canonic 

polytonal counterpoint typical of Clementi. What we 

hear, then, are 40 canons arranged/organized in eight 

fragments, in turn set within a perfectly symmetrical 

arch form. The entire contrapuntal construction then 

undergoes continuous time changes, from the sprightly 

paces of youth and the start of Summer, to the Winter 

when the rigid joints are almost immobile; in the end the 

music is so slow that it almost stops and decomposes. 

Although the composer chose instruments 

contemporary to the musical material presented, he 

nevertheless specified that the instrumentation is only 

«a suggestion – as if Bach had suggested an 

instrumentation for the Art of Fugue or for the Musical 

Offering». The Otto Frammenti are effectively a grand 

exercise in counterpoint that leaves many questions 

open as regards their performance. As Björn Nilsson 

wrote, maybe, on the basis of what Clementi theorized 

already in the ’70s, his works should be considered like 

epitaphs for an art already disappeared. And yet, they 

are resplendent with love for music and history. Within 

the mesh of parts we feel the great joy for the small 

snatches of melody, the wonder for the symmetry of the 

notes, for the beauty enclosed inside even the feeblest 

of them. In no other composition by Clementi is the 

sensation of a culture reaching its end so profound. 

«The end derives naturally from saturation and 

tiredness», said Clementi of his own poetics, «but it is 

never definitive: through a desolate familiarity we 

suddenly plunge into the infinite and the eternal». 

Roberto Fabbriciani will include music by Aldo Clementi 

in his tour in New Zealand and in Italy: on October 10 

in Wellington, during the Concert-conference “Maderna 

e i nuovi percorsi del flauto nel secondo ’900” Fantasia 

su roBErto FABbriCiAni and Parafrasi II, both for flute 

and magnetic tape, and on October 11 Duetto for flute, 

clarinet and two instruments in echo, with the Stroma 

Ensemble; on October 18 both works will be repeated 

at the Conservatory in Fermo, with 

students of the conservatory directed by 

Luisa Curinga. An exceptional tool for 

studying Clementi’s works is now available 

in the double monographic issue of the 

“Contemporary Music Review” (XXX, 3-4, 

Taylor & Francis, 2011) entitled Aldo 

Clementi: Mirror of Time I and II. A vast 

platoon of musicologists and performers, 

Italian and Anglo-Saxon (including Maria 

Rosa De Luca, Roberto Fabbriciani, 

Gianluigi Mattietti, David Osmond-Smith, 

Roberto Prosseda and Graziella Seminara) 

examine in over 300 pages the works of 

Clementi from many different perspectives, published in 

a set of essays edited by Dan Albertson. 

play Dialogo angelico for two flutes on October 14 in 

the Sale Apollinee of the Gran Teatro La Fenice in 

Venice during the series “Ex Novo Musica”. Finally, 

Romanzetta for flute and piano will be included in the 5 th 

Festival of the Ned Ensemble, Concert Season “Città di 

Desenzano”, on November 18, with Roberto Fabriciani 

and Massimiliano Damerini. 

A thirty-year project comes to 

fruition, the composer is celebrated 

at the Pontino and Nuova 

Consonanza, publication of a 

double volume of critical studies 

Ennio Morricone 

Rag in frantumi for piano can 

be heard on October 25 at the 

Festival Spazio Musica in 

Cagliari, during a concert in 

collaboration with the New 

Made Ensemble and ESZ, 

which will be repeated on 

November 12 at the Teatro Dal 

Verme in Milan during the 

Festival Rebus, with Rossella 

Spinosa, soloist of the New 

Made Ensemble. 

7

New ESZ composer makes 

his debut at the Biennale with 

a study focusing on rhythm 

Posthumous chamber 

premiere at the Biennale di 

Venezia, avoiding Debussy 

8 

Raffaele Grimaldi 

Land of Crossing 

T 

his year ESZ begin their collaboration with Raffaele 

Grimaldi. Born in 1980, Italian but raised in 

Switzerland, he gained a diploma in 

composition at the Conservatory in Salerno 

with Lucia Ronchetti and furthered his studies 

at the Accademia Nazionale Santa Cecilia in 

Rome with Ivan Fedele. He has won 

numerous international recognitions for both 

composition and piano – including Valentino 

Bucchi (Rome) 2005, Progetto Giovani 

Compositori (Forlì - Milan) 2007, International 

Composition Competition Toru Takemitsu 

(Tokyo) 2009, Gaudeamus Music Week 

(Amsterdam) 2011, Wiener Konzerthaus’s 

International Composing Competition (Vienna) 2012 –, 

and has attended masterclasses held, among others, by 

Salvatore Sciarrino, Brian Ferneyhough, Hugues 

Doufourt, Georges Aperghis and Michael Jarrell. His 

works have been performed in Europe, Russia, the USA 

and Japan, as well as being broadcast by many radio 

stations and performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic 

Orchestra and by groups such as the Neue Vocal 

Solisten, the Ensemble Algoritmo, the Quartetto 

Prometeo, and by conductors such as Zsolt Nagy, 

Tetsuji Honna, Marco Angius, Jacques Mercier, Flavio 

Emilio Scogna, Frank Wörner and Philippe Nahon. He 

was selected by Ircam (Paris) for the Cursus 1 in 

composition and electronic music for 2008/ 09, and 

obtained the artistic residence at the Cité Internationale 

des Arts. On October 9 the 56th Festival Internazionale 

di Musica Contemporanea of the Biennale di Venezia 

will present, at the Teatro alle Tese, the first performance 

of Primal (Hypnagogical Extended Space) for one 

percussionist, with Simone Beneventi. The composer 

introduces his new work: «Primal (Hypnagogical 

Extended Space) is the first piece I have ever written 

just for percussion instruments. While I was working 

various new, vivid and unexpected horizons gradually 

opened up before me. My initial approach was extremely 

playful, detached, maybe unscrupulous, but little by little 

I was led automatically towards a much deeper terrain, 

of study dare I say. Immersing oneself in unknown 

environments often brings about a turning point, a 

change. Or a vanishing point. The metamorphoses of 

thought, hand, heart, are necessary for our creative 

Christophe Bertrand 

A Harp Against Time 

I 

mportant presence of Christophe Bertrand’s music at 

the Biennale di Venezia, with a posthumous premiere 

and the first Italian performance of his last work for 

orchestra. On October 10 at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale 

Dall’inferno for flute, viola and harp will be played by the 

Ex Novo Ensemble. Then, on October 12 Michel 

Tabachnik will conduct the Radio-Sinfonieorchester 

Stuttgart des SWR in a performance of Okhtor for 

orchestra. This is how Bertrand introduced his new 

work: «Dall’inferno is a sort of race against time, in 

which all is speed, falls, and transformations. As in most 

of my works, I first created myself some “prisons of 

invention”, to take up the expression used by Brian 

Ferneyhough. The “prison” that I self imposed was 

tempered by the “rhapsodic” freedom which, in a certain 

sense, resides in the cells. The general architecture of 

the piece responds to very precise formal and 

proportional criteria: I chose in fact to link the Fibonacci 

series to the wave model. The music is structurally 

fragmentary, but processual at an ideal level. In addition, 

some easily identifiable markers are scattered 

throughout the piece to give it unity, despite the 

heterogeneity of the ideas set in action. The main 

difficulty of this instrumentation is the presence of the 

consciences never to have moments of arrest, of empty 

repose. This work represented for me a veritable 

dividing line. A kind of “land of crossing”. My attention 

focused in a somewhat general way on a sort of 

“cleansing”, in the sense of clarity, linearity, 

comprehensibility. The need for the essential. For form, 

sound, pulsation. Only later, “because of” my wish to 

involve secondary poetic information (typical of my 

works), conceptual sparks began to emerge which then 

exploded into the musical context. On this matter, the 

subtitle Hypnagogical Extended Space already says 

much about the work at a conceptual level. The 

“hypnagogical” state (also called hypnagogical illusion or 

hallucination) is an experience that occurs at the initial 

phase of sound, where the senses and the perception of 

the external world are totally upset, since the subject 

has difficulty in distinguishing hallucination from reality. 

Having a set of around 50 percussion instruments 

available but only one player, I tried to imagine a 

“doubled” performer, capable of a performance at the 

limit of human possibilities and of dialoguing with his 

“double” in a swirling and energetic dance, at the centre 

of a thousand resonances. The piece is a constant and 

frenetic alternation between moments of highly pulsating 

movement and others of extreme platitude. Contrast 

plays a fundamental role and obviously the intention is 

strongly focalized on the rhythmic aspect, on that 

primitive (or primary) relation that exists between each 

musical object and a “beating”, a vital gesture for all 

percussion instruments. Primal in fact means “original”. 

A few months before starting this work I began reading 

some philosophical texts on the question of rhythm that 

particularly struck me: Bergson, Bachelard, Bayer and 

Raymond Court, from whom I will make a quotation that 

considerably moved me at the time: Rhythm, in its 

harmonicity, is not however rest or abandon but rather, 

ever more so, “poieticity”, active “musicality”. Rhythm, 

the “articulation experienced between two primordial 

opposites, Dionysus and Apollo”, whose musicality 

pervades all works of art, is the very sense of our time 

and of the creativity which shapes it into the objectivity 

of art (Le Musical, Paris, Klincksieck, 1976). Primal 

(Hypnagogical Extended Space) was commissioned by 

the Biennale di Venezia 2012». 

harp and its basic functioning: its diatonicism and 

resonance. To get round the problem without untuning 

the harp, I tried to create the illusion of it playing quartertones 

through the microtonal environment of the other 

two instruments that can play them without difficulty. 

Moreover, the harp often plays in a dry fashion, 

staccato, as if a huge string instrument were playing 

pizzicato. Impossible not to evoke Debussy, who is a 

formidable monster: the instrumentation of his Sonata is 

so referenced, ingrained in the musical unconscious that 

it was necessary to avoid at all costs anything that might 

have recalled that work, all the Debussyian topoi. 

I therefore banned any glissandos and ethereal 

atmospheres, the gracious harp. But it would have been 

just another cliché to use the harp in an aggressive or 

percussive manner; so I had to find the right 

compromise, and try to open up a path that would make 

the piece my own and distance it from its famous 

model». Christophe Bertrand’s Virya for flute, clarinet, 

piano and percussion can be heard on October 25 at 

the Teatro Vittoria in Turin, during the series “In Scena!”, 

Rassegna di Musica Contemporanea of the 

Associazione Fiarì Ensemble, when the group will be 

directed by Marilena Solavagione.

Giovanni Verrando 

Rethinking Grammar 

T 

he Associazione Gli Amici di Musica/Realtà, on the 

occasion of the concert celebrating the 80th birthday of 

Giacomo Manzoni, commissioned Giovanni Verrando to 

write Grammatica dell’inarmonico for amplified ensemble 

and electronics, which will be given its first performance 

on October 11 at the Conservatorio “G. Verdi” in Milan, 

and repeated on October 12 at the Teatro Piccolo 

Arsenale in Venice, during the 56th Festival Internazionale 

di Musica Contemporanea of the Biennale, with the 

Ensemble Risognanze conducted by Tito Ceccherini. The 

composer explains: «The elements that generated the 

structure of Grammatica dell’inarmonico, that make up its 

genetic code, are multiple and various: the use of 

psychoacoustics as a discipline that offers grammatical 

elements ready for composition; a rethinking of the 

concept of music grammar, also on the basis of the 

studies on syntactic structures carried out by Noam 

Chomsky. Grammar thus becomes a discipline that is 

more dynamic and creative, less assertive and static, 

also due to the complex proprieties of inharmonics; 

inharmonics is in fact the reign of multiplicity of data and 

of points of view. As such, it doesn’t give rise to a single, 

or any case a main grammatical solution, a single corpus 

of adequate elements, but opens up the assessment of 

the grammaticality of the components by moving it in 

relation to the purpose, the technical side or sides being 

taken into consideration each time. In Grammatica 

dell’inarmonico the grammatical element is judged as 

adequate when it presents itself as such only in relation 

to a finite and particular purpose. “Grammatical” is 

therefore what corresponds to the technical data I am 

pursuing and is coherent with the compositional 

purposes declared for a specific section of the piece (for 

example, a threshold of brilliance of sound, or a threshold 

of inharmonicity), all the rest is “agrammatical”. 

Fundamental too is the distinction into four families of 

sound: 1) homogeneous inharmonics, those noises that 

Marco Momi 

Revelation Completed 

O 

n January 13, in the Espace de Projection of Ircam, 

the cycle Iconica will be given its first complete 

performance by the Solistes XXI and the Ensemble 

L’Itinéraire directed by Rachid Safir. In its definitive form, 

the cycle is made up of Iconica for soprano and 

ensemble, Iconica II for ensemble, Iconica III for six 

voices on a text by Filippo Farinelli and Iconica IV for 

string trio, flute, clarinet, prepared piano and live 

electronics. The musical informatics at Ircam will be 

realized by the composer, who speaks about his project: 

«I think the most suitable term to define the series of 

pieces entitled Iconica is “involuntary cycle”. It consists of 

pieces for instrumental ensemble and/or voices, with and 

without electronics (present only in the last piece). Each 

piece is a collection of miniatures, and all of them (except 

for Iconica III which is for six unaccompanied voices) end 

with a cadenza for piano (an instrument central to all of 

my output). The unity, then, is not to be found in any 

programmed plan, but in the sharing of formal elements 

and of sections that actually return in different shapes 

throughout the cycle. I started writing the cycle in 2006, 

at the end of my studies at the Conservatories and 

finished it in 2010 during my last period of training at 

Ircam. To complete the first part (Iconica) it took me a 

whole year, a period particularly full of questions, of a 

sense of detachment and challenge in redefining certain 

categories of my compositional thought which until then 

I had simply shared, comforted by the fact that I had 

learned them. The cycle exhausted itself when I became 

aware that I was formalizing something that until a short 

time before was unknown to me. To define without 

formalizing and therefore, if necessary, repeating rather 

than replicating structures. To sculpt an audacious 

perceptual dimension, dry and powerful through 

present wide bands of frequencies homogeneously 

occupied and which are given particular names (white 

noise, pink noise, brownian noise, blue noise and so on); 

2) heterogeneous inharmonics, those sounds that 

present spectral components not proportional to one 

another (Hz), distributed with different spectral densities, 

so as to produce neither perceivable fundamental 

frequencies (notes), nor wide homogeneous bands that 

prevail over the other components; 3) distorted 

harmonics, those sounds in which harmonic and 

inharmonic frequencies are perceptible to the same 

extent; 4) harmonic sounds. Finally, the work on new 

string instruments is essential. To obtain all this (that is, 

to be able to work on the inharmonic spectral details) the 

instruments in the ensemble are amplified and their 

performing technique is somewhat upset. The string 

players play with different kinds of bows, prepared with 

strips of card or polyethylene, which are rubbed directly 

onto the strings in place of the horsehair. This is to 

increase the quota of inharmonic elements within the 

sounds produced by the strings. The electronics are 

entrusted with the fate of the generally inharmonic sound 

of the whole piece». In September ESZ officially 

published the book La nuova liuteria: orchestrazione, 

grammatica, estetica, an important publication prepared 

by Giovanni Verrando in collaboration with the students 

of the classes of orchestration and theory of composition 

at the Conservatory in Lugano, directed and supervised 

by the composer himself, with a preface by Pierre Albert 

Castanet. Born of a collaboration with the Divisione 

Ricerca e Sviluppo of the Scuola Universitaria di Musica - 

SUPSI of the Conservatory of Svizzera Italiana in 

Lugano, the book, presented in the last issue of ESZ 

News, represents the final outcome of a research project 

lasting two years carried out by Verrando. An English 

edition of the work is currently being prepared. 

chiselling, the nuance that reveals the detail and the 

same that becomes the mainstay of the listening. The 

balance between the perception of the form through 

macro-figures and the creation of a time that becomes 

salient in every instant is achieved by renouncing the 

process. The attempt is to create a mechanism of 

continuous revelation, not to give in to the consolatory 

reconstruction of the listening. The sensation of a tactile 

discovery. The material that I hold in my hands is in itself 

neutral and fixed: each miniature that makes up the 

pieces presents itself as unequivocal and somewhat 

anonymous in its DNA: scales, multiphonics, distorted 

sounds, objects deprived of their common use 

(megaphones), glissandos... each sound is nonetheless 

“exposed”: the performer is expected to act without a 

safety net, is obliged to interpret, to consider each action 

as determinant, in respect of the most ruthless 

fundamentals of chamber music». The premiere of the 

complete project, to be performed during a concert that 

will take place as a co-production between Ircam-Centre 

Pompidou, L’Itinéraire and Les Solistes XXI, will be 

broadcast live by France Musique and will be coupled 

with music by Gesualdo. In October it is possible to hear 

the music of Marco Momi at the Fondazione Prometeo in 

Parma, during the Festival Traiettorie: on October 9 

Mario Caroli will play Reloading vanishing for flute; 

Iconica IV will be given its first Italian performance on 

October 10 at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale in Venice 

during the 56 th Festival Internazionale di Musica 

Contemporanea of the Biennale, by the Ex Novo 

Ensemble. Finally, on October 18 Cinque nudi for 

saxophone and Midi controller will be recorded by David 

Brutti at Radio France, who commissioned the work for 

the series of transmissions “Alla breve”, 

The concept of “inharmonic” 

at the centre of a new work to 

be presented in Milan and at 

the Biennale in Venice 

La lirica di Mario Luzi 

accompagna e ispira la ricerca 

di confine cara al compositore 

Ircam presents the complete 

cycle that accompanied the 

composer’s final years of study 

9

The series of quartets is 

continued for Milano Musica, a 

new chamber work celebrates 

the Contempoartensemble 

Roberto Fabbriciani 

Roberto Fabbriciani plays two 

of his own compositions: Suoni 

per Gigi for flute and magnetic 

tape on October 4 in Wellington 

(New Zealand) and on October 

18 at the Conservatory of 

Fermo; Motion capture for 

hyperbass flute elaborated 

through motion capture and live 

electronics on November 21 at 

the Scuola Normale in Pisa, 

with Walter Neri as sound 

engineer. 

10 

Michele dall’Ongaro 

For Sixteen Strings 

O 

n October 10 in the Auditorium San Fedele in Milan, 

during the Milano Musica Festival, Michele dall’Ongaro’s 

Quartetto n. 6 will be presented by the Quartetto di 

Cremona. The composer describes the work: «The 

Quartetto n. 6 is quite a short work that nevertheless 

took longer to write than what it might seem when 

listening to it. It all starts from a chorale (often the rough 

copy of my work is simply a page with 3 or 4 chords 

linked by criteria of harmonic tension that I have 

elaborated over the years). This basic grid is 

continuously interrupted, disturbed by processes that 

assume figures that are apparently secondary (an 

integral part of the vertical aspect) which are then 

developed horizontally. The texture becomes elastic and 

even marred by large flaws that put stress on its 

integrity, setting its resistance to a hard test. And this is 

why in the end everything gathers around a type of black 

hole, a whirlwind that transports the material into 

another dimension where everything changes, floats in a 

limbo dense with amniotic liquid where the temptation to 

sing and its negation cohabit in an apparent 

complementary way until the final dissolution. This is the 

only zone where the roles of the four instruments are 

specialized within a writing that, unlike my other 

quartets, transforms the group into a single 16-string 

instrument». Paolo Petazzi comments: «The composer 

does not feel the weight of the history of the most 

illustrious genre in chamber music as limiting or 

conditioning, also because he has no intention of 

revisiting the genre in its historical formal characteristics, 

but rather wishes to exploit the infinite and extraordinary 

possibilities of writing for four strings. In the subdued 

opening we immediately meet a determinant “character”: 

after a few bars with held notes and isolated pizzicatos, 

we hear notes rapidly repeated using a bowing 

technique called jeté (thrown) in this case col legno, 

because it involves making the bow bounce by 

“throwing” it onto the string (in this case using the 

wooden tip of the bow). Even without the jeté the 

potentials of the figures based on repeated notes are 

explored by changing such elements as registers, 

thicknesses and lengths. After the subdued opening the 

music builds up with tension until reaching a breaking 

point. Other elements come into play, the discourse 

opens up to strong contrasts and dramatic peaks. I won’t 

try to describe every detail, but I would like to draw 

attention at least to the final sections, where the 

consequential logic of what goes before seems to make 

way for surprising turns for the listener. Broad 

arpeggiated figures invade the sonic space, often 

involving all four players in virtuoso gestures which little 

by little become out of phase, through the introduction of 

divergent rhythms and meters and the use of harmonic 

sounds. And while the machine breaks up, an intense 

yearning for canto emerges. The second violin removes 

itself from the vortex of the others, and is followed by the 

Jean-Luc Hervé 

On September 21 in Bilbao Amplitude for cello solo 

was played by Séverine Ballon, soloist of the Ensemble 

Sillages. The Ex Novo Ensemble will give the first 

Italian performance of Réplique for five players and 

electronics on October 10 at the Teatro Piccolo 

Arsenale in Venice during the 56 th Festival 

viola. The viola proposes a new cantabile idea (amid the 

harmonic sounds of the other instruments); but this too 

and the other successive attempts are blocked and 

interrupted: there is no room for a prolonged melos like 

that of the viola from which the Quartetto n. 5 took its 

starting point». The Quartetto n. 5 for strings will be 

played this Autumn by the Quartetto Bernini in 

collaboration with the Associazione Roma Sinfonietta. 

Vingt ans après... for flute, clarinet, piano, violin, viola 

and cello, commissioned by the Contempoartensemble, 

will also be played this Autumn during the 

Contempoartefestival in Florence when the group will be 

directed by Mauro Ceccanti. Dall’Ongaro explains: «The 

title explicitly refers to the second episode of the exploits 

of the three, or rather four, musketeers. And the 

musicians of the ensemble too are actually heroes 

because, like the musketeers, they defend the colours 

not of their cousins beyond the Alps but rather the more 

fragile banner of ars nova and especially of ars 

novissima at the cost of sacrifices that only they, their 

friends and families can really know in detail. A work, 

then, that intends to offer thanks and best wishes for a 

bright future. It is impossible then to write for the 

Contempoartensemble (never did a name cause the 

automatic corrector so much trouble!) without imagining 

the protagonists in flesh and blood, without thinking of 

the smiles, the enthusiasm and the musicality of the 

members of the Ceccanti family and their partners. So 

writing this short piece was a way of passing time in 

their company and thus expressing my deepest 

gratitude for their worthy mission». Michele dall’Ongaro 

is the composer featured in the 2012 season of the 

Ensemble Musagète during the series “Pomeriggio tra 

le Muse”, held in the Gallerie d’Italia in Palazzo Leoni 

Montanari in Vicenza. The programme includes on 

September 9 the Invenzione a due voci n. 2 for flute 

and clarinet, September 30 Trenodia for flute, clarinet 

and violin, October 7 the Notturno n. 1 for violin, cello 

and piano, and on December 9 Berceuse in frantumi for 

two violins. On September 12 the Festival MITO 

Settembre Musica in Turin included Ad libitum for flute, 

clarinet, violin, cello, piano and vibraphone, with the 

Ensemble Antidogma. On October 19 at the Teatro 

Verdi during the Festival Play It! the Orchestra della 

Toscana conducted by Fabio Maestri will play Festschrift 

for fourteen instruments. The Ex Novo Ensemble will 

perform Zero for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano on 

November 15 in Macerata, during the Stagione 

Concertistica Associazione Musicale Appassionata, and 

on November 25 in Pordenone, during the Festival 

Internazionale di Musica Sacra. Finally, on December 2 

Stefano Cardi will direct the Freon Ensemble in a 

performance of Danni collaterali for cello and small 

ensemble, in the Sala Casella of the Accademia 

Filarmonica Romana, during the Festival di Nuova 

Consonanza in Rome. 

Internazionale di Musica Contemporanea. On October 

25 in Vilnius (Lithuania) the Ensemble L’Itinéraire will 

play Intérieur rouge for piccolo, clarinet, violin, cello and 

piano. Finally, on December 8 at the Musik-Akademie 

Basel Ein/aus for ensemble will be played by the 

Ensemble Diagonale directed by Marcus Weiss. 

The Suvini Zerboni catalogue is on line. 

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program notes, calendar of concerts and world premieres.

Giorgio Colombo Taccani 

Solitary Voices 

The first performance of L’image oubliée 

for piano is scheduled for October 1 st at 

the Teatro di Marcello in Rome, during the 

Festival delle Nazioni; it will be played by 

Adele D’Aronzo, to whom the piece is 

dedicated. The composer explains: «To 

mark the 150 th anniversary of the birth of 

Claude Debussy I was asked to write this 

new short piece for piano which, with the 

greatest of respect, takes it starting point 

from the first two bars of Hommage à 

Rameau from Images. These become the 

structural basis of the entire work, 

expanding to cover the whole length, the 

basic material for countless local 

elaborations. Excluding a priori any direct 

stylistic reference and, even more so, any 

explicit quotation, a harmonic colour diatonically linked 

to the starting point is nevertheless often determined, 

within a piano writing that privileges resonance and 

liquidity». Restless White for flute will be premiered on 

October 4 in Wellington (New Zealand) by its 

prestigious dedicatee Roberto Fabbriciani, who will also 

give the piece its first Italian performance on November 

18 in the Auditorium Celesti in Desenzano during the 5 th 

Festival of the Ned Ensemble. The composer tells us: 

«As can be deduced from the title, the work is 

characterized by a constantly anxious and restless 

pace; there is no melodic-cantabile tendency, the 

course of the piece being guided by minimal ideas 

repeated with a regularity that is almost obsessive and 

in this prospective highly expressive; the timbral 

resources, whether traditional or of more recent origin, 

are used with decision in the flute writing. The narrative 

course therefore does not follow a straight line, even 

though its climax comes towards the end, but rather 

has a spiral tendency, within which the elements turn 

without any real evolution of the discourse. Beneath it 

all, to give the work coherence, is the kaleidoscopic 

presence of a short fragment of seven notes, a 

fundamental element throughout the work». On 19 

October, during the second edition of the Festival Play 

It!, at the Teatro Verdi in Florence, the first performance 

will be given of Dura roccia for bassoon and string 

orchestra; the soloist will be Paolo Carlini, dedicatee of 

the piece along with the Orchestra della Toscana, 

conducted on this occasion by Francesco Lanzillotta. 

Colombo Taccani says: «Dura roccia represents a new 

step in my long fascination with low instruments. The 

title (think of it in English…) refers to the roughness and 

aggression that characterize much of the piece. Two 

contrasting situations are developed in alternation: the 

first is based on the cadential and violent mood of the 

solo part, which contrasts with the resonant and 

tendentially lyrical nature – though always undermined 

by more or less subterraneous drives towards 

disgregation – of the second. This goes on for the 

whole length of the piece, in which the strings are 

always ready to expand and exploit what the bassoon 

has proposed. The closing bars feature the paradoxical 

dwelling of the soloist on the final high note, below 

which the strings offer their last utterances, now unable 

Maurilio Cacciatore 

From October 6 to 13 the Biennale di Venezia, 56 th 

Festival Internazionale di Musica Contemporanea, will 

host for the first time in Italy the interactive 

electroacoustic installation Apparaître, disparaître, se 

cacher, realized by Simone Conforti. Impuro minimo for 

violin, cello and piano can be heard on October 25 at 

the Festival Spazio Musica in Cagliari, during a concert 

in collaboration with the New Made Ensemble and ESZ, 

featuring the New Made Ensemble: Raffaello Negri, 

to force the path elsewhere». A very 

unusual instrumentation can be found in 

Lybra, which will be premiered on 

October 20 at the Palazzo Chigi in 

Ariccia (Rome) by Jessica Horsley: the 

work, commissioned by the Ars Braemia 

(Switzerland), is in fact written for 

baryton, an instrument similar to the 

viola da gamba and characterized by the 

presence of a variable number of strings 

on the back of the instrument, which, as 

well as vibrating sympathetically, can 

also be plucked by the thumb of the left 

hand; many works for this instrument, 

much loved by prince Esterházy but 

soon fallen into disuse, were written by 

Haydn and Tomasini. The composer 

explains: «Taking its cursory inspiration from Haydn, the 

course of Lybra is guided by the constant return of 

certain main figures, especially chosen to highlight the 

surprising characteristics of the baryton; a decisive role 

is thus assumed by the broad arpeggios played on an 

almost regular basis at the start of the piece, and the 

falling figures shared between the front and back 

strings. Local digressions interrupt the path, in a climate 

that is constantly mobile and vital». Recent 

performances of the composer’s works include: Soleil 

levant, from the Due pezzi for bass flute, played by 

Laura Chislett-Jones at Sydney Grammar School on 

June 2; then on June 16, at the Hochschule für Musik 

in Basel, Stojan Krkuleski on the clarinet, Elia 

Portabales on viola and Gaelle Levevre on cello played 

Eco; on July 1 st Avvoltoi for voice and four instruments 

was performed during the Festival of Bellagio and Lake 

Como by Akiko Kozato and the New Made Ensemble 

directed by Alessandro Calcagnile; during the same 

Festival, on September 9, a performance was given of 

Nox, Tellus for solo voice, again by Akiko Kozato; 

L’àgnili for voice and piano on two poems in Sardinian 

by Pompeo Calvia was performed on July 12 during 

the series Suono Immagine at the Conservatory in 

Milan; on September 5 Antilia for piccolo and guitar 

was played by the Antilia Duo in the context of the 

project Irid. Visual Concert, in the Auditorium Lattuada 

in Milan; Eco celata entro braci ardenti for flute and 

harpsichord was played on September 7 by the Duo 

Novecembalo in Porretta Terme, during the Festival 

Nuovi Orizzonti Sonori; on September 23 at the Tokyo 

Opera City the instrumentalists of the Nomad Ensemble 

played Richiamo da lontano for flute and clarinet; on 

September 24, in the church of St. Martin-within- 

Ludgate in London, Laura Chislett-Jones and Thomas 

Jones played Luz for flute and violin. On October 25 

Avvoltoi for voice and four instruments on a poem by 

Simon Pederek will be performed at the Festival Spazio 

Musica in Cagliari by Akiko Kozato and the New Made 

Ensemble directed by Alessandro Calcagnile, during a 

concert in collaboration with the New Made Ensemble 

and ESZ. Finally, on October 27, the Duo Alterno will 

play L’àgnili for voice and piano at the Museo di Santa 

Caterina in Treviso during the Festival Finestre sul 

Novecento. 

violin, Guido Boselli, cello, and Rossella Spinosa, 

piano. Finally, on December 7 the Opéra de Lille will 

host Tamonontamo for amplified vocal quartet, 24 voice 

choir and live-electronics, with Adèle Carlier, soprano, 

Marie-Paule Bonnemason, contralto, Stephan Olry, 

tenor, Jean-Michel Durang, bass and Les Cris de Paris 

directed by Geoffroy Jourdain. The live electronics will 

be realized by Ircam. 

Three premieres for solo 

instruments, a fourth for 

soloist and orchestra 

Giacomo Manzoni 

On November 7 in the Auditorio 

Nacional de Música in Madrid, 

Fabián Panisello will conduct 

the Plural Ensemble in a 

performance of Musica notturna 

for five wind instruments, piano 

and percussion. 

Pagina da camera in prima 

assoluta, quasi un intermezzo 

11

Three premières conclude 

the composer’s residence 

at the Philharmonisches 

Orchester Cottbus 

The relation between “voices” at 

the centre of research, while an 

opera project takes shape linked 

to a double residence in France 

12 

Valerio Sannicandro 

Interior Tempos 

V 

alerio Sannicandro’s residence at the 

Philharmonisches Orchester Cottbus ends with the rich 

array of three new works. In order, the orchestra will 

present, at the Staatstheater Cottbus, Sutra for 

ensemble and electronic sounds, on November 30 and 

December 2, conducted by Will Humburg and with the 

composer in charge of the sound projection; then a 

diptych for orchestra: Windströme on January 11 and 

13, conducted by Marc Niemann, and Seelenströme, on 

February 22 and 24, conductor Evan Christ. The 

composer talks about his new works: «In Sutra the 

three “sutras” sung by the Japanese Tone Akemi, 

whom I met by chance in a monastery in Kyoto, 

are transformed electronically and projected so 

as to constitute a “soloist” accompanied by an 

instrumental ensemble. The latter, consisting of thirteen 

wind instruments (mostly brass), percussion and 

doublebasses, arranged around the audience, expands 

and amplifies the vocal sounds, producing an 

“immersive” sound effect. The singing without place or 

time, and with a religiosity that is extremely human 

because it is passionate, takes possession of the space 

within and around us: the instruments (thanks to 

various types of mute) imitate the sounds of the singing 

and extend and enrich it with a wide range of sonorities, 

almost as if to simulate listening in an unusual, wide 

space, open to the outside. The percussion 

instruments, with their continuous impulses, underline 

the character of a ritual with a constant osmosis 

between the present and memory, a moment that is 

loud and marked, but at the same time dreamlike». 

Regarding the diptych for orchestra 

Windströme/Seelenströme, the composer says it is 

«made up of two short (approx. 6 minutes each) but 

extremely characterized pieces for orchestra. In the 

wake of an idea of a composition that transcends the 

Federico Gardella 

simple hic et nunc (as in Ius Lucis) these two pieces 

were born almost as an experiment: might I perhaps in 

the future, with the aid of electronic techniques, create, 

between the two orchestras far from each other playing 

in synchrony each of their own pieces, a third 

composition that combines and reinterprets the musical 

elements in a different musical perspective? For now, 

though, I will describe these two precise musical ideas: 

the first (Windströme) presents sonorities that recall the 

wind (with just a few recognizable pitches), the second 

(Seelenströme) consists of melodic lines, microtonal 

and tightly packed, often fragmented, which aggregate 

and disperse, always ppp. In keeping with the idea that 

the soul is identifiable with breath, the conception of this 

diptych with its capacity for introspection of the 

orchestral apparatus, transfers the expressive accent 

into an anti-rhetorical dimension (just a few dynamic 

flares, an expanse of particles moving microscopically 

and uniformly at the limits of audibility), fixes on an 

idea, on a space but also on a multitude of tempi...». 

Opportunities to hear the music of Valerio Sannicandro 

this Autumn include a performance of Lasco for four 

strings, piano (with assistant) and percussion on 

September 21 at the Folkwang Museum in Essen, with 

the E-mex Ensemble directed by Ch.M. Wagner; 

Sonnet X for tuba and live electronics on September 

24 at the Mon-naka Tenjo Hall in Tokyo, with Shinya 

Hashimoto and Simihisa Arima; Renga for voice and 

four instruments, with Akiko Kozato and the New Made 

Ensemble directed by Alessandro Calcagnile on 25 

October at the Festival Spazio Musica in Cagliari, 

during a concert in collaboration with the New Made 

Ensemble and ESZ; finally, Epistolae III for bass flute, 

percussion and live electronics on October 27 at the 

Jayu Theater of the Seoul Arts Center, with the E-mex 

Ensemble. 

Instrumental Resonances 

T 

his Autumn sees two premieres for Federico Gardella. 

On November 3 in Riva presso Chieri (Turin), during 

the series Rive Gauche Concerti, Annamaria Morini will 

play Cinque cori notturni sotto la costa for alto flute. The 

composer tells us: «The evolution of monodic 

instruments is not infrequently linked to the 

history of counterpoint: real or virtual, 

counterpoint represents for these 

instruments a condition to aspire towards 

during the definition of their own sonic 

personality; I wondered, then, whether it was 

possible to imagine a choral writing for these 

instruments in which I could include this idea 

of counterpoint. To think of an instrument in 

analogy with a choir means reflecting on its 

complexity of timbres, but also learning to think of the 

“solo” as a potential of a “multitude”; in these Cinque 

cori notturni sotto la costa for alto flute the progressive 

definition of a choral sound coincides with the unveiling 

of the form: the “story” of each of these short 

compositions proceeds through the construction of a 

choral identity, expressed by a single instrument». 

On December 3, Sirènes, a chamber opera in one act 

on a libretto by Emmanuel Darley from a fragment by 

Lycophron, will be presented at the Compagnie 

Nationale de Théâtre Lyrique et Musical Arcal in Paris, 

in the form of an introductory sketch limited to the I and 

III scene, with a replica on December 4 at the Grand 

Atelier of the Abbaye de Royaumont. It will be 

performed by Dorothée Lorthiois, Sirène 1, Chantal 

Santon, Sirène 2, Caroline Meng, Sirène 3, Benjamin 

Alunni, Ulysses and the Ensemble Cairn conducted by 

Guillaume Bourgogne; the director will be Jean De 

Pange. Gardella explains: «In a short extract from 

Alexandra, the Greek poet Lycophron, who lived in the 

4 th Century B.C., tells of the death of the sirens: the ship 

of Ulysses moves away from the cliffs 

occupied by the sirens and the three bird 

women, according to classical mythology, 

decide to kill themselves by throwing 

themselves onto the rocks without opening 

their wings. This is the starting point for 

Sirènes, which is at the centre of a project of 

my residence at the Compagnie Nationale de 

Théâtre Lyrique et Musical Arcal in Paris and 

at the Fondation Royaumont. The solitude of 

the sirens and the horror in the face of a destiny in 

which everything is already written are amplified by the 

immobility and indifference of nature: so I imagined an 

instrumental writing independent from the web of 

voices, a place of resonance into which the characters 

are dropped and have to react». In the meantime it is 

possible to hear Federico Gardella’s Tre studi per 

riscoprire l’alba for piano on October 4 at the Istituto 

Italiano di Cultura in Paris, with Alfonso Alberti, and the 

Hofmannsthal-Mikro-Lieder for female voice, violin and 

cello on October 25 at the Festival Spazio Musica in 

Cagliari, during a concert in collaboration with the New 

Made Ensemble and ESZ, played by the New Made 

Ensemble: Akiko Kozato, voice, Raffaello Negri, violin 

and Guido Boselli, cello.

Malika Kishino 

Sonic Garden 

A 

first performance for Malika Kishino on November 3 

at the Tokyo-shohken Hall. Shuretsu Miyashita II will 

play Monochromer Garten IV for 30-string koto. The 

composer tells us: «Monochromer Garten IV is part of 

my series Monochromer Garten in which I concentrate 

on small instrumental groups, from one to three 

musicians. In this series I am trying to represent the 

characters and aesthetics of a Japanese garden, as 

well as the process of its architecture. A silvery world, 

night, black tiles covered with snow, reflected-light, 

space, silence ... I wanted to represent with sound such 

image of a garden, that I once saw through the window 

behind a temple in Kyoto. The night scene of the 

garden was like an India-ink painting, a work of art in 

black and white. I found there an epitome of beauty, at 

the same time it made me reflect on the appreciation of 

beauty. According to Shinichi Hisamatsu (1889-1980), a 

Japanese philosopher and scholar of Zen Buddhism, 

the general features of Japanese cultural expressions 

in the fine arts can be described in terms of seven 

interrelated characteristics: Asymmetry, Simplicity, 

Austere Sublimity, Naturalness, Subtle Profundity, 

Freedom from attachment, Tranquility. All fine art, 

landscape architecture included, may be found to 

possess all of these seven characteristics, which in 

Pasquale Corrado 

their inseparability form a perfect whole. In my 

Monochromer Garden series, I consider the 

composition of music like the composition of landscape 

architecture. Instead of materials like rocks, water 

features, moss, pruned trees, bushes, sand and space 

used to compose a Japanese garden, I use sound 

materials and time to create my piece. Especially in my 

piece Monochromer Garten IV, I tried to bring out the 

peculiarities of the 30-string Koto, such as the spell of 

its deep sound, rich timbres, vibration and resonance 

from its thick strings, intensity etc. as sound materials. 

I wanted to create a universe of beauty with these 

materials and to reach the deep reserve of my 

sensibility. Monochromer Garden IV was 

commissioned by the 30-string koto master, Shuretsu 

Miyashita II and it is dedicated to her». On August 3 

and 4 in Stuttgart a performance was given of Dukkha 

for electronics, a three-channel composition for the 

interactive performing installation Attitude directed by 

Sebastian Klemm with the collaboration of numerous 

guest artists. On September 24 in the Mon-naka Tenjo 

Hall in Tokyo Lebensfunke for bass drum and 

electronics was performed by Yoshiko Kanda and 

Sumihisa Arima. 

The Light and the Shade 

T 

wo premieres for Pasquale Corrado. On September 

15 during the 4th International Pharos Contemporary 

Music Festival in Delikipos (Cyprus), the first 

performance was given of Lux Day for string quartet, 

which will be repeated on October 15 in the Auditorium 

San Fedele in Milan for the Milano Musica Festival in 

collaboration with the Centro Culturale San Fedele. 

Both concerts feature the Quartetto Prometeo. Then, on 

October 19 Lux Day Off for violin, cello, doublebass 

and piano will be played in the Auditorium Montemezzi 

of the “E.F. Dall’Abaco” Conservatory in Verona, during 

a workshop on performing practices in Contemporary 

Music. Lucia Zanela, violin, Eleuteria Arena, cello, 

Claudio Borolomai, doublebass, and Adriano Ambrosini, 

piano, will be directed by Andrea Mannucci. 

The composer describes the double work: «Lux Day is 

part of the programme for the Premio San Fedele which 

this year requires a piece for quartet to be played by the 

Quartetto Prometeo. The piece pays homage to canto 

XXXIII of Paradiso from Dante’s Divina Commedia (in 

particular the lines «O Somma Luce…»), the latter 

being the guide for the imagination set for the 2012 

Martino Traversa 

Crystalline Sound 

O 

n October 31, at the Casa della Musica in Parma, 

the Festival Traiettorie will include the first performance 

of a new work by Martino Traversa: Red for violin, 

played by Hae-sun Kang, to whom the piece is 

dedicated. The composer tells us: «When you find 

yourself having to write a piece for Hae-Sun Kang, you 

have the impression of living a unique, unrepeatable 

experience. Just mentioning the violinist’s name makes 

you imagine a dimension and quality of sound quite out 

of the ordinary, with the clarity of a crystal, the fruit of a 

masterful technique and an intelligent performing 

sensitivity. And it was precisely with this in mind that the 

resulting piece was conceived and written. And I make 

no pretence at hiding a certain enthusiasm at having 

given in to the idea, in some passages, of tending 

towards a sort of extreme writing, fully aware of the fact 

edition of the Prize. Lux Day is characterized by a rapid 

succession of extremes. In other words the piece is 

built on the repeated passage of extreme sonorities: 

from thin to thick, from high to low, from imperceptible 

to evident. The piece composed for the workshop on 

performing practices in Contemporary Music at the 

Conservatory in Verona consists of a rewriting of Lux 

Day, with the addition of the piano. It is a sort of 

negative reading of the original Lux Day, which upsets 

its perspective and creates a surface of shade that 

traces the luminous borders of previous version». 

Finally, two more performances should be mentioned: 

Pulse for six instruments was played on September 14 

in the Bohemian National Hall at the Czech Center in 

New York, during the Moving Sounds Festival, with the 

Ensemble Mise-en; Raise Voice for female voice and 

four instruments can be heard on October 25 in the 

Festival Spazio Musica in Cagliari, during a concert in 

collaboration with the New Made Ensemble and ESZ, 

with Akiko Kozato and the New Made Ensemble 

directed by Alessandro Calcagnile. 

that, thanks to the presence of Hae-Sun, the result 

would be exceptional. The structure in sections of Red 

alternates very rapid movements with others that are 

more calm, reflexive, played almost always in the 

middle register of the violin, since it is precisely in this 

area that the sound is able to flourish in a pure and 

transparent manner. What finally emerged was a piece 

for violin using traditional writing, able to arouse wonder 

in the listener on account of the extreme energy, the 

beauty of the sound and the charm of a virtuosity 

beyond one’s expectations». On November 14 at the 

University of California in Santa Barbara, during the 

UCSB’s Festival of Contemporary Arts and Digital 

Media, it will be possible to hear Critical Path and 

NGC253, both for synthesis sounds. 

A new work for koto, part of a 

wider project, takes its aesthetic 

inspiration from the architecture 

of Japanese landscapes 

Two “twin” pieces for the San Fedele 

Prize at Milano Musica and for the 

Conservatory in Verona 

Premiere of a work for soloist 

at the Festival Traiettorie, 

with Hae-Sun Kang 


assoluta, quasi un intermezzo 

13

A single inspiration for 

two French premieres 

Two new works whose 

sound exploration is inspired 

by Dante and by Borges 

14 

Eric Maestri 

Associations of Ideas 

T 

wo French premieres for Eric Maestri. On September 

22 the first performance of Due parole (Endeared III) for 

female vocal quartet and string quartet was given in the 

Abbaye de Royaumont, during the series Voix 

Nouvelles 2012. Commissioned by the Fondation 

Royaumont, the new work was played by the soloists of 

the Atelier Vocale de Royaumont/Les Cris de Paris 

directed by Geoffroy Jourdain and the Quartetto 

Diotima. The composer tells us: «Due parole is based 

on the association of ideas. One pair of words leads to 

others and the composition of the text is parallel to the 

composition of the music, until almost being the same 

thing. The piece presents masses and contrasts based 

on harmonies created by the distortion, through 

frequency modulation, of a handful of pitches that 

successive counterpoints form into outlines. To describe 

the piece in just a few words, the construction is related 

to pure form: the sound source, the dynamic violence 

and the harmonic construction bring me increasingly 

closer to the world of Edgard Varèse». On October 19 

in Strasbourg, during the event Without Cage - 

Manifeste de Musique de Demain, La visione delle cose 

for ensemble and electronics will be performed by the 

composer on electronics and the Ensemble Vortex, who 

commissioned the work, and will be repeated on 

October 31 in Geneva, Radio de la Suisse Romande, 

and on November 1st at the Gare du Nord in Basel. 

Maestri speaks of the inspiration behind the new work: 

«The idea of putting oneself in front of a musical object 

and drying it up, placing it in time and space. The 

Vittorio Montalti 

The Poet Resound 

T 

wo premieres for Vittorio Montalti. On September 15 

the 4th International Pharos Contemporary Music 

Festival in Delikipos (Cyprus) presented 

the first performance of Cinque studi 

sulla dinamica della luce for string 

quartet, which will be repeated on 15 

October in the Auditorium San Fedele in 

Milan during the Milano Musica Festival, 

in collaboration with the Centro Culturale 

San Fedele. Both concerts will feature 

the Quartetto Prometeo. The composer 

introduces his new work: «The Cinque 

studi sulla dinamica della luce are a 

series of pieces that explore the concept 

of luminosity in different ways. In 

particular the light examined in these 

studies is that of Dante’s Paradiso; each 

piece is inspired by an extract from the third canto of 

the Divina Commedia: I. ... più dolci in voce che in vista 

lucenti ... II. ... silenzio puose a quella dolce lira, / e fece 

quietar le sante corde / che la destra del cielo allenta e 

tira. III. ... così si veggion qui diritte e torte, / veloci e 

tarde, rinovando vista, / le minuzie de’ corpi, lunghe e 

corte, / moversi per lo raggio ... IV. ... e moto a moto e 

canto a canto colse ... V. ... così da’ lumi che lì 

m’apparinno / s’accogliea per la croce una melode / che 

mi rapiva, sanza intender l’inno». On October 21 in the 

Sale Apollinee of the Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice 

the series Ex Novo Musica will present Labyrinthes for 

bass flute and electronics, a commission of the Ex 

Donatoni - Fedele - Solbiati 

Limen Classic & Contemporary has released a Cd 

(CDE11-C012) dedicated to three contemporary Italian 

composers, featuring the Limen Ensemble directed by 

Yoichi Sugiyama. The programme covers a period of 

more than half a century and includes Franco 

writing seen as objectivation and an investigation of the 

psychological resonances that the constitutive elements 

of the music provoke in the association of ideas. The 

basic logic of this new piece consists of taking the 

instruments as objects, putting and placing the music 

before composing it. For the first time the electronics 

has no anonymous source, as happens in most 

electronic pieces, where the categories of enrichment 

of the instrumental material or acoustic counterpoint 

to the score prevail. In this case the electronics is an 

instrument. Since the electronic sound is defective, in 

the piece I try to eliminate the defect by balancing the 

acoustic aspect and the instrumental one. In this sense 

a solution can be found, I believe, to the discourse 

started by Nono, in Sofferte onde serene, and then 

continued by Stroppa and the development of the 

timée, a loudspeaker that projects the sound spherically 

and localizes the source. La visione delle cose is a 

piece for this strange new object, similar to an 

instrument without being one, which encloses the 

electronics in a box. This step gives rise to other 

aspects, a modular loudspeaker divided between 

magnet and membrane. In this way La visione delle 

cose experiments with this new approach which I 

arrived at after passing through many experiences in 

electronic diffusion and composition». In the same 

days, on October 28, the Milano Musica Festival in the 

Auditorium San Fedele in Milan will include 

Celestografia for soprano and string quartet, performed 

by Valentina Coladonato and the Quartetto Prometeo. 

Novo Ensemble who will play the work (Daniele 

Ruggieri, flute, and Alvise Vidolin, sound engineer). The 

composer explains: «In the composition a 

description is made of a hypothetical labyrinth 

and of possible itineraries in which to lose 

oneself. The journey within this network builds 

a narration in which the musical elements are 

alternated, overlapped and transformed one 

into the other with returns to places already 

visited. The electronics amplifies the 

instrumental route, becoming its extension. 

Parallel labyrinths are thus created, deviations 

that open the door to other dimensions. The 

piece is also a homage to the writer and poet 

Jorge Luis Borges, and to his labyrinths, who 

wrote: “I dream obsessively of a small, clean 

labyrinth, in the centre of which is an urn that 

I almost touched with my hands, that I saw with my 

eyes, but the paths were so contorted, so confused, 

that one thing seemed clear to me: I would die before 

I arrived there”». Two more works by Montalti are 

featured during this festival season: Ghiribizzo for guitar 

was played on September 18 in the Church of San 

Maurizio at the Monastero Maggiore in Milan during the 

Festival MITO Settembre Musica, with Luigi Attademo. 

And Don’t Shoot the Piano Players can be heard on 

October 12 during the Biennale di Venezia, 56 th 

Festival Internazionale di Musica Contemporanea, in 

the Sala delle Colonne of Ca’ Giustinian, with the 

pianist Ciro Longobardi. 

Donatoni’s Asar (1964) and Solo (1969), both for ten 

string instruments, Ivan Fedele’s Nohtar (2009) for 

string orchestra and Alessandro Solbiati’s Sette pezzi 

(1999), in the version for string orchestra.

Andrea Mannucci 

Melologues of Solitude 

T 

wo first performances for Andrea Mannucci within the 

space of a month. Solo for flute, the sixth episode of 

Homunculus for reciting voice and wind quintet, will be 

played by Roberto Fabbriciani on October 4 in 

Wellington (New Zealand). The composer tells us: 

«While I was working on the composition of the 

melologue Homunculus on a text by Marco Ongaro, 

I received a commission from Roberto Fabbriciani for a 

piece for solo flute. This prompted me to write the sixth 

episode of the melologue, whose atmosphere is defined 

in the libretto as “solitary” and “tense”, for solo flute». 

On November 4 the 5th Festival of the Ned Ensemble, 

in the Auditorium Celesti in Desenzano, will include the 

premiere of Novembre dei vivi, melologue for reciting 

voice and piano on a text by Marco Ongaro, with Paolo 

Valerio, reciting voice, and Maurizio Baglini, piano. 

Mannucci speaks about the new piece: «The curse of 

the Sibyl, immortal and forever aging, is the photograph 

of the new western era, that of forced survival, of 

resistance to diseases that are increasingly less 

definitive, always possible to postpone in the illusion of 

an eternity that must not pass through death. The 

November of the dead, with its fog deceived by a sun 

that protracts the fine season beyond its time, becomes 

that of the living and reflects the uncertain condition of 

the long-living now precluded from the splendour of a 

youth pushed beyond its usual term. The essential 

dilemma between procreation and sterility, between 

balance and imbalance, having arrived at the age of 

consumption after all the preventive measures have 

played out their period of competence, now explodes, 

to the amazement of the survivor who clings to a 

longevity protracted in polemic with the natural period of 

fertility assigned to the living. The wish to reflect on the 

ascent of an agony, or the descent into hell of a 

persistence that begs to end in the necessary rebirth, 

necessary for death just as death is for a new 

beginning. The bodies move away and are replaced by 

5 th Festival of the Ned Ensemble 

The 5 th Festival of the Ned Ensemble will take place 

between November 2012 and March 2013 in 

collaboration with the Concert Season “Città di 

Desenzano”, of which Mannucci is the artistic director. 

The current edition will be more ambitious and 

purposeful, thanks to the well-disposed support of the 

Cultural director of the municipality of Desenzano 

Antonella Soccini and the mayor Rosa Leso. The 

peculiarity of the Festival is that each concert will 

include the work of a contemporary composer in order 

to help the public to extend their knowledge of new 

Ivan Vandor 

With an Extra Theme 

I 

van Vandor’s new chamber work will be premiered on 

November 12 at the Teatro Olimpico, during the 

season of the Accademia Filarmonica Romana. The 

new Klavierquartett for violin, viola, cello and piano was 

written in 2011 for the Quartetto Klimt, dedicatees of the 

piece, who will give the work its premiere in Rome. 

The composer tells us: «The formal structure follows 

tradition for it is based on the two-themed “Sonata form” 

(the second theme taking its inspiration from a Jewish 

melody), but with the addition of a summarizing coda 

that also contains a third element». This Autumn 

Vandor’s In memoriam Tadeusz Moll can be heard in 

two versions: for flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello and 

piano on October 26 in the Palazzo della Cultura in 

Latina during the Festival Pontino di Musica, Incontri 

others that are ever less pertinent, the 

organic structures and the spectres are 

subjected to repair while the balance of a 

life clashes with the uncertainty of its 

length, with the mirage of an infiniteness 

permeated with the probability of a lottery. 

Those who are missing from the roll-call 

in the new season, who abandon the 

stage willingly or unwillingly, suggest a 

sense of prematurity in those that remain, 

a vain impulse to move the frontier of a 

nature that instead imposes deadlines, sonorous and 

sudden like the proverbial tolling of the bell. The 

recreative landscape echoes with the empty spaces left 

by the departed, like a cemetery camouflaged as the 

rented space of a Summer bar, and the new resilient 

question themselves about the perimeter of the prison, 

about its extension and its true field, between the 

perceivable and the remote beyond. Even love has the 

ephemeral taste of an aperitif repeated without 

enthusiasm, without the inebriation of one time. 

Composed between the end of 2011 and the start of 

2012, fruit of a lively association with Marco Ongaro 

now confirmed through a lasting collaboration, 

Novembre dei vivi is a contemporary melologue, an 

artistic reflection that, between poetic and musical 

creation, attempts to intensify reciprocally the sense of 

the one and the other towards a deeper existential 

meditative dimension. The act of composition triggers 

an indissoluble bond with the text through the 

interaction of a double dramaturgy, musical and scenic, 

a bond organized metrically by the rhythmic 

architecture provided by the word which generates 

sounds, harmonic fields, agglomerates of rhythms and 

timbres. Meaning and sound thus lead a “double life” in 

a horizontal and vertical duet traversing a spectrum of 

an event that is at once concrete and abstract, emotive 

and intellectual». 

music. The featured artists will include names such as 

I Virtuosi Italiani, the duo Silvia Chiesa and Maurizio 

Baglini, the duo Roberto Fabbriciani and Massimiliano 

Damerini, the Quartetto Prometeo, Giorgio Gaslini 

with Laura Conti and the Ned Ensemble. The 

contemporary works will include, among others, 

Giorgio Colombo Taccani’s Restless White, Goffredo 

Petrassi’s Romanzetta, Ivan Fedele’s Palimpsest, 4 th 

string Quartet, and a monographic concert focusing 

on Giorgio Gaslini’s Recital Song Book. 

Internazionali di Musica Contemporanea, with the 

Divertimento Ensemble directed by Sandro Gorli; and 

for flute, clarinet, horn, violin, viola and cello on 

December 2 in the Sala Casella of the Accademia 

Filarmonica Romana, who co-produces the concert 

together with the Festival di Nuova Consonanza. 

Stefano Cardi will conduct the Freon Ensemble. 

Finally, Silences Horizons Espaces - Parte 1 for 

orchestra will be given its first performance in its 

definitive version on November 22 and 23 at the Teatro 

Savoia in Campobasso, with the Orchestra Stabile del 

Molise conducted by Franco Piersanti. The piece is the 

first part of a longer composition for orchestra in three 

movements still to be completed. 

Two melologues, one finished, 

the other in progress, at the 

centre of the composer’s creativity 

New chamber work at the 

Accademia Filarmonica Romana, 

performances at the Pontino and 

Nuova Consonanza Festivals 


assoluta, quasi 

15

A new critical edition and three 

close performances, in Germany 

and Italy, of a work for ensemble 

Monographic concert in 

Lugano featuring works 

of the last twenty years 

16 

Bruno Maderna 

A Rediscovery 

A 

new title, edited by Angela Ida De Benedictis, has 

been added to the project for the critical re-edition of 

the works of Bruno Maderna, directed by Mario Baroni 

and Rossana Dalmonte. The Concerto per pianoforte 

ed orchestra, long considered lost, belongs to the group 

of early works by Maderna involved in the series of 

(re)discoveries and surprising findings that have taken 

place in recent years. Until a few years 

ago our knowledge of the Concerto, 

written in 1942, was limited to a handful 

of documents and some instrumental 

parts, reputed to be the only traces 

remaining of the work. The lack of 

sufficient documentation therefore made 

it impossible to piece together a score. 

However, the discovery, over the last five 

years, of as many as three different 

examples of the score and a large 

number of instrumental parts, in different 

archives and places, progressively helped shed light on 

the genesis and fate of this work, today complete in all 

its parts. These findings have finally made it possible to 

prepare a critical edition, based on a quantity of 

exceptionally rich documents which, not uncommonly, 

offer unexpected variants. The editor writes: «The 

Concerto per pianoforte ed orchestra is a short but 

intense work, made up of three macro sections (Adagio 

- Allegro - Adagio) which follow each other without a 

Francesco Hoch 

Feminine Portrait 

T 

hree occasions to hear the music of Francesco Hoch 

in these months. On August 12, during the 

inauguration of an exhibition of Klaus Prior, the 

Municipality of Hagnau (Germany) hosted the Duo 

Hendrick Blumenroth in a performance of Su gentile 

invito for violin and cello. On September 22 in the 

Church of Santo Stefano in Tesserete (Switzerland) 

L’isola dell’amore for plucked string orchestra was 

played by the Orchestra a plettro M. e C. Terroni from 

Brescia, directed by Dorina Frati. Finally, on October 

11 in the Sala Metrò in Lugano and October 16 at the 

Teatro Studio Foce, in the same town, the monographic 

concert “…di gentile e femminile…” will take place, 

conceived as a meeting between Francesco Hoch’s 

music and the poetry of Maria Rosaria Valentini, the 

artwork of Samuele Gabai and the dance of Manuela 

Bernasconi and Francesca Sproccati. The concert will 

include a performance of Bicordo for voices and 

instruments; Imago, seven female self-portraits for 

female six-part vocal group and string quartet, on a text 

by Maria Rosaria Valentini in collaboration with the 

composer, played by the vocal ensemble Vox Altera 

and the string quartet I Ribelli directed by Massimiliano 

Pascucci; Su gentile invito, fourteen small invitations 

separated in space alternating between seven 

“melodies” and seven “accompaniments” for violin and 

cello, with the duo Piotr Nikiforoff and Màtyàs Major; 

Hommage - Omaggio all’amore (from the opera The 

Magic Ring) for female three-part vocal group, again 

with Vox Altera directed by Massimiliano Pascucci; 

Carlos Roqué Alsina 

Themen II for one percussionist and string orchestra 

can be heard on October 4 in the Auditorio Stelio 

Molo of the Radio Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, in 

collaboration with the Conservatorio della Svizzera 

Italiana, featuring Sakiko Yasui, percussion, and the 

break. The style and harmonic language show a strong 

influence of the post-romantics, of the study of Bartók 

and of Maderna’s early interest in the harmonic and 

post-tonal experiments of Stravinsky, Hindemith and 

Malipiero. Maderna’s attachment to tradition – and at 

the same time his desire to undermine its very roots – 

have rarely been so evident and analyzable as in this 

youthful work». This Autumn it is possible to hear 

Bruno Maderna’s Musica su due dimensioni for 

flute and magnetic tape during the Concertconference 

“Maderna e i nuovi percorsi del flauto 

nel secondo ’900” held by Roberto Fabbriciani on 

October 10 in Wellington (New Zealand), a 

performance that will be repeated by the same 

artist on October 18 at the Conservatory in 

Fermo. Three performances of Serenata n. 2 for 

eleven instruments will be given within a short 

space of time: on November 3 at the Mozart Saal 

of the Alte Oper Frankfurt, with the Ensemble 

Modern directed by Jean Deroyer, on November 9 at 

the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, with the 

Badischen Staatskapelle directed by Ulrich Wagner, 

and again on December 5 in the Sala Santa Cecilia of 

the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, with 

Michael Boder directing the Ensemble Modern. Finally, 

on December 16 in the Sale Apollinee of the Gran 

Teatro La Fenice, Lina Uinskyte will play Widmung for 

violin. 

Musica per Samuele Gabai (from Frammento 

d’epitaffio) for cello solo, with dance and projections of 

paintings by Samuele Gabai, performed by Matyas 

Major, cello, and the dancers Manuela Bernasconi and 

Francesca Sproccati; Stra… dire (from Dire, due 

briciole da “Oltre il postmoderno” ) for soprano, with 

dance, performed by Barbara Zanichelli, soprano, 

Manuela Bernasconi and Francesca Sproccati. The 

composer introduces the programme of this concert: 

«Theatrical gesture, scenic movements, projected 

images, poetic texts and dance all dialogue in the 

various moments of the programme with the music of 

my pieces written over the last twenty years. The 

musical part is permeated by two main aspects, 

“kindness” and the “feminine”: the drama of the image 

of women used for advertising in Imago, stimulated by 

the poetic text of the writer Maria Rosaria Valentini; the 

kindness of the mutual invitations between the two 

protagonists to play together, to dialogue or frolic in Su 

gentile invito; the discerning attempt of a group of 

women to suggest love as the last chance for a 

therapeutic route in Hommage - Omaggio all’amore; the 

mysterious solidity of women in maternity in Musica per 

Samuele Gabai, inspired by some paintings of the artist 

Gabai and reinforced by the addition of dance; the 

linguistic-scenic play of the female voice in Stra... dire, 

in a tight dialogue with the two jubilant dancers. The 

Bicordo, F.H., at the start and again at the end of the 

programme, should be considered the composer’s 

musical signature, in “diabolus”». 

Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana directed by Marc 

Kissoczy. The Klavierstück 7 (Trois Études) for piano 

will be played on October 27 in Moscow by Michel 

Bourdoncle.

Giorgio Gaslini 

Leaps and Dances 

O 

n September 9, in the Basilica of Bagno di Romagna, 

during the series “Natura in Concerto”, Roberto 

Fabbriciani, with the Orchestra Filarmonica di Roma 

conducted by Ezio Monti, played the Concerto for flute, 

strings, harp and percussion. The concerto is dedicated 

to Roberto Fabbriciani and will be added to a Cd, now 

being prepared by the label Tactus, featuring Giorgio 

Gaslini’s complete works for flute. The composer 

describes his new work: «The work is in three 

movements: the first starts in a mood marked “Solenne” 

and then suddenly frees itself and leaps into a 

“Moderato” that plays on the dialogue and contrast 

between the flute and the orchestra, not without 

moments of lyricism. The first movement ends with an 

arioso-like “Largo” which alludes to the opening 

“Solenne”. The second movement is a “Larghetto” in 

which an arioso, intimate mood prevails, finally evolving 

into an ethereal sonic space. The third movement is a 

“Vivace”. The orchestra is highly active and offers 

surprising harmonic and polyphonic solutions which 

involve the flute in fast virtuoso passages of 

convergence/divergence, conceding it an aria and then 

a solo cadenza. All comes back together in an “Allegro 

giocoso” that unexpectedly leaps into a neo-baroque 

Henri Pousseur 

Esprit de Géométrie 

A 

posthumous premiere for Henri Pousseur. This 

Autumn in Florence, during the Contempoartefestival, 

Huit petites géométries for an ensemble of seven 

players will be given its first performance by the 

Contempoartensemble directed by Mauro Ceccanti. 

It is the first official concert performance of one of the 

last pieces written by the Belgian Maestro. Originally 

conceived for the New York ensemble The Miniaturists, 

who commissioned pieces with no more than 100 notes, 

the score is accompanied by an introduction in which the 

composer on the one hand justifies his infraction of the 

rules of the commission, and on the other describes the 

architectonic plan of the new work. He explains: «Since 

these Huit petites géométries are made up of 4 pairs, 

each constituted in the same way (2 solos, 2 duos, 2 

quartets and 2 tutti) and since these 4 pairs are all 

distributed within the two halves of the long sequence 

(but in a different order), the whole could be considered 

like a cube: two opposing faces (for example the lower 

and upper) are “explored” in such a way that, if 

superimposed into a single face, all the sides and all the 

diagonals are expressed. One of the latter is also 

doubled into a three-dimensional diagonal that crosses 

the cube and joins the two opposing faces. The 

Marco Quagliarini 

Space and Time 

A 

new chamber work by Marco Quagliarini, will be 

presented during the Contempoartefestival in Florence 

this Autumn, with the Contempoartensemble directed by 

Mauro Ceccanti. Zone I for flute, clarinet, violin, cello 

and piano is described as follows by the composer: 

«This work was born from a reflection on compositional 

materials and structures which are associated with 

musical characters and figures ideally generated from 

the idiom of the four instruments (flute, clarinet, violin, 

cello – excluding the piano) of which the work makes 

use. Each of these materials generates a determined 

harmonic space, so that when the musical events 

change, the environments in which these events take 

place also change. The role of the piano in this context 

is almost concertante. At times it stands apart, openly 

contrasting the behaviour of the others, while at others 

it participates by inserting itself within the general 

discourse. This superimposition of characters and of 

theme in a finale of playful irony». A second new work, 

commissioned by the Ex Novo Ensemble, who will give 

the piece its premiere, can be heard on October 27 in 

the Sale Apollinee of the Gran Teatro La Fenice in 

Venice during the series “Ex Novo Musica”: Circular 

Dances for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and 

percussion. Gaslini explains: «The composition, 

dedicated to Claudio Ambrosini’s Ex Novo Ensemble, is 

in five movements of dances that, in character, come 

from distant and diverse cultures. The pieces are not 

separated, but are set in a single circular flow of music 

where each of the six instruments in the ensemble is 

highlighted. Habanera, Rumba, English Waltz, Blue 

Dance: five linked dances that lead, all together, into the 

circular and lively finale of a Circle Polka. A carousel ride 

that could start over again and repeat itself ad infinitum… 

at least in our imagination». Finally, on February 3 in the 

Auditorium Celesti in Desenzano, during the Concert 

Season “Città di Desenzano”, the 5 th Festival of the Ned 

Ensemble will include the Recital Song Book, sixteen 

songs on texts by the composer for female voice and six 

instruments. They will be performed by Laura Conti and 

the Ned Ensemble directed by Andrea Mannucci. 

instrumental ensemble consists of only seven players 

grouped into three families: two winds, three strings and 

two “keyboards”. But the above mentioned groupings – 

(1 + 2 + 4 = 7) x 2 + 2 tutti = 4 x 7 – is exploited in a way 

that allows each musician to participate in 4 pieces, 

bringing about the maximum of contrasts between these 

brief sections. As regards the “squares” referred to in the 

titles of the pieces (carrés), these should be taken 

somewhat metaphorically, since they are made up of 

sides that correspond to intervals of “pitch” (that is, 

of frequency) of different sizes». The Huit petites 

géométries are presented in this order: 1. Quadruple 

carré de 5 for cello or bass clarinet; 2. Double carré de 7, 

hélicoïdal for ensemble; 3. Triangles engrenés for 

piccolo, vibraphone, Bb clarinet or cello, and marimba; 

4. Sextuple et quintuple carrés de 3 for violin and 

marimba; 5. Cube de 5 moins cube de 3 for clarinet and 

string trio; 6. Hypercubes de 2 et 3, imbriqués for 

vibraphone; 7. Tétraèdres en famille(s) for flute in G and 

viola; 8. Bloc heptagonal en expansion for ensemble. 

Finally, Zeus joueur de flûtes for flute and electronics will 

be performed on October 4 in Wellington (New Zealand) 

by Roberto Fabbriciani, co-author of the piece with Henri 

Pousseur. 

environments leads, in the finale (after a paroxysmal 

crescendo and a brief piano cadenza), to an annulment 

of the sound and a consequent silence. The coda, in 

fact, like a sort of farewell, summarizes in just a few 

entries all the characters that make up the whole work. 

Any technical or aesthetic consideration on this work 

cannot but mention the aspect of time. All the elements 

of the music are free forms in transition from one 

temporal state to another. This allows me to project onto 

the time-screen two types of temporal qualities: the socalled 

“measure time” resulting from the succession of 

always equal rhythmic segments and the “subjective 

duration” which expresses itself freely and elusively 

through polyrhythms. The composition thus becomes a 

counterpoint of these two temporal experiences, as well 

as a continuous play of moods that alternate in an ever 

new and unpredictable way». 

Two instrumental premieres 

revisit illustrious forms of 

western music 

The Contempoartefestival 

presents a “miniaturist” work 

for ensemble three years after 

the composer’s death 

“Counterpoint of 

temporal experiences” 

in a new chamber work 

Pagina da 

camera in 

17

Multimediality at the centre 

of the composer’s research 

Prestigious recognition with an 

international award for the 

composer’s orchestral work 

First edition in modern times 

of a significant anthology of 

studies by one of the most 

eminent teachers of the 19 th 

Century 

18 

Michele Tadini 

Technology and Multimedia 

O 

n September 16 at the Théâtre des Arbalétriers in 

Mous (Belgium) the first performance was given of 

Ripples Never Come Back for violin, cello, karlax and 

electronics, commissioned by the Studio Art Zoyd et La 

Grande Fabrique. On October 11, 12 and 13 in 

Grenoble it will be possible to hear La terza luce (Phase 

1), a perception test in which Tadini and Angelo Guiga of 

the CEA Leti will exhibit their research for Experimenta 

2012, during the “Salon Arts, Sciences, Design” and in 

prevision of the concert scheduled for the “Rencontres” 

of the Biennale Arts-Sciences 2013. This year’s event 

foresees the elaboration of experiments on the relation 

between phenomena of light and sound, treating the 

former as if they were elements of the composing. 

The tests will be carried out in the form of rhythmic 

sequences of increasing complexity, allowing the 

experimentation of the various possible relations of 

synchronization and development. The two sides of the 

research: firstly, the search for a dictionary, for a 

grammar of the possible synaesthesias, for a “manual of 

counterpoint”. How and to what extent is it possible to 

cross the principles of musical counterpoint? And how 

freely? Secondly: the search for effects of “light beats”, 

with the vibrations of light and the frequencies of 

stroboscopic pulsation. La Terza Luce can open up new 

ways in our perception of listening and seeing, where 

light becomes sound, and sound light. A new state in 

which the eyes create their sound illusions and the ears 

vibrate to the shining of light. The audience is invited to 

test their perception with regards to different 

compositional principles applied to the relation between 

sound and light. On November 8 and 9 in Glasgow a 

performance of Justò Janulytò’s Sandglasses will be 

given, for which Tadini prepared the electronic part. 

Javier Torres Maldonado 

Brandenburg Prize 

I 

n June Javier Torres Maldonado was awarded the 

prestigious “Da Capo” International Prize of the 

Brandenburger Biennale. The composer prevailed over 

245 participants from 38 different countries with his 

Esferal for six orchestral groups and electronics, 

Obscuro etiantum lumine for violin and three orchestral 

groups and Ex abrupto for three instrumental groups, a 

pianist and a percussionist. One of these three large 

orchestral works will be played by the Brandenburger 

Symphoniker during the next edition of the Festival. 

On August 30 the Radio programme Itinerarios (City 

of Mexico), presented by the poet and music critic José 

Manuel Recillas, dedicated a retrospective to the 

composer following his winning of the “Da Capo” prize. 

Recent performances of his music include Alborada for 

soprano saxophone, played by Jorge Hoyo on August 

Matteo Carcassi 

From November 20 to 25 the Teatro Studio in Milan will 

be the venue for Turing, a Staged Case History, a 

multimedia action on a project and with the direction of 

Maria Elisabetta Marelli, an AGON production, with video 

by Claudio Sinatti, music by Michele Tadini, Sandro 

Mussida, Pietro Pirelli and Giorgio Sancristoforo, 

informatic-technological implementation and live 

electronics by Massimo Marchi, sound engineer Hubert 

Westkemper and scientific consultant Giulio Giorello. 

This year in fact is the centenary of the birth of Alan 

Turing, a British genius of mathematics, logic and 

cryptanalysis, considered one of the fathers of 

informatics. His thought, the underlying development and 

logic and his research principles, are combined in a 

multimedia spectacle. The actor, an ensemble of 

computers, and the video are the characters on stage. 

There is no plot or classical interplay, no linear narration, 

just sound, music, images, movement, technology, 

informatics, in continuous live interaction: languages 

equally, or more valid than the actual word to 

communicate what according to Turing was the essence 

of mathematical thought: «a combination of two skills: 

intuition and invention». On December 5 the Sala 

Sinopoli of the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome 

will host a performance of K_446, concerto for 60 guitars 

and 20 basses, with the guitar soloist Stef Burns. In 

August, for the inauguration of the exhibition of musical 

instruments at the Palazzo Comunale in Pampanato 

(CN), during the Festival dei Saraceni, Tadini created the 

sound installation named Quartetto. Finally, the Festival 

MITO Settembre Musica in Milan included, on 

September 18 in the Church of San Maurizio at the 

Monastero Maggiore, a performance of Hands for guitar, 

with Luigi Attademo. 

8 at the Escuela de Artes Musicales of the University of 

Costa Rica in San José, and Huayra Yana for bass 

flute, a new version of the work for bass flute and 

electronics of 2003, played by Ine Vanoereven on July 

2 in the Auditorium of the Conservatory in Lugano. 

Espira IV for recorder, bass clarinet, violin and cello 

was given its first performance on May 18 at Villa 

Elisabeth in Berlin by the XelmYa Ensemble (Sylvia 

Hinz, recorder, Alexa Renger, violin, Marika Gejrot, 

cello, and Antonio Rosales, bass clarinet), who 

commissioned the piece, in a programme that also 

included the Art of the fugue; finally on May 25 the 

Festival “DI_stanze” in Catania included a preliminary 

version of Toglie alle stelle gli splendori acquisiti e 

accidentali, an acousmatic composition in progress. 

The Rossini of the Guitar 

E 

SZ is publishing a Scelta di studi per chitarra by 

Matteo Carcassi (Florence 1792 - Paris 1853) edited by 

Fabio Ardino, responsible for the selection, revision and 

fingering of this collection. In 1810 Carcassi, who with 

Carulli was among the most distinguished guitar 

virtuosos of the early 19th Century, he embarked, like his 

contemporary Rossini, on an international career as a 

concert artist, which he combined with his work as 

composer, teacher and researcher: among other things 

he was central to establishing the correct position for 

playing the guitar, which is still acknowledged today in all 

academic circles. Similarly to Rossini, Carcassi too 

moved to Paris, where he stayed till his death. Until 

today the modern editions of his work were limited to the 

Method Op. 59 and the collection of 25 Studies Op. 60; 

this new publication aims to bridge this serious gap in the 

guitar repertory by proposing a collection of studies 

taken from several sources, not only for teaching 

purposes. The choice of pieces has taken into account 

both their didactic and aesthetic value, taking full 

advantage of the teaching background of the editor, who 

has arranged the selected pieces in order of increasing 

difficulty. The collection is aimed in particular at students 

in their first years of study, a fundamental period in their 

instrumental training. Studying the work of Carcassi 

therefore makes it possible to gain a complete overview 

of the repertory from a technical and musical point of 

view. The revision remains faithful to the original text, the 

only addition being that of the fingering.

First First World Perform Per 

First Prime First World esecuzioni World Performances 

assolute 

OCTOBER 


L’IMAGE OUBLIÉE 

for piano 

Rome, Teatro di Marcello, Festival delle Nazioni, 

October 1 

Adele D’Aronzo, piano 


RESTLESS WHITE 

for solo flute 

Wellington (Nuova Zelanda), October 4 

Roberto Fabbriciani, flute 


SOLO 

for solo flute 

Wellington (Nuova Zelanda), October 4 


Luigi Manfrin 

SURFACES... ALWAYS ELUDING 

for cello and baritone saxophone 

Olgiate Olona (Varese), Spazio Danseei, October 5 

Guido Boselli, cello 

Marco Bonetti, baritone saxophone 

Raffaele Grimaldi 

PRIMAL (Hypnagogical Extended Space) 

for one percussionist 

(Commission by La Biennale di Venezia) 

Venice, La Biennale, 56° Festival Internazionale di 

Musica Contemporanea, Teatro alle Tese, 

October 9 

Simone Beneventi, percussions 


QUARTETTO N. 6 

(Commission by Milano Musica) 

Milan, Festival di Milano Musica, Auditorium San 

Fedele, October 10 

Quartetto di Cremona 

Marco Momi 

ICONICA IV 

for string trio, flute, clarinet, prepared piano 

and live electronics 

(First Italian performance) 


Musica Contemporanea, Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, 

October 10 

Ex Novo Ensemble 


DALL’INFERNO 

for flute, viola and harp 


Musica Contemporanea, Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, 

October 10 


Giovanni Verrando 

GRAMMATICA DELL’INARMONICO 

for amplified ensemble and electronics 

Milan, Associazione Musica/Realtà, Conservatorio 

G. Verdi, October 11 

Ensemble Risognanze 

conductor: Tito Ceccherini 


OKHTOR 

for orchestra 



Musica Contemporanea, Teatro alle Tese, 

October 12 

Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR 

conductor: Michel Tabachnik 


LE SEI CORDE DI NICOLÒ 

for guitar 

(First performance of the IV Movement) 

Genoa, Casa Paganini, October 12 

Luigi Attademo, guitar 


DÉESIS 

for violin and organ 

Piove di Sacco (Padova), Chiesa di San Rocco, 

October 12 

Lina Uinskyte, violin 

Francesco Filidei, organ 

Marco Momi 

CINQUE NUDI 

for saxophone and Midi controller 

(Recording session - Commission by Radio France 

for the series of transmissions “Alla breve”) 

Paris, Radio France, October 18 

David Brutti, saxophone 


SINFONIA TERZA 

for orchestra 


Florence, Festival Play It!, Teatro Verdi, October 18 

Orchestra della Toscana 

conductor: Fabio Maestri 

Nicola Sani 

SEASCAPES III “Caieta” 

for orchestra 

(Commission by ORT) 



conductor: Francesco Lanzillotta 


DURA ROCCIA 

for bassoon and string orchestra 

(Commission by ORT) 


Paolo Carlini, bassoon 


conductor: Francesco Lanzillotta 

Eric Maestri 

LA VISIONE DELLE COSE 

for ensemble and electronics 

(Commission by Ensemble Vortex) 

Strasbourg, Without Cage - Manifeste de Musique 

de Demain, October 19 

Ensemble Vortex 

Eric Maestri, electronics 

Pasquale Corrado 

LUX DAY OFF 

for violin, cello, doublebass and piano 

Verona, Conservatorio “E.F. Dall’Abaco”, 

Auditorium Montemezzi, Laboratorio sulla prassi 

esecutiva della Musica Contemporanea, 

October 19 

Lucia Zanela, violin 

Eleuteria Arena, cello 

Claudio Borolomai, doublebass 

Adriano Ambrosini, piano 

conductor: Andrea Mannucci 


LYBRA 

for baryton 

Ariccia (Roma), Palazzo Chigi, October 20 

Jessica Horsley, baryton 

Aureliano Cattaneo 

BLUT 

for trio (saxophone, percussion, piano) and 

orchestra 

Donaueschingen, Donaueschinger Musiktage, 

October 21 

Trio Accanto 

SWR Sinfonie Orchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg 

conductor: François-Xavier Roth 

Nicola Sani 

NO LANDSCAPE 

for piano and live electronics 

(Commission by Ex Novo Ensemble) 

Venice, Ex Novo Musica, Gran Teatro La Fenice, 

Sale Apollinee, October 21 

Aldo Orvieto, piano 

Alvise Vidolin, live electronics and sound 

engineering 

Vittorio Montalti 

LABYRINTHES 

for bass flute and electronics 




Daniele Ruggieri, flute 

Alvise Vidolin, sound engineering 


FOLIA (Homage to Aldo Clementi) 

for solo violin 

Latina, Festival Pontino di Musica, Incontri 

Internazionali di Musica Contemporanea, 

Palazzo della Cultura, October 25 


Aldo Clementi 

ARIA (DOWLAND) 

for female voice, viola da gamba and lute 



Internazionali di Musica Contemporanea, Palazzo 

della Cultura, October 25 

Livia Rado, soprano 

Silvia De Maria, viola da gamba 

Elena Casoli, lute

Aldo Clementi 

OTTO FRAMMENTI 

Canoni su una “Ballade” di Charles d’Orléans 

sul tema de “L’homme armé” 

for soprano, countertenor, viola da gamba, lute 

and organ 

(First complete performance of the definitive 

version) 


Internazionali di Musica Contemporanea, Palazzo 

della Cultura, October 25 

Livia Rado, soprano 

Alessandro Giangrande, countertenor 

Silvia De Maria, viola da gamba 

Elena Casoli, lute 

Filippo Perocco, organ 

conductor: Marco Angius 

Giorgio Gaslini 

CIRCULAR DANCES 

for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano and 

percussions 





Martino Traversa 

RED 

for solo violin 

Parma, Festival Traiettorie, Casa della Musica, 

October 31 

Hae-Sun Kang, violin 

NOVEMBER 

Malika Kishino 

MONOCHROMER GARTEN IV 

for 30-string koto 

Tokyo, Tokyo-shohken Hall, November 3 

Shuretsu Miyashita II, 30-string koto 


CINQUE CORI NOTTURNI SOTTO LA COSTA 

for alto flute 

Riva presso Chieri (Turin), Rive Gauche Concerti, 

November 3 

Annamaria Morini, alto flute 


NOVEMBRE DEI VIVI 

Melologue for reciting voice and piano on a text 

by Marco Ongaro 

Desenzano, V Festival del Ned Ensemble, Stagione 

Concertistica “Città di Desenzano”, Auditorium 

Celesti, November 4 

Paolo Valerio, reciting voice 

Maurizio Baglini, piano 

Ivan Vandor 

KLAVIERQUARTETT 

for violin, viola, cello and piano 

Rome, Accademia Filarmonica Romana, Teatro 

Olimpico, November 12 

Quartetto Klimt 

Nicola Sani 

DEUX, LE CONTRAIRE DE “UN” 

for ensemble 

(Commission by Ensemble Orchestral 

Contemporain) 

Nice, Festival Manca, Théâtre National de Nice, 

November 13 

Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain 

conductor: Mark Foster 

Nicola Sani 

UN SOUFFLE LE SOULÈVE, LES DUNES DU 

TEMPS 

for alto flute and digital support 

Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore, I Concerti della 

Normale, November 21 


Walter Neri, sound engineering 

Ivan Vandor 

SILENCES HORIZONS ESPACES - Part 1 

for orchestra 

(First complete performance of the definitive 

version) 

Campobasso, Teatro Savoia, November 22 

Orchestra Stabile del Molise 

conductor: Franco Piersanti 


SUTRAS 

for ensemble and electronic sounds 

Cottbus, Staatstheater Cottbus, 30 November 

Philharmonisches Orchester Cottbus 

Valerio Sannicandro, sound projection 

conductor: Will Humburg 


VINGT ANS APRÈS… 

for ensemble 

Firenze, Contempoartefestival, November [date to 

define] 

Contempoartensemble 

conductor: Mauro Ceccanti 

Henri Pousseur 

HUIT PETITES GÉOMÉTRIES 

for seven players 

Florence, Contempoartefestival, November [date to 

define] 



Marco Quagliarini 

ZONE I 

for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano 

Florence, Contempoartefestival, November [date to 

define] 



DECEMBER 


SIRÈNES 

Chamber work in one act 

Libretto by Emmanuel Darley on a fragment by 

Licofrone 

(Preview of the 1 st and 3 rd scenes) 

Paris, Arcal - Compagnie Nationale de Théâtre 

Lyrique et Musical, December 3 

Dorothée Lorthiois, Sirène 1 

Chantal Santon, Sirène 2 

Caroline Meng, Sirène 3 

Benjamin Alunni, Ulysse 

Ensemble Cairn 

conductor: Guillaume Bourgogne 

direction: Jean De Pange 

Michele Tadini 

K_446 

Concert for 60 guitars, 20 basses 

Rome, Contemporanea, Auditorium Parco della 

Musica, Sala Sinopoli, December 5 

Stef Burns, guitar soloist 

Ivan Fedele 

FÜNFZEHN BAGATELLEN 

for violin, cello and piano 

Bilbao, Fundación BBVA, December 11 

(Commission by Fundación BBVA) 

Trio Arbós 


PRÉ PARÉ - PRÉ ÉPURÉ 

from the cycle: “Prés” for piano 


Sale Apollinee, December 16 



SONATINEXPRESSIVE 

for violin and piano 

Venezia, Ex Novo Musica, Gran Teatro La Fenice, 

Sale Apollinee, December 16 




BIANCO - V movimento da “Crescendo” 

Otto brevi brani in forma di studio 

per orchestra da camera 

Milan, Teatro Dal Verme, December 16 

Orchestra I Piccoli Pomeriggi Musicali di Milano 

conductor: Daniele Parziani 

JANUARY 


WINDSTRÖME 

per orchestra 

Cottbus, Staatstheater Cottbus, January 11 

Philharmonisches Orchester Cottbus 

conductor.: Marc Niemann 

Marco Momi 

ICONICA II 

for ensemble 

ICONICA III 

for six voices on a text by Filippo Farinelli 

ICONICA IV 

for string trio, flute, clarinet, prepared piano and 

live electronics 

(First integral performance of the cycle “Iconica”) 

Paris, Ircam, Espace de Projection, January 13 

Solistes XXI 

Ensemble L’Itinéraire 

conductor: Rachid Safir 

live electronics: Ircam, Marco Momi 

Aureliano Cattaneo 

PAROLE DI SETTEMBRE - LIBRO I 

for countertenor and ensemble 

Genève, Saison Contrechamps, Radio de la Suisse 

Romande, Studio Ernest Ansermet, January 15 

Daniel Gloger, countertenor 

Ensemble Contrechamps 

conductor: Michael Wendeberg 


TO WHOM? 

for female soloist voice 

(First performance of the new version) 

Osaka, Nanko Sunset Hall, January 20 

Akiko Kozato, soprano 


EPOS 

for oboe (English horn) and string trio 

Lugano, Conservatorio, Jenuary 24 

Heinz Holliger, oboe 

Swiss Chamber Soloists 

ESZ 

Constantly updated, at the website www.esz.it 

you will find the complete performance list of our composers 

news EDIZIONI SUVINI ZERBONI 

Editore: Sugarmusic S.p.A. Galleria del Corso, 4 - 20122 Milano Tel. 02 - 770701 - E-mail: suvini.zerboni@sugarmusic.com - www.esz.it 

Direttore responsabile: Maria Novella Viganò - Responsabile del Settore Classica: Alessandro Savasta 

Redazione: Raffaele Mellace - Coordinamento di redazione: Gabriele Bonomo - Progetto e realizzazione grafica: Paolo Lungo - Traduzioni: Mike Webb 

Aut. del Tribunale di Milano n. 718 del 25-10-1991 

DISTRIBUZIONE IN OMAGGIO

Timbral Spaces Sound Labyrinths - Edizioni Suvini Zerboni

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