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Siete qui: Home Festival Festival 2011 Glorious sounds of brass
Glorious sounds of brass PDF Print E-mail
Spectacular sound effects, directly from St Mark’s Basilica in Venice – Giovanni Gabrieli (Venice, ca. 1557 - 12 August 1612) was familiar with them as the organist of the Serenissima, and was able to exploit the grandiose stereophonic play that could be achieved by placing the singers in the two choir lofts facing each other. These spatial effects became part of his instrumental music, and can be appreciated in the echoes, imitations and brilliance of the Canzone per Sonare no. 4, one of his Canzoni da sonar con ogni sorte de istrumento (Songs to be sung with all sorts of instruments) from 1615. His feeling for dramatic effect is expressed here as polyphony, the melody floating out from counterpoint mimicry, winding around and twisting on itself like ivy! The baroque composer Heinrich Schütz, who knew him personally, had no hesitations about his genius, and wrote: «I spent my early years as an apprentice to the great Gabrieli – oh! immortal Gods! If antiquity, so rich in expression, had known him, it would have placed him higher than Amphion and if the muses had had husbands Melpomene would have wanted no other spouse than him, so great was he in the art of song».

 


Die Bänkelsängerlieder (1685), from the Musikalisch-türkischer Eulenspiegel, by Georg Daniel Speer (Breslau, 2 July 1636 - Göppingen, 5 October 1707), a German baroque composer, is a piece of occasional music for a group of instruments that was widely enjoyed and published highly successfully at the time. The crisp, bright melody, picked up here and there by the various instruments, establishes a magnificent aura of sound that captivates the listener.
Johann Sebastian Bach (Eisenach, Thuringen 1685 - Leipzig 1750) composed these two outstanding “jewels” – the Prelude and fugue in C minor and the well-known Toccata and fugue in D minor, both of them evergreens combining technical strength and vitality with beauty. Here the Kantor, inspired, pushes his inimitable creative talent to the limit. The brilliance, and apparent improvisation held in check by rigor and discipline, are described in realistic detail by the composer’s first official biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, who depicted the young Bach at work: «he liked to run his hands the length of the keyboard, skipping from one end to the other, playing as many notes as he could with his ten fingers, and carrying on wildly like this until by chance at a certain point his hands came to rest». This vigour and vitality are transposed perfectly here for wind instruments.
The poetic Quintett by Michael Kamen (New York, 15 April 1948 - 18 November 2003) takes a two-century fast-forward leap. This American composer, musician and conductor wrote some great sound tracks for films like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, X-Men and Brazil. He also worked with pop and rock stars like David Gilmour of the Pink Floyd, the Queens, Eric Clapton, the Aerosmiths, David Bowie, Eurythmics, Herbie Hancock, Bryan Adams, Sting and Kate Bush. Quintett produces a dream-like effect, the amalgam of the instruments building delicate melodies over a warm, iridescent harmonic ground.
The sublime brilliance and galanterie of the Rondò for horn by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Salzburg, 27 January 1756 - Vienna, 5 December 1791), gives way to Samuel Osborne Barber’s Adagio (West Chester, 9 March 1910 - New York, 23 January 1981) transporting the listener into a sort of suspended vision, bewitching but dismal at the same time. The Adagio, originally one movement in his String Quartet no. 1, composed in 1936, was transcribed as an orchestral version which was highly successful and was first conducted by Arturo Toscanini with the Nbc Orchestra on 5 November 1938 in New York. With its delicately strident harmonies, purposeful dissonances, and moving melodic line, it was used in Oliver Stone’s war film Platoon as a backdrop to the most intense scenes.
Eugène Bozza (Nice, 4 April 1904 - Valenciennes, 28 September 1991) in his Sonatina for wind instruments, combines a masterly technical display with the characteristic French expressive style. Charles Camille Saint-Saëns (Paris, 9 October 1835 - Algiers, 16 December 1921) brings the concert to a French conclusion with his exciting, inviting, sinuous Dance Macabre.

 

Marino Mora