Despite the health emergency related to the Covid-19 pandemic, Emilia Romagna Festival is back with a special edition dedicated to its 20 years! From July 26 to September, the festival will celebrate this important milestone under the banner of the composers who wrote for the festival, with live concerts in the magical and enchanted places of the region, in compliance with the new security measures.
The image of the billboard of the 20th edition is dedicated to the composers, which have always been the motor of the festival: on the one hand the great composers of the past – Vivaldi, Bach, Rossini, Verdi and Beethoven – and on the other the contemporary ones who wrote music for ERF – Morricone, Bacalov, Gubajdulina, Sollima, Nyman, Glass and Penderecki.
The opening concert stands out thanks to a world premiere: the Concerto No. 2 by one of the most famous protagonists of international contemporary music: the pianist and composer Michael Nyman. The piece was written for Massimo Mercelli’s flute and recently dedicated to his mutual friend Ezio Bosso, following his premature death. The piece will be performed by Mercelli together with I Solisti Veneti, in Forlì (26 July, Arena San Domenico).
The festival will also pay homage to two other great composers and musicians, who have recently passed away: Maestro Krzysztof Penderecki, a regular guest of ERF since 2002, the year in which he conducted Beethoven’s IX Symphony in the splendid and evocative location of Piazza Maggiore in Bologna with the Chorus of Emilia Romagna Festival and the Lithuanian Philharmonic Orchestra. And Maestro Luis Bacalov, a dear friend of the festival to whom he has given unforgettable concerts over the years, such as the performance of his Estaba la madre, a work of great social impact dedicated to the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which he directed at ERF, the 11 September 2009 at the Diego Fabbri Theatre in Forlì.
Still on the subject of great composers and anniversaries, we will remember Giuseppe Tartini, multifaceted musical and cultural personality of the Age of Enlightenment, 250 years after his death, and Ludwig van Beethoven, the great genius of Bonn, whose 250th anniversary of the birth is celebrated this year. The festival will also give space to contemporary composers such as Giovanni Sollima and the rising Cristian Carrara and Lamberto Curtoni.
Among new protagonists and welcome returns, the program will host great international artists such as Richard Galliano, Ramin Bahrami, Ivo Pogorelich, Moni Ovadia, the ensemble of Cameristi della Scala, together with young talents, including Cristian Lombardi, Lorenzo Albanese and Giulia Rimonda.
A unique mix always full of quality music with a particular attention to the excellence of the national scene, which need to be supported and promoted.
Speaking of Italian excellence, the orchestras in residence of this edition will be two flagship groups of the Emilia Romagna region: the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, acclaimed by audiences and critics in major concert venues around the world, and the Toscanini NEXT, the newborn higher educational music project aimed at increasing the skills of under 35 musicians, based in the Giuseppe Sarti music school in Faenza and in the Arturo Toscanini music production centre in Parma.
Soon all the details on the programme and about the tickets booking together with the procedures for accessing the events, in compliance with safety regulations.