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Musicisti della Budapest Festival Orchestra
Orchestra da Camera di Perugia
MusicAnimalia
Concerti di Mezzogiorno
That between music and animals is from always an intimate, almost symbiotic relationship. Their existence in art, and in music in particular, is an expression of that bond that humans have with other living things: by telling us about them, they tell us about us. The animal world populates musical theater, symphonic and from chamber music. Gli uccelli per primi.
Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf taught to entire generations of children to recognize the timbre of instruments by associating them through imitation. By Saent Saens The Carnival of the Animals is among the most famous works. For others, animals are the inspiration for larger, more complex works about nature: in Finland's Jean Sibelius they are at the center of his symphonic poems - sixteen beautiful swans inhabit his Symphony No. 5 -, in Beethoven they peep out in the Pastoral, in Vivaldi's Seasons, in Musorgsky's Pictures, in Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnole, and again Poulenc, Milhaud, Messiaen, Martinu, Grieg, Händel, Schubert have taken creative cues from Mother Nature with brilliant writing full of fascinating colors so that man never stops imagining, even when he seems to turn his eyes away. Our relationship with animal is only the tip of the iceberg on which we sit in the pyramid of biodiversity. If the presence of living beings on the planet is silent, art, too, reminds us that our very existence cannot disregard the recognition of roles and the fragile balance that life on the planet asks us to respect.
Whether suggestions or explicit references, the history of music gives us back an incredibly varied musical bestiary. In the midday concert series, soloists from the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the from Perugia Chamber Orchestra perform a large number of wonderfully beautiful works, well-known and lesser-known, drawing a musical atlas of the extraordinary variety of representations: from bees to birds, flies to fish, cicadas to ants, and even dogs, cats, squirrels and owls for an exciting and original journey into the world of animal creatures.
This concert series is a zoo of notes. Similar scores to naturalistic paintings where art translates the voices of creation into instrumental sounds according to a system of timbral and rhythmic transliteration that Western composers have to perfected since the Renaissance. Animals of all sorts are heard there, from insects
to humans (the most fearsome, the most warlike). Sometimes, around to these animals we find arranged other musical creatures, on the side. It may be a trio with a singular ensemble such as Bartók's Contrasts and a String Quartet such as Tchaikovsky's: absolute music, that is, devoid of descriptive or imitative intentions, focused only on the coherence of its architecture. Or a puppet may appear, as in the first program of the series, June 24.
Text by Gregorio Moppi
Iván Fischer realized his dream when he founded the Budapest Festival Orchestra in 1983 together to Zoltán Kocsis. Thanks to its innovative approach to music and the unstinting dedication of its musicians, the BFO has become the youngest ensemble to enter the top ten symphony orchestras in the world. In addition to to Budapest, the orchestra regularly performs at some of the most important concert venues on the international music scene and is also featured on international streaming platforms. Since its inception, the BFO has been awarded from "Gramophone," the prestigious British music magazine, three times: in 1998 and 2007, the magazine's jury awarded the BFO the prize for the best recording, while in 2022, thanks to public votes, it was named Orchestra of the Year. The BFO's most important achievements are related to Mahler: the recording of Symphony No. 1 was nominated for a Grammy Award. In addition to its recording successes and acclaimed tours, the BFO has also become known to internationally through a series of particularly original concerts. The Autism-friendly Cocoa Concerts, Surprise Concerts - also appreciated at the London Proms -, music marathons, youth-oriented Midnight Music performances, outdoor concerts to Budapest, free Community Weeks, and the Bridging Europe Festival, organized in cooperation with Müpa Budapest - are all unique events to their own way. Another unique feature of the Orchestra is that its members regularly sing during concerts. Each year the BFO, in cooperation with the Iván Fischer Opera Company, Müpa Budapest, the Vicenza Opera Festival and Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, stages an opera production. Performances have been invited to New York's Mostly Mozart Festival, the Edinburgh International Festival and Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie; in 2013, The Marriage of Figaro topped New York Magazine's ranking of the year's best classical music events. The Vicenza Opera Festival, founded from Iván Fischer, debuted in fall 2018 at the Teatro Olimpico.
The Orchestra from Camera di Perugia was born from the many years of experience of young Umbrian musicians in the dissemination of musical culture, especially in relation to musical productions aimed at young people in schools. The debut of the formation took place in September 2013 with the "Penderecki 80" Project, presented at the Sagra Musicale Umbra, Ravello Festival and Emilia Romagna Festival, to celebrate the 80th year of age of the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, who conducted music from composed by him for the occasion. from that moment the Orchestra's activity intensified bringing the to ensemble to collaborate with important maestros, soloists and choral ensembles (Paolo Fresu, Giovanni Sollima, Nicola Piovani, Wayne Shorter, Enrico Bronzi, Angela Hewitt, Stefan Milenkovich, Hugo Ticciati, Jonathan Webb, Nancy Zhou, Hossein Pishkar, Christian Schmitt, Uri Caine, Quincy Jones, Stewart Copeland, Gino Paoli, Gary Graden, Gregory Porter, Danilo Rea, Ares Tavolazzi, Fabio Ciofini, Filippo Maria Bressan, John Patitucci, Andrea Oliva, Francesco Di Rosa, Danilo Pérez, Corrado Giuffredi, Marco Pierobon, Brian Blade, Mark Milhofer, Daniela Dessì, Fabio Armiliato, Desirée Rancatore, Bruno Canino, Gemma Bertagnolli, Kremena Dilcheva, Thomas Indermühle, Karl- Heinz Schütz, Choir from Chamber of the Estonian Philharmonic, Choir St. Jacobs of Stockholm, Choir of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Coro Canticum Novum, Choir of the Papal Musical Chapel of St. Francis, and many others) and to perform permanently in prestigious Seasons, Festivals and Festivals (Spoleto Festival, Umbria Jazz, Umbria Jazz Winter, Umbria Jazz Spring, Sagra Musicale Umbra, Season of the Brunello and Federica Cucinelli Foundation, Villa Solomei Festival, Expo Milano, Kusatsu Music Festival-Japan, Amici della Musica di Perugia, Festival delle Nazioni, Portogruaro International Music Festival). Since 2018, Maestro Enrico Bronzi has held the position of Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestra from Camera di Perugia.
Musicians of the Budapest Festival Orchestra
Musicians of the Budapest Festival Orchestra
Musicians of the Orchestra from Perugia Chamber
Musicians of the Orchestra from Perugia Chamber
Musicians of the Orchestra from Perugia Chamber
Musicians of the Orchestra from Perugia Chamber
Musicians of the Orchestra from Perugia Chamber
Musicisti della Budapest Festival Orchestra
Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Jakub Hrůša
