Wednesday 17 July (9.30 pm) at the Rocca Sforzesca in Imola will bean evening of great music and contamination between classical, jazz and sounds of the popular tradition. Richard Galliano, here as a composer and soloist, together with his musician friends – the Quintet of I Solisti Aquilani and the flautist Massimo Mercelli – will take us to distant eras, through the music by Vivaldi and Bach in dialogue with the music of the present.
Contrafactus (2000) for flute and strings by Giovanni Sollima will open the evening. The piece, based on a fragment of Bach’s twenty-fifth Goldberg variation, draws inspiration from the essay by Gödel, Escher, Bach: un’eterna ghirlanda brillante (Adelphi) by the philosopher Douglas Hofstadter.
Baroque is the Concerto in A minor for violin and strings by Bach transcribed for accordion.
The program also includes Jade for flute, accordion and strings, written by Richard Galliano on ERF commission, and dedicated – as Contrafactus – to Massimo Mercelli. Inspired by the mutability of the flute, the concert was written to point out the virtuosity and the fascinating sound of its first performer and dedicatee.
This is followed by another piece by the French Maestro, the suggestive Opal for accordion and string orchestra, and immediately after the famous concert Summer for violin and string by Vivaldi. The evening closes with a great classic, the melancholy Oblivion by Astor Piazzolla – winner of a Grammy Award in 1993 – in its declination for accordion and strings.