Concert by Denis Yudin and Umberto Ruboni

Clarinetist Denis Yudin and pianist Umberto Ruboni are the young talents that the Accademia Filarmonica Romana is hosting in its season on Saturday, April 12, in Sala Casella at 6 p.m. The last of three concerts organized with the Società Umanitaria to promote new and promising performers, the program will be a journey into the world of the clarinet from the 19th century to the present day, exploring all its expressions.

Trained at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and perfected in Versailles, clarinetist Denis Yudin moved to Italy in 2021 where he is currently studying at the Milan Conservatory. Also arriving from the Milan Conservatory is pianist Umberto Ruboni , born in 1996, who went on to specialize at the Chigiana in Siena and the Pinerolo Academy, and is currently Artist in Residence at the Ingesund Piano Center in Arvika (Sweden), the Swedish Piano Academy par excellence led by Julia Mustonen-Dahlkvist. Both are winners of national and international competitions and launched into artistic careers from a very young age.

The concert opens with a tribute to Verdi , with the famous Fantasia on themes from Rigoletto in Luigi Bassi’s transcription. It then continues with two twentieth-century Sonatas that have become firmly established in the repertoire for clarinet and piano: that of Francis Poulenc , composed in 1962, shortly before the author’s sudden death, was commissioned by the legendary clarinetist Benny Goodman, who premiered it and followed it the following year at Carnegie Hall in New York, with Leonard Bernstein at the piano. Also belonging to the last year of its composer’s life is the Sonata Op. 167 (1921) by Camille Saint-Saëns, who wanted to expand the clarinet repertoire with this work. We go even further back with Claude Debussy’s Première Rhapsodie , from 1909-10, a work of great refinement that brings out the virtuosity of the wind instrument. Finally, two works