60th Nuova Consonanza Festival “Memory and utopia”

First weekend of music of the 60th Nuova Consonanza Festival at Slaughterhouse-La Pelanda. Carlo Siega’s electric guitar on December 2nd with ItalianElectricGuitar PROJECT and Light Percussion with Lugano Percussion Ensemble; on December 3rd the GAMO Ensemble with i Galgenlieder (Gallows Songs) by Gubajdulina is a novelty by Montalbetti.

It starts on Saturday 2 December with two scheduled concerts. At 7 pm Carlo Siega‘s electric guitar with ItalianElectricGuitar PROJECT ranges across the classical-contemporary repertoire until it crosses over into the non-academic tradition of rock with songs by Federico Costanza, Mattia Clera and the two first Italian performances of [Ni] Svanito construct by Davide Ianni and Shinryoku by Giulia Monducci.

At 9pm the Light Percussion concert with the Lugano Percussion Ensemble, a group dedicated for years to the development of the percussion repertoire. The group arrives in Rome with a program that starts from the well-known Music for Pieces of Wood from 1973 by Steve Reich, continues alternating Swiss and Italian authors, and also welcomes an absolute premiere by Patrizio Esposito (What the table dispenses). Historic Florentine group dedicated to the contemporary repertoire, the GAMO Ensemble on Sunday 3 December (9 pm) presents a concert that revolves around the performance of the Galgenlieder (Gallows Songs) on the poems of Christian Morgenstern written in 1996 by Sofija Gubajdulina, among the most important composers of today, and compares it to a new composition by Mauro Montalbetti, which will be heard for the first time, Alice moving under skies: lesson two.

The Galgenlieder, in particular, are a cycle of extravagant poems, at times harsh and aggressive, between sarcasm and black humor, by the German writer Christian Morgenstern, who lived between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An author greatly influenced and inspired by the cabaret entertainment form which combines theatre, song, comedy and dance. In the preface of the book the Songs of the Gallows, from 1905, Morgenstern states that he wanted to express a reflection on the human being and the discomfort of modern civilization with the use of the poetry of the gallows. Sofija Gubajdulina offers her unique and personal interpretation of these poems, seeking a surprising, at times theatrical, sound in the composition of the cycle. The first draft of this lieder cycle dates back to 1995, for a smaller ensemble (voice, double bass and percussion), subsequently expanded in the version for quintet composed of voice, flute, accordion, double bass and percussion. The score is characterized by music of great expressive power, in which the composer’s musical aesthetic is recognisable, but instrumental and vocal gestures are also found which go as far as the theater of performance. In this cycle the composer finds a balance between intuition, fantasies, rigor and intellectual rationality, such as to place this work among the masterpieces of our time.