Radio France fetes Italian musical excellence

(ANSA) - Paris, February 5 - 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.