From Beethoven to Morricone, great music in the Roma Sinfonietta season

The concert season of the University of Rome "Tor Vergata", organized by the Roma Sinfonietta Association, confirms its importance in terms of number and quality of events.

It will take place from 12 October 2022 to 24 May 2023 with twenty concerts and will be particularly rich in interesting proposals and open to a great variety of musical genres, ranging from the world of classical - which remains the pillar of the season - to contemporary musical theater, to jazz, cinema music and popular music.

Grand opening on Wednesday 12 October (all concerts take place on Wednesdays at 6 pm in the “Ennio Morricone” Auditorium) with the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra, Morricone's favorite team, who have often conducted it on international tours.

The first song on the program is the

by Beethoven, soloist Giuseppe Albanese, one of the most requested pianists of his generation: regularly present in the most prestigious international halls, he records for Deutsche Grammophon.

The concert concludes with the

by Shostakovich (a transcription by Rudolf Barshai of the

by the Russian composer).

Directed by Gabriele Bonolis.

The following week there was an immediate demonstration of the variety of these concerts: the Luca Velotti Trio will present under the title “Woody Allen Movie Music” some of the music that the New York director has chosen as the soundtracks for his films.

On November 9th, third concert and third original and stimulating proposal: under the title "Unknown Morricone and his contemporaries" music by the Roman composer himself, by his teacher Goffredo Petrassi, by his contemporary Francesco Pennisi, by his young admirer Marco Sinopoli (who he was inspired by Morricone for his

) and his son Andrea Morricone, who will also be the director of this concert.

Play Roma Sinfonietta.

The following concert (November 16) is also dedicated to a great Italian artist, Pier Paolo Pasolini: the first absolute performances of music written by four contemporary Italian composers, Giovanni Costantini, Maurizio Gabrieli, Giorgio Nottoli and Riccardo Santoboni, will be listened to. inspired by the texts of the Friulian poet, writer and director.

After these tributes to great artists of the recent past, the season will feature a very young musician, thus opening a window on the near future.

He is the nineteen year old Roman cellist Ettore Pagano, who is collecting prizes in important international competitions, such as the recent Khachaturian.

In front of the public of the city he will perform music for solo cello by Bach, Hindemith and Kodaly (30 November).

On 7 December the Roma Sinfonietta Ensemble will perform music by Casella, Carpi and Ravel, unjustly neglected for the sole reason that they require rare and unusual instrumental groups.

2022 closes with joy on December 14th, when Fabio Maestri will conduct the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra in Brahms'

and in some timeless Strauss waltzes.

It resumes on February 15, 2023 with a concert for the twentieth anniversary of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, which could not have had a better protagonist of the University's Choir - named after Claudio Casini, former professor of history of music at the “Tor Vergata ”- and which will be directed by Stefano Cucci: the program is a synthesis of the history of music, starting from the 16th century of Orlando di Lasso, passing through the romanticism of Schubert and the patriotic choirs of Verdi and ending with Morricone.

The following concert is entirely dedicated to Mozart, of which the violinist Marco Fiorentini will give an appetizing taste of the complete for violin and orchestra together with the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra.

On 1 March we return to wander through the centuries with the pianist Scipione Sangiovanni, who starts from the Baroque of Frescobaldi,

and Ellington's jazz.

Even the soloists of Aquilani, a historic complex specializing in the music of the Baroque period, have fun ranging from Mozart's eighteenth century to Grieg's nineteenth century and Holst's early twentieth century (March 15).

A date to be noted is March 22, because there will be an unmissable appointment with a contemporary work and precisely with

written by Matteo D'Amico, one of the most interesting Italian composers of today, who together with the librettist Sandro Cappelletto drew the subject of his one act from the homonymous comedy by Luigi Pirandello.

On the podium Fabio Maestri.

Spring also reserves two encounters with eighteenth-century music, performed by some of the best interpreters of Baroque music in the international arena: on March 29 Bach and Vivaldi will be performed by soprano Lucia Napoli and violinist Marco Serino, flanked by the Ensemble Roma Sinfonietta, while on April 26 Francesco Cera, harpsichordist of solid international fame, will play German (Bach and Haendel), French (Couperin) and Italian (Frescobaldi and D. Scarlatti) authors.

Between these two appointments with the Baroque,

Spring will also be the season for some “extravagant” concerts.

On April 19th four excellent double bass players, who have given themselves the playful name of "The Bass Bang", entitled their concert "The low seasons", or "free musical confusion on themes ... moderately burning and not".

Two encounters with traditional Italian music follow.

On 3 May Ambrogio Sparagna with his Italian Popular Orchestra gives us an unequivocal invitation: “And now to dance”.

Seven days later, for the series "Music from the Regions of Italy" Molise is on stage, with the May rites, the bagpipes and the carregna for San'Antonio, curated by Giorgio Adamo, Giuseppe Giordano and Vincenzo Lombardi, ethnomusicologists of the Roman University. 

On May 17th the Ensemble Roma Sinfonietta will perform

di

Stravinskij, a masterpiece of the twentieth century, plus a Duo and a Trio by Raffaele Bellafronte: an opportunity to get to know this contemporary Italian composer better.

Grand finale on May 24th with a concert with the tantalizing title: “Notes of taste: Italian-

”.

It is a real regional cookbook, which highlights the different territorial culinary traditions, going with music and singing to discover the immense wealth of Italian cuisine.

The soprano and performer Laura Catrani will sing 20 recipes set to music by the composer Roberta Vacca.