Radio France has chosen Italy
as its featured country for its 26th Festival of Musical
Creation, which begins Friday evening with the first in a 10-day
series of concerts.
Radio France President Matthieu Gallet called this year's
festival "a voyage in the Italy of today, at the same time
familiar and surprising".
The festival will feature various compositions by Milan's
Luca Francesconi, who studied under Luciano Berio and founded
the Agon research and musical experimentation centre; and
Lecce's Ivan Fedele, who has been director of the Venice
Biennale Festival of Contemporary Music since 2012; both of whom
Gallet called artists "whose vitality has been constant for
about 30 years" and who possess "an aura of influence" in the
contemporary classical world.
"The constants of Italian music, if we must cite a few, are
articulation, color, the clearness of harmony, and that which
I'd call unpredictable play," Fedele said in an interview with
Radio France.
"So, yes, a festival dedicated to Italian musicians makes
sense, because there are common elements among them. There's
still an Italian spirit, even if the national characteristics
are weakening," Fedele said.
Other featured artists, whom Gallet called "figures of an
eternal past", will include Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, Salvatore
Sciarrino, Francesca Verunelli, Francesco Donatoni, and Fausto
Romitelli, an innovative composer who had a promising career
ahead of him, only to lose a battle with cancer in 2004 at just
41 years old.
The concerts will also include French composers who worked
in Italy or on Italy, such as Henri Dutilleux, who in 1938 came
to Villa Medici with the prestigious Prix de Rome; Edith Canat
de Chizy; Jacques Lenot, who lived in Italy for many years; and
Gerard Grisey, who composed music based on texts by 15th-century
mathematician Piero della Francesca.
Radio France's Philharmonic Orchestra will take the stage
along with their choir and youth choir, as well as some notable
ensembles and soloists to include Abruzzo's Valentina Coladonato
and Alessandria clarinetist Michele Marelli.
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