Zagreb
22-24 April 2005
ZAGABREB
April 22-24
Biennale Zagreb
In collaboration with Italian Culture Institut of Zagreb, Biennale Zagreb
April 22 - 10 pm
Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall - Small Hall
Hommage to Giacinto Scelsi
Quartetto d'archi di Torino
Giacomo AGAZZINI violin
Umberto FANTINI violin
Andrea REPETTO viola
Manuel ZIGANTE cello
Giacinto Scelsi
Quartetto n. 1 (1944) 32'
Quartetto n. 4 (1964) 10'
Quartetto n. 2 (1961) 18'
Quartetto n. 5 (1984/85) 6'30"
Quartetto n. 3 (1963) 19'
In 1988 four musicians met in the classrooms of the Conservatory of Turin on accompanying a fellow student to take the examination for Quartet; the artistic rapport immediately established led to their following courses and seminars together, until in the end - at Fiesole - they were "christened" Quartetto d'Archi di Torino. The joint progress of Giacomo Agazzini, Umberto Fantini, Andrea Repetto and Manuel Zigante was marked by many stages: awards, concerts, tours and recordings, with a repertoire enriched in the course of the years. Several meetings were particularly decisive in this sense: from Piero Farulli, with whom they refined their studies of Beethoven and Brahms, to Valentin Berlinsky who initiated them in the sonorous expressiveness of Shostakovich's Quartets and Milan Skampa who introduced them to Slavonic music. Their encounter with the music of Bèla Bartòk originated with the composer Gyorgy Kurtág, who gave impetus to their study of this music with an approach free of stylistic preconceptions and full instead of precision and concentration.
The Quartetto di Torino have recently added Giacinto Scelsi's Quartetti per archi to their repertoire. Studying the works of Scelsi has given fresh stimuli to the members of the Turin ensemble who found in the tridimensionality of Scelsi's sound, in the intervallic micro-variations and tone characteristics of these compositions, a fascinating challenge which the trio has met with extremely satisfying results.
(Alessandra Carlotta Pellegrini, in Sonora News n.15, p.2)
April 23 - 4.00 pm
concert CIRM
Martin Matalon Traces I for cello and electronics
Giovanni Verrando The rough detail celebrated by Aby Warburg
for flute, oboe, violin, cello, piano
Gilles Racot Ipso for clarinet and electronics
Fausto Romitelli Amok Koma for ensemble
Martino Traversa Bianco, ma non troppo (1995)
for bass flute and tape
Le voci sottovento (2005) for recorded voices WP
Critical Time (2005) for electronics WP
François Paris Roque for cello and electronics
Sombra for violin
Lecture d'une vague for flute and tape
Icarus ensemble
Giovanni Mareggini flute
Mirco Ghirardini clarinet
Alessandro Ferrari violin
Andrea Maini viola
Nicola Baroni cello
Kumi Uchimoto, Marco Pedrazzini piano
Danilo Grassi percussion
April 23 - 10 pm
Zagreb Puppet Theatre
Hommage to Giacinto Scelsi
Roberto Fabbriciani flute
Antonio Caggiano percussion
Giacinto Scelsi
Pwyll for flute (1954) 6'
Maknongan for bass instrument (1976) version for percussion by A. Caggiano 4'
Quays for flute in C (1954) 3'12"
Ko-Tha for guitar played as a percussion instrument (1967) 9'
Maknongan for bass instrument (1976) version for bass flute by R.Fabbriciani 4'
Hyxos for flute in G and percussion (1955)
Stefano Scodanibbio double bass
Giacinto Scelsi
Mantram for double bass (1990) 5'
Wo-Ma (1960) version for double bass by S. Scodanibbio 9'
Le Réveil profond (1972) for double bass
Stefano Scodanibbio
Voyage That Never Ends part 1° (Voyage started) (1979-1997) 20'
Giacinto Scelsi: reflections on a "different" centenary
The centenary of the birth of Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988) falls this year. It is no ordinary anniversary, it is not one of those which by now are annual institutional recurrences. It is instead a special case - and, to a certain extent, one that remains an enigma. Scelsi's music has never stopped being performed and diffused on records, abroad far more than in Italy. Indeed, it can be said dispassionately that Scelsi's music has still to be discovered in his own country. Someone no doubt will say "no one is a prophet in his own country", but that is not true in this case: Scelsi was a prophet (in the sense of pioneer and visionary which is implicit in the word) in his native land, a country which he loved greatly and where he chose to live. He asserted - and probably rightly - that the borderline between East and West ran through the terrace of his house (a legendary spot in the centre of Rome), poised between the eternal city and Byzantium. Was he heeded as a prophet ? Solely by those whose attention was captured on hearing a new sound that went beyond all pre-established forms, that roamed freely across traditions, styles, conventions. A sound that was beyond time but at the same time profoundly alive, present, modern. The official institutions concerned with music in our country turned a deaf ear, and today like yesterday continue to ignore him. Contrary to the rest of the world where leading institutions were responsible for the well-deserved international success of Scelsi's music. Our commemoration this year - which will continue over the whole twelve months - has therefore the additional meaning of a recovery, of a wish to emphasize how that sound trajectory, isolated and personal, has influenced the tendencies of the new Italian music as well as the performance practices of a whole generation of musicians.
The participation of SONORA in the Zagreb Music Biennial, which coincides this year with the programming of World Music Days and gives rise to an event of truly exceptional proportions, is for us the onset of the Scelsi celebrations. It seems to us significant to accompany this event with music by contemporary composers from throughout the world - for the most part belonging to the most recent generations - in order to emphasize how Scelsi's message does not end with the revival of his compositions but has an everlasting actuality given the fundamental problems which it raised: the centrality of sound, spiritualism, the relationship with the themes of esoterism, new sound production techniques, the transcending of writing, virtuality, the relationship with space. It is from this angle that we wish to remember Scelsi, a presence which set the problems that music continues to face today. His compositions are indeed metaphors which materialize in potential instrumental and vocal formations; there is never the certainty of uniqueness, of something that remains fixed on paper in a univocal way. Listening again to the complete series of string quartets, for instance, is to realize an authentic journey in sound, from one extreme to the other, to the very borders of uncertainty. The same can be said too, with remarkable coherence, of his works for individual instruments or his grand orchestral frescos.
This is a unique centenary which will give the opportunity of listening to the music of Scelsi free from commemorative rhetoric, of discussing it without frills, with simplicity, far from the culture of appearance that haunts contemporary life. A simple sound, to be followed through its infinite metamorphoses, launched from a terrace in the centre of Rome to spread throughout the world and enfolding it in a circle which symbolically unites in the spirit an East and a West that wish to listen to each other.
(Gisella Belgeri, in Sonora News n.15, p.1)