J. S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048

Jean Sibelius: Canzonetta, Op. 62a

Vanni Moretto: Ex silentio (Italian premiere)

W. A. Mozart: Piano Concerto in E-flat major, K. 271 “Jeunehomme”

This program could be considered a small compendium of the different ways in which the individual elements that make up an orchestra can interact and relate to each other.

In Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto, written for nine strings (divided into groups of three) and basso continuo, the individual components are called upon to engage in a dense concertante dialogue in which the responsibility for both the solo passages and the dense, pulsating texture that sustains and drives the entire composition is shared equally by all. After this sort of incandescent fireball, which, except for a brief central suspension, releases energy with equal intensity throughout its development, we move on to Jean Sibelius's ‘Canzonetta’, taken from the incidental music for the play ‘Kuolema’ (death in Finnish). Here, it is the power of the melody that shapes the writing of the piece, organizing the sections of the ensemble into singing roles, alternately entrusted to the first violins and cellos, and accompanying roles. The rarefied atmosphere, the pace, and the “color” of the sound prepare the audience for the third piece on the program: Ex Silentio by Vanni Moretto. Presented here in its Italian premiere, this piece, commissioned from the Milanese composer in 2024 by the Opéra-Théâtre de Clermont-Ferrand, features a new distribution of roles dictated by the form of the concerto for solo instrument and orchestra.  The orchestra opens the piece by offering a landscape with uncertain contours from which the solo violin draws the elements to shape form and meaning; on the one hand, the world, on the other, the individual experience that interprets and shapes it in its own interiority and determines its narrative. Another piece for solo instrument and orchestra, this time no longer for strings alone, concludes the program. This is Mozart's Piano Concerto K. 271, “Jeunehomme.” In the evolution of this form, to which Mozart made an enormous contribution, the Jeunehomme represents a decisive turning point between the style of the Salzburg period and that of the Viennese period. The soloist dialogues with the orchestra from the very first bars, according to a concept that clearly goes beyond the juxtaposition of soloist and orchestra, intertwining the musical discourse in a logic of continuous exchange. The protagonist is precisely this dialogue, rich in ideas, surprises, digressions, and different emotional states. It is a hierarchically mobile dynamic to which the soloist and orchestra contribute with equal force of necessity.