59th International Festival of Contemporary Music

The Sound of Memory

The activities of the Music section of the Biennale di Venezia, chaired by Paolo Baratta, will be held this year from October 2nd to 11th: 59th International Festival of Contemporary Music directed by composer Ivan Fedele [ video ].\n\r\n“The spirit of the Biennale College – stated Paolo Baratta – is increasingly permeating the programmes for theatre and dance. Ivan Fedele will dedicate his Music festival to a theme that recurs this year in various programmes of the Biennale, the theme of memory, the goddess of which, Mnemosyne, is also cited in the Art Exhibition. Memory understood as the expansion of the artist’s space, as the constituent element of the experience of listening, as a necessary element for a dialogue about music. The project for the college this year is dedicated to young instrumentalists who will work to produce an extraordinary experience. The Biennale thus keeps attention focused on the contemporary and offers young people an opportunity to engage with it. Two fundamental aspects of its mission” [ video ]. \n\r\nThe 10-day programme – from October 2nd to 11th – of the 59th International Festival of Contemporary Music will feature 18 concerts presenting 31 new works, 16 of which will be world premiere performances. “The Festival will centre on the theme of “memory” – writes director Ivan Fedele - in the various senses of the term, both as a perceptive/cognitive tool indispensable for a hermeneutic experience, and as recollection and a vivid revitalizing vestige of history in the contemporary age, bringing together eras distant in time but close in the essence of their thought and inspiration”.\n\r\nPierre Boulez, Georges Aperghis, Helmut Lachenmann, and Giuseppe Sinopoli: these names represent the highlights of the 59th Festival. Pierre Boulez, a previous winner of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, will be paid tribute on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday by the brilliant cellist Marc Coppey.  The winner of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement for 2015, Georges Aperghis, a reserved yet highly original composer, distinguished by his irony and his sharply surreal approach, will participate in the festival with Machinations, an emblematic work in which 4 female voices create an imaginary language, a blend of phonemes, objects, music and technology which seems to take us straight back to the origins of language [ video ]. Helmut Lachenmann, 80 years old this year and the winner of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2008, will also be extensively performed at the Festival thanks to the Ensemble Recherche and the Musikfabrik.\n\r\nTo Giuseppe Sinopoli, and his Souvenir à la memoire, a work destined to go down in the history of twentieth-century music, the Festival dedicates the project for the Biennale College – Music: a youth orchestra, selected by audition after an international call for participation, will perform Sinopoli’s score - following a training session with a tutor - under the direction of Michele Carulli, Sinopoli’s long-time assistant. \n\r\nThere will be many composers from the newer generations on the programme, often unfamiliar to Italian audiences but frequently performed on international stages: Milica Djordjevic (1984), Nina Šenk (1982), Pasquale Corrado (1979), Federico Gardella (1979), Silvia Borzelli (1978), Lara Morciano (1978), Dai Fujikura (1977), Marcin Stanczyk (1977), Luca Antignani (1976), Filippo Zapponi (1976), Benoît Chantry (1975), Aureliano Cattaneo (1974). There is an equally dense participation by the generation in the middle, with such established composers as: George Benjamin, Fabio Nieder, Vladimir Tarnopolski, Fabio Cifariello Ciardi, Dieter Ammann, Matteo D’Amico.\n\r\nPerforming their works will be major European ensembles such as Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Recherche, Musikfabrik; recent companies such as the European Contemporary Orchestra (which gathers 33 performers from France, Holland, Belgium) and the Studio for New Music Moscow; the original wind quintet Slowind, the Lemanic Modern Ensemble, the Leonis quartet and the trio entitled to Josef Suk; and finally extraordinary performers such as the piano duo composed of the two Turkish sisters Ufuk and Bahar Dördüncü, and cellist Francesco Dillon with Emanuele Torquati on the piano. And two more pianists: Giuseppe Albanese, with a linear survey of Hungarian piano music from Liszt to Bartòk to Ligeti; and David Greilsammer, who relies on his virtuosity to activate a short-circuit between the arduous sonatas of Scarlatti and the new timbres of Cage’s prepared keyboard.\n\r\nThe illustration of science with art is the experiment underlying Chemical Free, a  cross-media performance that brings together scientists, musicians and visual artists led by composer Nicola Sani and the master of electronics Alvise Vidolin: from sounds that travel and are transformed in space to the capacity of molecules to combine and create new molecules thanks to technology.\n\r\nAnd in Parole di settembre – inspired by the 15 poetical texts dedicated by Edoardo Sanguineti to the painting of Andrea Mantegna – art and technology take form for the stage with composer Aureliano Cattaneo, visual artists Arotin & Serghei and the musicians of the Klangforum Wien [ video ].\n\r\nSome of the concerts of the 59th International Contemporary Music Festival are organized in collaboration with Ircam – Centre Pompidou in Paris.\n\r\nWe wish to thank the Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and Activities for its significant contribution and the Regione del Veneto for its support of the programmes in the Dance Music and Theatre Sectors of the Biennale di Venezia.\n\r\norigin:\n\r\nhttp://www.labiennale.org/en/news/15-04.html\n\r\n \n\r\n