Amiata Piano Festival 16th edition
Music and culture in the heart of Tuscany from July to December 2021
BERTARELLI FOUNDATION FORUM, POGGI DEL SASSO
Nine concerts thus distributed: Euterpe from 29 July to 1 August, Dionisus from 26 to 29 August and, at the end of a different year due to the persistent pandemic uncertainties, the traditional Christmas concert on Saturday 11 December.
After a year of necessary and painful silence, the high quality music finally returns to the Bertarelli Foundation Forum on the Mount Amiata for the “Amiata Piano Festival”, one of the most challenging and dreamlike music projects on the European scene, for its cosy and independent nature. Even in this reduced edition, the founding spirit of bringing international artists into the Renaissance framework of the most untouched European countrysides, rendered contemporary to us only by the visionary brush strokes of a concert hall that is perfect for its acoustics, aesthetic impact and comfort, remains unchanged.
Therefore, thanks to the dream of the artistic and life companions Maurizio Baglini and Silvia Chiesa and the great contemporary patronage of the Bertarelli Foundation, art music returns to Poggi del Sasso.
It is really difficult to imagine a more visionary project than the one conceived by the winemaking entrepreneur Claudio Tipa and the celebrated Italian pianist Maurizio Baglini in 2005: a festival of cultivated music in the heart of Italy among the most beautiful vineyards and olive trees of the world. Their perseverance, combined with the one of the great cellist Silvia Chiesa, have created an inevitable miracle: to thrill the artists to the fitzarraldic challenge and, at the same time, to build a local and international audience loyalty. All this by rolling up the sleeves in person, passing from the artistic directors’ creativity to the simpler but fundamental procedures of the administrative and accounting office and leafleting. The knowledgeable contemporary patronage of the Bertarelli Foundation, wisely led by two women, Maria Iris Bertarelli and Maria Tipa, has thus completed the dreamlike project with an as beautiful as rationally unpredictable gift: a magnificent and ultramodern concert hall, pride of another Italian excellence, the Edoardo Milesi&Archos architectural firm.
Today, in this perfect setting of harmonically anthropized nature in a fully Renaissance perspective, during the five tranches – this year reduced to three – thousands of people from Grosseto, from all over Italy and from all over the world, annually live a realised utopia: the Amiata Piano Festival.
Since eclecticism was one of the stylistic codes of Renaissance, as every year the Amiata Piano Festival presents a programme of the highest artistic quality and total indifference towards genres boundaries, gracefully inviting the listener from chamber music to dance, with the soloists of the Stuttgart Ballet together with Silvia Chiesa and Maurizio Baglini, on an Italian repertoire from the nineteenth to the twentieth century; from considerations on the mathematics of sound, with a dialogue between two piano and the mathematician and science communicator Piergiorgio Odifreddi, to unusual projects, extremely uncommon in the regular seasons programmes, true curiosities of subtle refinement, as the Concerto for harp and glass harmonica, an instrument of rare allure that is also aesthetic, since it is made up of wine glasses, by Pauline Haas and by the French musician Thomas Bloch specialised in unusual instruments. And then, encounters of spoken word and music, with the great Paola Pitagora, as narrator of One Thousand and One Nights during the piano four-hands transcription by Rimsky-Korsakov of his orchestral suite Sheherazade, with the pianists Marco Sollini and Salvatore Barbatano. The strong presence of a twentieth century and contemporary repertoire, leitmotiv of the festival, is confirmed by the historical Milanese ensemble Sentieri Selvaggi conducted by Carlo Boccadoro with rare music by Torke, Testoni, Nyman, Jeffes, but also with the unusual Viaggio Americano per Cinque Tastiere (American Journey for Five Keyboards) by Emanuele Arciuli in his challenge with harpsicord, piano, prepared piano, electric and microtonal piano, toy piano. Without forgetting the C3-ChiesaCellosCremona project by Silvia Chiesa with the unusual ensemble of eight cellos and the soprano Maria Babilua, as well as the Christmas concert led by Maurizio Baglini on a little popular Beethoven repertoire.
The Amiata Piano Festival concerts are broadcasted by RAI RADIO3 and a selection of them is annually published all over the world by Decca.
Programme
EUTERPE
THURSDAY 29 JULY
In dance time
Silvia Chiesa cello; Maurizio Baglini piano; Alessandro Giaquinto coreography; Timoor Afshar, Alessandro Giaquinto, Matteo Miccini dancers from Stuttgart Ballet
Busoni (Serenata op. 34 BV 196 for cello and piano, “Kultaselle” – 10 variations on a finnish folk song KiV 237 for cello and piano, Kleine Suite op. 23 BV 215 for cello and piano); A. Casella (Nocturne and tarantella op. 54 – cello and piano version); Castelnuovo-Tedesco (“Notturno sull’acqua” op. 82 no. 1 for cello and piano, Toccata op. 83 for cello and piano).
FRIDAY 30 JULY
American journey for five keyboards
Emanuele Arciuli harpsichord, piano, prepared piano, electric and microtonal piano, toy piano; Nicola Monopoli computer music and sound direction
J. Adams (“China Gates” for piano); L. S. Harrison (Sonata no.6 for harpsichord); Cage (Suite for toy piano, “The Perilous Night” for prepared piano); P. Class (Studio for piano no.2); Gann (“Fractured Paradise” for keyboard sampler); Wolfe (“East Broadway” for toy piano and audio playback); H. M. Budd (“Children on the Hill” for electric piano and harmonizer); Hovhaness (“Dark River and Distant Bell” op. 212 for harpsichord); Rzewski (“Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues” no. 4 from “North American Ballads” for piano).
SATURDAY 31 JULY
Sheherazade, voice from One Thousand and One Nights
Paola Pitagora, voice reciting; Marco Sollini, Salvatore Barbatano piano four-hands
N. Rimsky-Korsakov (“Sheherazade”, symphonic suite op. 35 – piano four-hands transcription by the composer)
SUNDAY 1 AUGUST
Wild Paths, room with coffee!
Sentieri Selvaggi Ensemble conducted by Carlo Boccadoro
Torke (“The Whithe Pages” from “Telephone Book” for flute [and piccolo], clarinet [and bass clarinet], violin, cello and piano); Boccadoro (“Calligramme pour M.P.” for clarinet, harp and percussion); Testoni (Little Scherzo for flute, clarinet and harp); Nyman (“Love Always Counts” for flute, clarinet, vibraphone, piano, violin and cello); Jeffes (“Music from the Penguin Cafe”).
DIONISUS
THURSDAY 26 AUGUST
Inspired by Bach
C3:ChiesaCellosCremona: Silvia Chiesa, Africa Dobner, Afra Mannucci, Clarissa Marino, Alessandro Mastracci, Andrea Nocerino, Francesco Scolaro, Roberta Selva cellos, with the participation of Maria Babilua soprano.
H. Villa-Lobos (“Bachianas brasileiras” no. 1 W246 for eight cellos, “Bachianas brasileiras” no. 5 W389 for soprano and eight cellos); J.S. Bach (Chaconne from Partita no. 2 in d minor BWV 1004 – transcription for two cellos by C. Jaffe and J. Perron, Brandeburg Concerto no. 6 in b-flat major BWV 1051 – transcription for five cellos by L. Niefind).
FRIDAY 27 AUGUST
Music of numbers
Conference-concert with Piergiorgio Odifreddi, mathematician, Giuseppe Fausto Modugno, lecturer and pianist
with the participation of Maurizio Baglini, piano.
J. S. Bach, W. A. Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky
SATURDAY 28 AUGUST
Strings in three dimensions
New Trio Italiano d’Archi
with the participation of Maurizio Baglini piano
F. Schubert (String Trio in b-flat major D. 471); Boccherini (String Trio in d major op. 14 no. 4 G. 98); Citro (“MeMi” for string trio – first ever performance); Beethoven (Serenade in d major op. 8 for violin, viola and cello); G. Mahler (Quartet for piano and strings in a minor).
SUNDAY 29 AUGUST
Harp&Glass Harmonica: Wunderkammer Musik
Pauline Haas harp; Thomas Bloch glass harmonica
von Holt Sombach/T. Bloch (Adagio from Fantasia Concertante), Posse (Variationen über der “Karneval von Venedig” for harp), K. L. Röllig (Kleine Tonstücke for glass harmonica), T. Bloch (Adagio K. 1418, “Christ Hall Blues”), W. A. Mozart/T. Bloch (Adagio and Rondò in c minor K. 617), J. A. P. Schulz (Largo for glass harmonica), Farr (“Kembang Suling”), Grandjany (“The Colorado Trail”: Fantaisie for Harp op. 28), Rota/T. Bloch (“O Venezia, Venaga, Venusia” from the film “Fellini’s Casanova”, 1976), Donizetti/Haas/T. Bloch (Fantasia on “Lucia di Lammermoor”), Haas (“Iguales al nacer”).
CHRISTMAS CONCERT
SATURDAY 11 DECEMBER
Beethoven: room for 3 and 7
Maurizio Baglini piano; Gabriele Pieranunzi violin; Francesco Fiore viola; Silvia Chiesa cello; Alberto Bocini double bass; Corrado Giuffredi clarinet; Paolo Carlini bassoon; Guido Corti horn.
Beethoven (Trio in e-flat major op. 38 for piano, clarinet and cello, Septet in e-flat major op. 20 for strings and winds).
