Download aniello desiderio - Dubrovačke ljetne igre

54. dubrovačke ljetne igre
54th Dubrovnik Summer Festival
2003
Hrvatska Croatia
ANIELLO DESIDERIO
Gitara Guitar
Atrij Kneževa dvora
Rector's Palace Atrium
15. srpnja 15th July
21.30 9.30 p.m.
Johann Sebastian Bach (obr. arr. A. Desiderio): 1. sonata za violinu u g-molu, BWV 1001
Sonata No.1 for violin in G minor, BWV
1001
Adagio
Fuga
Siciliana
Presto
Johann Sebastian Bach (obr. arr. A. Desiderio): Ciaccona iz 2. partite za violinu u d-molu,
BWV 1004
Chaconne from Partita No. 2 for violin in
D minor, BWV 1004
***
Leo Brouwer: El Decameron Negro, tri balade The Black Decameron, Three Ballades
El arpa del guerriero
La huida de los amantes por el valle de los ecos
Ballada de la doncella enamorada
Južnoamerička plesna suita / South American Dance Suite
Maria Luisa Anido: Air Norteno
Antonio Lauro: Venezuelanski valceri II. i III. Venezuelan Waltzes II and III
Leo Brouwer: Danza del altiplano
Astor Piazzolla (obr. arr. Leo Brouwer): 3. tango Tango No. 3
Alberto Ginastera: Sonata, op. 47
Esordio (Solenne)
Scherzo (Fantastico, il più presto possibile)
Canto (Rapsodico)
Finale (Presto e fogoso)
Italian guitar player Aniello Desiderio was born in Naples (1971). He started to study music
at an early age; a child prodigy had his first concert at the age of 8. He studied with B. B.
D'Amari, S. Arut and famous L. Brouwer who selected him for a group of the most talented
students. In 1992 he graduated from the Alessandria Conservatory with top grades. The
winner at prestigious Italian and international competitions (Messina, 1986; Sanremo, 1994;
Havana and Tokyo 1988; Francisco Tarrega, 1992; Guerrero, Spain, 1995; etc.), he launched
an increasingly successful world career. Music critics acknowledged him ‘The Neapolitan of
the Year’ and ‘The Guitarist of the Century’. Both as a soloist and with an orchestra he
performed in Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Greece,
Denmark, Turkey, Cuba, Columbia, Venezuela and Japan. Particularly noted were his
performances with the Moscow Virtuosi, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and the
German Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra. He records for Frame and Wahn Records labels.
The German BR/ARD Television recorded the Aniello Desiderio portrait. He is also engaged
as a pedagogue and gave many master courses of which the most noted was the one at the
Manhattan School of Music in New York, 1996.
The powerful and distinctive comprehension of art and world of the great German baroque
master Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) encompasses almost all major achievements of
cultural and artistic experience throughout history. Discoveries of the Renaissance, tradition
of German folk song, firm but also pliant laws of German bourgeois music practice, as well as
all spectres of the 17th Century German music – all this settles in Bach’s creative
subconsciousness. And then, at the moment of creation, his powerful personality starts to
behave as a generator: due to efficient and strong reactions, the primary elements, raw
materials, gain completely new contours, light and meaning in his elaboration and
interpretation. Regardless of the music form, Bach’s creative genius is equally present and
recognisable in every detail of his speech. Lucid announcements, which are easy to notice in
the huge master’s heritage, go to the heart of nearly every époque that separates us from his
time. Striking expressiveness of his music thought, individuality of harmonies and melodies
point to the Romanticism to a greater extent than the purity in constructing the themes of
markedly homophonic character points to the discipline of the Classicism. Yet a remarkably
developed substantiality of his polyphonic harmony had repeatedly come within the reach of a
triumph of the music structure, achieved only in the present century.
Bach composed his three Sonatas and three Partitas for violin solo (from BWV 1001 to
1006) during his stay in Köthen, where he was in charge of the court chapel from 1717 to
1723. Several sketches of these pieces can however already be found in his notes from the
Weimar period (from 1708 to 1717). The master seems to have already been interested in
melodic music instruments as solo instruments; particularly the violin, which was superbly
played by almost all members of his family. Sonatas and Partitas were for a long time
considered to have primarily pedagogic purpose, whereat their precious artistic value used to
be neglected. Bach’s (four-movement) Sonata No. 1 in G minor, BWV 1001 still relies on
the tradition but the formal elements are arranged in a different way, yet with a significant
change of the contents. The introductory Adagio turns into a free prelude and the first fast
movement is a masterful fugue grown out of a powerful, one-measure theme, which is
precisely elaborated. The third slow movement, which brings a simple-symmetric theme
placed within stirring of the sophisticated Siciliana, starts with a wide cadenza out of which,
after two measures, melodic contours surface, followed by a well-considered harmonic
condensation. The final Presto is deep-rooted in the tense motor rhythm and therefore close to
toccata’s wavy stirring. Notwithstanding high achievements of other movements, Partita No.
2 in D minor, BWV 1004 is among the best in music history in the first place due to its
finale, the anthological Chaconne, variations on the initial theme based on its continuous
melodic, harmonic and rhythmic metamorphosis. This two-part, markedly compact theme
originates from a typical old dance rhythm with punctuated focuses on the second beat of the
three-beat measure, its basis being the descending bass tetrachord. The movement develops
into four great arches of approximately equal span in which Bach meaningfully releases inner,
intermingled tensions. In the first group the melodic and rhythmic elements are prominent
above all and in the second group the composer reaches various harmonic solutions in the
movement and figuration. Turning into the major key, the third group directs the sound power
towards the development climax and release, while the fourth, shorter variation group,
connects the factors of the previous three, gradually going back to the basic theme form.
The Cuban composer and guitar player Leo Brouwer was born in Havana (1939). Impressed
by the sounds of Flamenco, he started to study the guitar at the age of thirteen, under his
father’s tutorship. His first teacher was Isaac Nicola, an indirect successor of Tarrega’s guitar
school. He also studied the piano, the cello, the double bass and the clarinet and performed
traditional repertoire of classic and romantic compositions. He was very early noticed for his
compositions Prelude (1956) and Fugue (1959), which he composed under the influence of
Bartók and Stravnsky. He studied the composition at the New York Juilliard School of Music
and at the Hart College in Hartford. His first works show influence of Latin American and
Afro-Cuban folklore; in which he at the same time experiments with both the 12-tone and
serial techniques. Leo Brouwer is the first Cuban composer who used the aleatory music and
open forms. He then turned to minimalists and he himself described that period as “opening
the modular system”. His opus includes solo, chamber, vocal and orchestral music and one
ballet. He was engaged in the Cuban film industry and composed music for more than 60
films. From 1961 to 1967 he taught the composition at the Havana Conservatory, where he
has been the head of the Experimental music department since 1969. An esteemed guitar
player and conductor, Leo Brouwer is a permanent jury member of many guitar competitions
and frequently gives master courses and workshops. El Decameron Negro (The Black
Decameron) is one of Brouwer’s major works. Composed in his minimalist period, this
piece’s title is a specific allusion to Baccaccio’s story collection from the 14th Century, but
with African genesis. Inspired by stories from the book of the same title by German
ethnologist and explorer Leo Frobenius (1873-1938), this ballade suite is a tale of a warrior
who opposed the social order and wished to become a musician. It was composed in 1981 and
dedicated to the guitar player Sharon Isbin. The movements are composed along the lines of
traditional forms: the first one in the sonata form, the second one as a rondo with an obsessive
rhythmic ostinato (according to the ABACA scheme) and the third one in a three-part (ABA)
form.
Aniello Desiderio most probably collected and gave title to the South-American Dance Suite
inspired by Bach’s suites. Choosing stylised South American dances by various authors, he
connected them without neglecting the contrast effect both in the contents and the form.
Maria Luisa Anido, known as Mimia, was born in Moron near Buenos Aires (1907). A child
prodigy started to perform as a guitar player with tremendous success. She extensively toured
Europe, Asia and South America and made a huge number of recordings. She had been
teaching the guitar at the Buenos Aires National Conservatory for more than fifty years and
died at a very old age in June 1996.
Antonio Lauro was born in Venezuelan city Bolivar (1917). His father was an Italian who
immigrated to Venezuela during the World War II. Antonio Lauro studied at the Caracas
Music School with renowned pedagogues Vicente Emilio Sojo and Juan Bautista Plaza. He
first chose to study the piano, but having met the Paraguayan guitar virtuoso Augustin Barrios
Magnore, dedicated himself to the guitar. He composed and arranged numerous pieces the
majority of which have not been published. In addition to compositions for the guitar, he
composed many orchestral, choir, chamber and solo pieces. He most often found inspiration
in Venezuelan folk music. He died in Caracas, in April 1986.
After receiving a thorough education with Albert Ginastera, Nadia Boulanger and Hermann
Scherchenn, the outstanding Argentinian composer, conductor and performer (guitar player in
particular) Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) dedicated the largest part of his career to tango. This
moderate tempo dance originated in 1882 in Buenos Aires, the precursor of which is
considered to be habanera del café, the trendy dance from Cuba, but also tango milonga, the
folk dance from harbour areas of Montevideo and Buenos Aires. The combinations of these
dances called tango argentino, tango brasileiro or tango criollo came into European
ballrooms around 1910 and become particularly popular there around 1920. Many prestigious
composers of the previous century also used elements of this effective dance in their works.
Piazzolla himself composed about three hundred tangos until 1960. He also founded several
ensembles, composed original music and arrangements, as well as a huge number of musicstage, orchestral and chamber works, majority of which were also based on the dance
movement of tango.
In the opus of probably the most significant Argentinian composer of the 20th Century,
Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) the folk music elements, in a very natural way, interweave
with a kind of neoimpressionism, which later turns into serialism, whereas in his final creative
period the composer gives up all strict rules and heads towards released spaces of pure music.
Guitar Sonata, op. 47 was composed in Geneva, 1976 and published by the American
publisher Boosey & Hawkes in 1981. It is dedicated to the famous Brazilian guitar player
Carlos Barbosa-Lima who premièred it on 27th November 1976 in Washington. The piece had
its European premiére by the same artist – on 20th May 1977 in Geneva. The Sonata, close to
the baroque four-movement form of the same name, is perhaps the most noted example of the
composer’s mature style, the prominent freedoms of which often reach the very edge of the
avant-gardism. The piece consists of four separate units connected by a shared brilliant
element, a perfectly developed metro-rhythmic system. The festive first movement (Esordio),
inspired by native music, is at the same time also a successful reminiscence of the malefemale dualism of the European sonata themes. This two-part movement begins with a festive
fragment with arpeggio chords followed by a melody with elements of a folk song, recorded
in a gentle siciliana rhythm. Glimmering brilliantly, the rhythmically developed second
movement, the quick and fantastic Scherzo of impressionist-surrealist significance, is full of
magical nocturnal shapes, which require the performer to achieve maximum of the dynamic
contrasts. The lyrical Canto has a free, rhapsodic form with wide dashes resembling the
cadence. Its central part again brings, this time in retrograde motion, the melody from the first
movement. Contrasted in a vivacious metro-rhythm, the chords performed in a special way
(rasgueados and shasquidos), as well as the various knocks on the guitar, compose the fiery
Finale, rondo in which the Argentinian folk melos is fully manifested, and which skilfully
brings The Sonata to its delirious ending.
D. Detoni