Mario Brunello, Giovanni Sollima

At the Festival dei Due Mondi, audiences will witness an encounter that is far more than a concert: it is a dialogue – free-spirited and unconventional – between two of the most charismatic figures on the international music scene, Mario Brunello and Giovanni Sollima.

Both cellists defy convention, having spent recent decades redefining the very identity of their instrument. Mario Brunello, making his Spoleto debut here and the first Italian to win the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, has always paired the classical repertoire with a tireless curiosity for lateral musical languages, unusual spaces, and projects that weave together music, literature, and nature. Giovanni Sollima, composer and performer with a distinctive voice, is celebrated for the visionary energy with which he traverses eras and styles, blending Baroque, rock, minimalism, and folk traditions into a magnetic, theatrical sonic flow. Their artistic partnership is no accident: it rests on profound expressive freedom and a conception of music as both a physical and spiritual experience, capable of transcending all boundaries.

The concert programme reflects this vision. From the traditional Armenian Songs and mystical evocations of Gregory of Narek, the journey moves to the ethereal meditations of Ukrainian composer Valentyn Syl’vestrov, with pieces dedicated to Schumann and Tchaikovsky—suspended, intimate pages. At the centre stands the rhythmic and narrative drive of Sollima’s The Hunting Sonata, a true sonic ride with dance-like gestures, alongside an anonymous Traditional Dance that returns the cello to its popular roots. The programme concludes with Alexander Knaifel’s Lux Aeterna, a work of profound spirituality for two “chanting” cellos, in which sound becomes prayer and light.

A remarkable spiritual journey, where tradition and avant-garde meet in the name of a free, radical, and deeply human art.

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