Twenty years and a great desire to continue growing!
Emilia Romagna Festival celebrates this important goal in the name of the composers who have wrote for the festival, with 36 live events from 26 July to 10 September in the territories of Bologna, Ferrara, Forlì-Cesena and Ravenna, in compliance with the new security measures.
Great interpreters of the international music scene and young talents are on the programme for an amazing musical itinerary: from classical to contemporary, from jazz to opera, the music will also enclose readings, art, literature and cinema.
A unique mix starring quality music that opens on July 26, at the San Domenico Arena in Forlì, with the Italian premiere of the Concerto no. 2 by Michael Nyman, written for Massimo Mercelli’s flute and dedicated to his mutual friend Ezio Bosso. The piece will be performed by Mercelli himself with I Solisti Veneti, who together will also face Contrafactus by Giovanni Sollima, written on commission for the festival just 20 years ago, and two pieces by Giuseppe Tartini, of which this year the festival commemorates the 250th anniversary from death. The concert will be broadcast in worldwide streaming in collaboration with ItaliaFestival and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini conducted by Lanzillotta with the mezzo soprano Daniela Pini will close the festival on 10 September at the Rocca Sforzesca in Imola. For the closing concert they will perform on the notes of Symphony No. 7 by Ludwig van Beethoven – on the 250th anniversary of its birth – rearranged by the composer Fabio Massimo Capogrosso and the orchestral elaborations of the pieces by Francesco Paolo Tosti by Maestro Francesco Lanzillotta.
Among the other great artists of the 2020 programme: Richard Galliano with the famous The Tokyo Concert (2/8 Forlì), which this year will also be the protagonist of the XI ERF Carreer Award (1/8 Tredozio); Ramin Bahrami with two appointments: in Lugo (10/8) with excerpts from his latest CD Malinconia and in Forlì (27/8) with the Goldberg Variations; the Aighetta Quartett with a concert in which the most interesting pages of the classical and popular guitar repertoire will be performed (11/8 Tossignano); Danilo Rea with his personal tribute to Fabrizio De André (16/8 Comacchio); Moni Ovadia accompanied by Giovanni Seneca on guitars, Gabriele Pesaresi on double bass, Francesco Savoretti on percussion and by the Italian-Algerian singer Anissa Gouizi, in an original form of theatrical concert, Rotte Mediterranee (21/8 Cesenatico); Ivo Pogorelich (22/8 Forlì) with a program focused on Johann Sebastian Bach, Fryderyk Chopin and Maurice Ravel; and Cristina Zavalloni together with Fabrizio Puglisi with their project “O Supersong” which revisits songs by Sigur Ros, Franco Battiato, Laurie Anderson, Radiohead, Beatles and others.
The orchestras in residence of this edition will be two flagship groups of the Emilia Romagna region: La Toscanini, acclaimed by audiences and critics in the major concert venues around the world, and La Toscanini Next, the newborn high-level educational project aimed for musicians under 35. In addition to the closing concert La Toscanini, with its modular ensembles, will be the protagonist of four other concerts: the Archi de La Toscanini together with the soloist Mihaela Costea, first violin of the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini with the integral performance of “The four seasons” by Antonio Vivaldi and the famous Aria on the fourth string by Johann Sebastian Bach (28/7 Codigoro); again the Archi de La Toscanini with Pietro Nappi solo cello, with a repertoire between Mozart and Haydn (3/8 Castel San Pietro Terme); the Ensemble La Toscanini – Sandu Nagy on flute, Gianni Giangrasso on percussion, Antonio Mercurio on double bass and Francesco Melani on piano – with I Got Rhythm: in crossover between classical and jazz (8/8 Bubano); and the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini conducted by the solo violin Enrico Onofri with a concert with music by Vivaldi, Mozart and Rossini (9/8 Forlì).
The Toscanini Next conducted by the composer and conductor Roger Catino will be in Faenza with Da Cinecittà a Hollywood, in which there will be a tribute to Luis Bacalov, a dear friend of the festival to whom he has given unforgettable concerts over the years (29/7), and with a second concert, Images da ascoltare, dedicated to the most famous musical pages of cinematographic films (6/8). In Russi, the Toscanini Next Sax Quintet will perform with music by Joplin, Kander, Desmond, Gershwin, Brubeck, Piazzolla, Rota and Coruzzi (5/9).
And still speaking of young talents, the Young Musicians European Orchestra arrives at the festival, a formation composed by very young musicians from all over the world, which with Massimo Mercelli on flute will perform the Sinfonietta for flute and strings by maestro Krzysztof Penderecki, a reworking of the original for clarinet and strings (1994) in a new guise with solo flute, expressly requested by Mercelli who performed it for the first time in 2006 and then performed it, under the conduction of the composer, 35 times (7/9 Imola). The great Polish composer, a regular guest of ERF since 2002, will also be honored in another concert, this time with the Indaco Quartet accompanied by one of the most popular Italian clarinetists, Claudio Mansutti (24/8 Codigoro).
Great female artists will be part of the programme: in addition to Cristina Zavalloni, the cellist Silvia Chiesa, one of the most famous Italian interpreters on the international scene, together with the Roma Tre Orchestra with pieces by Wagner, Haydn and Grieg (27/7 Imola); the Slovenian harpist Mojca Zlobko Vajgl, with a program of waltzes, nocturnes and variations (31/7 Bagnara di Romagna); and the young Emilia Zamuner, defined by many as the “Neapolitan Ella Fitzgerald”, accompanied by Massimo Moriconi, the historic bassist of Mina, Massimo Del Pezzo on drums and Piero Frassi at the piano, in two different performances: in Codigoro (18/8 ), with Once Upon A Time, a collection of songs taken from his latest CD, and in Castel San Pietro Terme (19/8) with New Orleans – Napoli, tra musica e stile, an evocative medley that combines famous pieces from the American tradition and of the Neapolitan song in jazz.
Among the proposals that combine music with theatre, art, literature and cinema, two appointments with the Duomo Ensemble dedicated to the centenary of the birth of the director Federico Fellini and of the poet and screenwriter Tonino Guerra, to the music of another great, Nino Rota: in Codigoro (4/8), the Ensemble will accompany the voice of Ivano Marescotti, who will read pieces by Federico Fellini and Tonino Guerra, while in Imola (5/8), Elena Bucci will recite texts by Fellini and Guerra, always with music by Rota. In addition, the world premiere of “The Whalebone Arch, intrecci fra musiche e terra” a visual and sound installation by the artist Claudia Losi, organized as part of the Ceramic Performance Festival, in collaboration with Ossessioni 2020 (8/9 Faenza).
To complete the rich program, the duo composed of Federico Mondelci on saxophones and Simone Zanchini on accordion with Latino Mediterraneo (12/8 Codigoro); the cellist Denis Burioli with music by Bach and Cassadó (13/8 Faenza); the tribute to Kurt Weill with Daniele Santimone on guitar, Tiziano Negrello on double bass and Massimo Mantovani on piano (20/8 Faenza); the duo formed by Donato D’Antonio and Marko Feri on guitars, with pieces by Scarlatti, Beethoven, Tan Dun, Gnattali and Debussy (25/8 Riolo Terme); the ensemble of teachers and students of the Angelo Masini Musical Institute with music by Bach, Beethoven and Unterberger (30/8 Forlì); the pianist and composer Pietro Beltrani with some of the most beautiful and well-known classical compositions in jazz (1/9 Alfonsine); the young and talented Kazakh violinist Sharipa Tussupbekova with a repertoire of Partitas and Sonatas by Bach, Ysaye, Bacri and Shildebaev (3/9 Castel San Pietro Terme); the quartet composed by Daniele Santimone on guitar, Tiziano Negrello on double bass, Gianluca Berardi on drums and Mattia Cappelli on sax with The Latin Itch (5/9 Faenza); and the female ensemble QuarantaQuartet with music from the 1940s revisited and contaminated with the practice of jazz improvisation (9/9 Alfonsine).