Pier Paolo Pasolini’s first musical love were Bach’s Solo violin works, which the Slovenian violinist Pina Kalc introduced to him during her stay in Friuli, in 1943. Pasolini even briefly considered the idea of learning the violin, but desisted. His passion, though, resulted in the Studies on Bach’s Style, a musicological work inspired by the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin BWV 1001-1006, and left unfinished. Pasolini, however, leaked his fascination with Bach into his films, from Accattone to The Gospel according to St Matthew. The “Unaccompanied works” are the other side of Bach: not the rigorous organist, but the sensual, refined master of the bow who could infuse his “voice” with both light and shadow, abstract thought and the materiality of speech. Flesh and heaven, as Pasolini termed it.

The Programme

A male narrator and a soprano, in stereo, and a solo cello offering the incipits of Bach’s six Suites for cello, piano and orchestra. This is how one of the most prominent contemporary composers, Azio Corghi, has imagined the “impossible” encounter between Bach and one of the greatest Italian intellectuals. This symphonic-poetic work evokes Pasolini’s life and thought, starting from his early infatuation with music, which came with the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin. The title stems from Pasolini’s brilliant definition of Bach’s struggle «between Flesh and Heaven», corporeal matter versus sublime spirit, which contributed a new key for the interpretation of the Kantor’s music (also in his films).

The Programme

The quintet formation always best expressed Piazzolla’s approach. In 1960, undaunted by the limited number of musicians, he put together his first ensemble: the five soloists could easily interpret the electric vitality of Buenos Aires, with a melodic and harmonic flexibility unknown to more imposing orchestras. Violin, guitar, double bass, piano and the main voice of the tango, the heart-wrenching bandoneón, is the line-up chosen by the Astor Piazzolla Foundation for its “Quinteto”, formed with the objective of bringing the composer’s legacy around the world. For over 20 years now, it has been offering original arrangements from his vast repertoire, in a permanent laboratory projecting into the future a musical legacy that seemed unrepeatable.

The Programme

Masterpieces are usually born from personal and artistic tribulations. 1779 was a black year for Mozart: his mother died, the appointments he hoped to obtain in Mannheim and Paris came to nothing. He had to go back to the “prison” of Salzburg, where he “had to play for the chairs”. His transition to adulthood, however, came with the Sinfonia Concertante for two solo instruments, where hope for the future (the sparkling lines of the violin) dialogues with the dark, meditative tones of the viola. Dvořák, too, at almost 50, was trying to achieve his own identity, leaving the Germanic tradition behind to embrace the Bohemian folklore. “Don’t laugh at me. I am not only a musician, I am a poet”, he claimed in 1889 on publishing his Symphony no.8, composed through images, with an initial long, melancholy movement to open up his memory box.

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“I am mortally wounded, so I dedicate this evening not to the dead, but to those who were wounded in the horrible massacre.” Forty years ago, on the first commemoration of the Bologna train-station bombing, Carmelo Bene performed his memorable Lectura Dantis from the top of the Asinelli tower, to a city that was still licking its wounds, and to a massive crowd, akin to a rock-concert audience. It takes much courage to revive it today—the courage of Arto Lindsay, cultural stirrer and language disruptor, who outdid the punk culture from left, inventing a rigorously illiterate grammar for the guitar, through which he wreaks havoc on the slick lines of Brazilian samba, and breaths new life into a chapter of Italian history.

The Programme