#LMF23 / 2. QUATTRO AMICI AL BAR

🎶 9:00pm concert

🍽️ 10.30pm Gastronomic Experience: #Ice-cream from C'era una volta with the Artists

PROGRAM

D. Shostakovich Sonata for cello and piano in D minor op.40 (25')

1. Allegro non troppo
2. Allegro
3. Largo
4. Allegro

David Philip Hefti “Magma - sparks of sound” Trio for violin, viola and cello (14')

R. Schumann Quartet for piano and string trio in E flat major op.47 (30')

1. Sostenuto assai - Allegro ma non troppo
2. Scherzo: Molto vivace – Trio I - Trio II
3. Andante cantabile
4. Finish: Vivace

Concert without intermission.

End ca. 10.15pm

ARTISTS

Irene Abrigo, violin

Jürg Dähler, viola

Enrico Bronzi, cello

Francesca Sperandeo, piano

The title of the concert QUATTRO AMICI AL BAR is inspired by the 1991 song by Gino Paoli in which the singer-songwriter recalls when as a young man four friends met in a bar fantasizing about how to change the world, a bit like our artists tonight in Lucignano… with music and art !

A Russian composer who fought all his life against the censorship of the Soviet authorities, finding his expressive freedom between contradictions and ambiguities,Dmitri Shostakovich shows in his cello sonata the formative labor of the young composer, the susceptibility to various influences and at the same time a precise and unequivocal personal style. In 1934, while staging his opera "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" at the Leningrad Festival, Shostakovich fell madly in love with a young student. This relationship resulted in a brief separation from his wife Nina during which he composed the Sonata for cello op.40. He completed it in a few weeks and gave its premiere in Moscow on 25 December with his close friend, the cellist Viktor Kubatsky, who dedicated the piece. In late 1934 Shostakovich and Nina were reunited and she eventually became pregnant with their first child.

Magma, 'sparks of sound' for violin, viola and cello, was written in 2014 by the Swiss composer David Philip Hafti commissioned by the Swiss Chamber Concerts for Jürg Dähler, our festival artist, to whom it is dedicated. Magma it does not develop from silence, but engages the audience with energetic sound effects. From his predominantly noise-like sounds small sparks flare up from time to time, which turn into a long farewell. The color palette of tones is particularly broad in this work, ranging from barely perceptible noises through micro-intervals to pure euphony, or the beauty of sounds that are “pleasing” to the ear.

The Piano Quartet in E flat major op. 47, was composed by Robert Schumannin 1842 for piano, violin, viola and cello, during a productive period in which he produced several works of chamber music. The piece has been described as the "creative double" of his Piano Quintet op.44, finished weeks earlier, which we performed last year in Lucignano. While both display the outgoing and exuberant side of the composer's creative genius, he did not consider them "twins", as the absence of a violin in the Piano Quartet creates a more intimate and individual sound not heard in the Quintet. Although dedicated to the Russian cellist Mathieu Wielhorsky, it was written with his wife Clara in mind, a pianist at its first public performance on 8 December 1844 in Leipzig.