Where and when
From
To
Museo Novecento
Sound in gesture: multi-dimensional listening
From 14 to 30 September 2016, the international festival Firenze Suona Contemporanea, now in its ninth edition, offers premieres and special guests, combining the music of the twentieth century and contemporary visual art.
The Austrian artist Erwin Wurm will present a preview of the project Fallen Falls, video-installation created for the occasion, with music by Andrea Cavallari and performed live by Klangforum Wien; Michael Nyman will premiere in the Sala d’Arme of Palazzo Vecchio, WAR WORK: 8 Songs with Film, installation with live concert; Roberto Fabbriciani and Giuliano Scabia will present a project on Luigi Nono.
Concerts and art exhibitions come together in events that are placed on the border between different dimensions, experimenting with the unprecedented forms of mutual accompaniment between music and image. Entitled Il suono nel gesto, the festival, directed by composer Andrea Cavallari, takes place in extraordinary and unusual scenographies, historical places and museum spaces of the city. In addition to the Museo Novecento, places such as the Tepidarium del Roster, the Sala d’Arme of Palazzo Vecchio and Le Murate are involved.
Firenze Suona Contemporanea 2016 is realized within the Estate Fiorentina, in collaboration with Museo Novecento, Fondazione Berengo, Ernest von Siemens Music Foundation and Austrian Forum of Culture in Rome.
Program
Wednesday 14 September at 9.00pm
Tepidarium del Roster
Erwin Wurm & Klangforum Wien
With Giulia Peri soprano, Bernhard Zachhuber clarinet, Florian Müller piano, Michele Greco electronics, Klangforum Wien. With the collaboration of Roberto Fabbriciani for the electronic track.
The video-concert, in international preview, sees the Austrian ensemble Klangforum Wien and the soprano Giulia Peri interpret Fallen Falls, video work of Erwin Wurm, commissioned to the artist by the Festival. The work is conceived at the limits of movement to accompany the music, in turn to the limits of sound, by Andrea Cavallari. The program continues with Vortex Temporum, a masterpiece with clear contours and mesmerizing subtleties, by Frenchman Gerard Grisey, and Intorno al bianco, a piece by Austrian composer Beat Furrer, founder and director of Klangforum, always made for the occasion and proposed in world premiere in the presence of the author.
Saturday 17 September at 6.00pm and 9.00pm
Le Murate. Contemporary Art Projects
Luisa Valeria Carpignano and Andrea Cavallari tell about Morton Feldman
Meeting with the audience dedicated to the American composer, which precedes the concert scheduled at 9.00pm.
Morton Feldman, For Philip Guston
FLAME Ensemble in concert, 9.00pm. With Francesco Checchini, Alessandro Lo Giudice flute; Jonathan Faralli, Samuel Baldi percussion; Luisa Valeria Carpignano piano, celesta. Event between concert and installation, with the contemplative music of For Philip Guston, opera for piano, celesta, flutes and percussion composed by Morton Feldman. If, on the one hand, the composition forces the performers to a continuous performance of four and a half hours, on the other hand it allows the audience to rebel against its role as a passive listener. In the intentions of the American composer, the audience is in fact sitting in front of a painting, and is free to wander the gaze between the whole and the small parts.
Sunday 18 September at 6.00pm and 9.00pm
Roberto Fabbriciani and Giuliano Scabia tell their years with Luigi Nono (Museo Novecento)
During the meeting with the public, Roberto Fabbriciani and Giuliano Scabia will recount their years spent alongside the Venetian composer. The meeting introduces the concert scheduled at 9.00pm.
Homage to Luigi Nono (Saloncino della Pergola)
Concert, 9.00pm. With Silje Aker Johnsen soprano, Roberto Fabbriciani flute, Ciro Longobardi piano, Thorolf Thuestad electronic. The concert, designed as a retrospective on Luigi Nono, investigates the poetics of the Venetian composer, between experimentation and fragility. Two fragments of works, from Das atmende Klarsein (The breath of clarity), and from La Fabbrica Illuminata, frame the masterpiece for piano and magnetic tape dedicated to Pollini … You’ve been through the serene waves… describing an aesthetic panorama that oscillates between the inspiration dictated by political reflection and that born from spiritual meditation. Exceptional soloists, Roberto Fabbriciani on bass flute, Silje Aker Johnsen soprano, and Ciro Longobardi on piano, reveal a triptych that traces Nono’s research in electronics (curated by Thorolf Thuestad). Concerto, ore 21.00. Con Silje Aker Johnsen soprano, Roberto Fabbriciani flauto, Ciro Longobardi pianoforte, Thorolf Thuestad elettronica.
Due to an unexpected unavailability of the room at the Museo Novecento, Omaggio a Lugi Nono on Sunday 18 September will be held at the Saloncino della Pergola, via della Pergola 12/32, Florence, at 9.00pm. The time and venue of the conference of Roberto Fabbriciani and Giuliano Scabia at 6.00pm are sent to the Museo Novecento.
Tuesday 20 September at 9.00pm
Sala d’Arme Palazzo Vecchio. Michael Nyman: WAR WORK 8 Songs with Film
Inauguration of the installation, with live performances by Michael Nyman.
WAR WORK is an installation consisting of a series of videos based on archival materials from the Great War. The images of the mangled bodies of soldiers, shot in Britain, France and Germany, alternate with fanatical videos of the recruitment campaign, images of the Dadaist movement and texts by expressionist poets. The film is accompanied by a specially written soundtrack, sometimes made live by the Michael Nyman Band other times recorded, which for the occasion will be performed by the same Nyman. The 8 Songs form a series of melodies inspired by a series of poems by the French poet Gaston de Ruyter entitled Chansons vieilles sur d’autres airs, or Old Songs on other arias. It includes texts by poets of the First World War, including David Bomberg, Isaac Rosenberg and Alfred Lichtenstein. This “film with music”, reminiscent of the sounds of silent films already made by Nyman, from a thematic point of view appears linked to some of the composer’s works that have a utilitarian perspective on the body, such as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Facing Goya. WAR WORK: 8 Songs with Film (2014) was directed and composed by Michael Nyman, and edited by Max Pugh. In the seven-screen version it represents a world premiere.
The video installation will be visible to the public from 21 to 30 September. On 19 September at 21.00 at the Teatro di Settignano, CinemAnemico, in collaboration with Firenze Suona Contemporanea, will present the cinema version of WAR WORK (one screen), in the presence of the author.
Wednesday 21 September at 9.00pm
Museo Novecento
Electronics & Flutes
With Michele Marasco flute, Rebecca Asso flute, Francesco Gatti flute, Michele Greco electronic
With Electronics & Flutes, the dialogue between the acoustic and the electronic dimensions continues. The masterful interpreter of this event is Michele Marasco, first flute of the ORT and soloist in the most important concert halls in Europe and America, accompanied by young flutists Rebecca Asso and Francesco Gatti and Michele Greco electronics. The titles on the programme – Varèse’s Density 21.5, Antonioni’s Organum II, Gatti’s Sistema and Maderna’s Musica su due dimensioni – evoke the new aesthetics of the flute, with layered music in both timbre and compositional architecture, so much to suggest a Renaissance in an electronic key of this instrument from ancient history.
Friday 23 September at 9.00pm
Museo Novecento
The sound in the gesture
With Karina Oganjan soprano; Luisa Valeria Carpignano piano.
Concert for soprano and piano entrusted to the voice of Karina Oganjan – Latvian soprano of Armenian origin, appreciated interpreter of both contemporary and popular music – and the hands of pianist and composer Luisa Valeria Carpignano. A unique opportunity to listen to a vocal repertoire in six different languages (including Russian, Hungarian and Armenian), a very original path that from Schönberg comes to the popular traditions of Hungary and Armenia, reinterpreted by Bartòk and Komitas, then touch a jewel of Sostakovic’s production – the Satires cycle – and continue with Stripsody by Berberian, Banshee by Cowell, Bacchanale by Cage and finish with Berio’s popular songs.
Saturday 24 September at 6.00pm
Le Murate. Contemporary Art Projects
Inspector Sorrow
Inauguration of the video installation of the Iranian artist Negin Sharifzadeh, visible to the public until 28 September.
Thursday 29 September at 7.00pm and 9.30pm
Octagon of the Murate
The Crazy Woman Next Door
Theatrical action freely inspired by Alda Merini.
Concept and music by Andrea Cavallari; Alwynne Pritchard soprano/performer; Loretta Luzi voice shadow;
Michele Greco elettronica.
The festival closes on 29 September in the Semiottagono delle Murate with an Italian-English production, another premiere, with a high rate of experimentation, dedicated to the life and troubled events of the Milanese poet Alda Merini, La pazza della porta accanto. In the play, inspired by the homonymous book, relives the madness, the tragic experience of the asylum – suffered until electroshock – but also the loves and personal affections, observed by the intellectually lively sensitivity of the poet. The staging is located at the boundaries between the theatrical, the musical and the performance, remaining “drama” in a broad sense of great intensity. On stage Alwynne Pritchard, eclectic artist and performer from the international curriculum. The music is by Andrea Cavallari, with the support of Michele Greco electronics.