An embrace of music and the city, but also a gesture to bring together the community to which we belong and for which we feel responsible, around the timeless beauty of what we define as “classic”. Not to entertain or escape from the present, but to cast a conscious and, where possible, new look at it. The Lucca Classica Music Festival crosses the finish line of the tenth edition with the maturity of 60 years, which are those of the Lucca Musical Association that organizes the festival, and it does so with a renewed edition, which marks a point for the future.
It is difficult to describe the entire program without trivializing it and equally complex to convey the idea of the myriad of nuances present between the lines of almost 70 events of the festival which begins on Wednesday 24th and ends on Sunday 28th April.
The Festival was presented on April 22nd in the Sala De Servi of San Micheletto by the president of the CaRiLucca Foundation Marcello Bertocchini, the president of the Lucchese Musical Association Marco Cattani, the artistic director of the festival Simone Soldati and the tourism councilor of the Municipality of Lucca Remo Santini. With them also the representatives of some of the organizations that collaborate in the Festival, including Cataldo Russo for the Teatro del Giglio, Nicola Lucchesi for Lucca Crea, Gabriella Biagi Ravenni for the Puccini Study Center. During the press conference, videos also arrived with greetings from Cardinal Ravasi and Stefano Bollani and Valentina Cenni.
The 200 years since the first performance of Beethoven’s Ninth become an opportunity to reflect on rights, community and utopia. The discussion on the Ninth is choral and ranges from neuroscience to music, with Maurizio Baglini who will perform the masterpiece in the piano version, moving on to the conversation between Davide Avolio, a twenty-three-year-old Neapolitan who likes to define himself as a “poetastro” (with over 250 thousand followers between Instagram and Tik Tok), and the physicist Guido Tonelli, one of the fathers of the discovery of the Higgs boson.
Giovanni Sollima with his “Al-Bunduqiyya. The lost concert” testifies to the ability of music to overcome barriers and prejudices between different cultures and eras.
The evening of Saturday 27th is conceived as a composition with two movements. The first, mainly in prose, will deal with violence against women. Claudio Santamaria will give voice to the violated soul of a victim by presenting a poem composed by Shakespeare in 1594 as a manifesto against violence to which is added the depth of Francesca Barra’s interventions, which transport him to the present and to the news. From the darkness of the first, we move towards the “light” with the second movement of the evening, in which the Guadagnini Quartet, Danusha Waskiewicz on the viola and Giovanni Gnocchi on the cello will perform Schönberg’s “Notte trasfigurata”, a work in which humanity and love demonstrate the power and salvation of which they are capable.
Also worth highlighting is the refined and surprising concert of the first evening, with the only Italian date of the King’s Singers. The famous vocal group, as a tribute to Lucca Classica, has also included in the program some pieces taken from The Lucca Choirbook, a volume which includes what remains of a gigantic codex commissioned in Bruges around 1463, containing English, Franco-Flemish and 15th century Italian. Much of the material that constitutes it comes from the State Archives and the Diocesan Archives of Lucca.
In the Puccini year, Lucca Classica offers many points of view on the Maestro, also thanks to a special collaboration with the Giacomo Puccini Study Center: music for quartet, music for piano, lyrics (with the soprano Veronica Simeoni), music by his ancestors, his relationship with the visual arts, the itinerary through his family’s homes and also an interesting journey into the music of his time. Among the events, the concert by the Quartetto della Scala and the great final concert with the Orchestra and Choir of the “Boccherini” Conservatory who will perform Puccini’s Mass for 4 voices. Also scheduled are three appointments at Palazzo Ducale with the Quintetto Lucensis, designed to bring us closer to opera and Puccini with simplicity and a language that is as comprehensible as possible, albeit respectful of the original.
Lucca Classica has always also been a laboratory of thought, not only of creativity, and its national value is underlined this year by the presence on 24 April in San Micheletto of the conference of the National Association of Music Critics which is dedicated precisely to Giacomo Puccini and will help stimulate current and lively reflection on the composer from Lucca. In the program, which is open to the public, it is worth highlighting the conversation that Angelo Foletto will hold at 5pm with Raina Kabaivanska, legendary soprano, already awarded the Premio Lucca Classica in 2016.
And speaking of the Lucca Classica Prize, this year it will be awarded on the afternoon of April 27 to Nuria Schönberg Nono, a great witness of the music of the 20th century as daughter of Arnold Schönberg and wife of Luigi Nono, as well as president of the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna and founder of the Luigi Nono Archive in Venice. In the year in which we celebrate the centenary of Nono’s birth and the 150th of Schönberg’s, Lucca Classica remembers these two great protagonists of twentieth-century music and culture with a series of events that culminate with Saturday’s ceremony.
The festival has always been committed to promoting young musicians and this year too, every day there will be at least a couple of events dedicated to the best students of the “Boccherini” Conservatory who will perform in the church of San Salvatore and in other places in the historic center . Then there are the orchestras and choirs made up of children and young people from the city’s schools who will have a place of honor with six events on the programme, to underline the educational importance of making music and doing it together.
The complete program on www.luccaclassica.it.
Most tickets are on sale on the Vivaticket platform: http://luccaclassica.vivaticket.it/ita
A ticket office has also been set up at the Teatro del Giglio and will be open from Wednesday to Saturday, from 10.30am to 1pm and from 3.30pm to 6pm. The ticket office will also be open one hour before the concerts to be held at the Giglio.
For appointments that are not on presale, ticket offices will be set up at the concert venues, open 30 minutes before each appointment.
Lucca Classica Music Festival is an event organized by the Lucca Music Association in collaboration with the Luigi Boccherini Conservatory and the Teatro del Giglio. Media partners are Bell’Italia and Gardenia, Rai Cultura and Rai Radio3. Supported by the MIC, with the patronage and support of the Tuscany Region, the Province and Municipality of Lucca, the North West Tuscany Chamber of Commerce and The lands of Giacomo Puccini, Lucca Classica is also created thanks to Acqua Silva, AKC, Akeron, Cartografica Galeotti, Castagneto Banca 1910, Farmacia Novelli, Fabio Francesconi Srl, Wolters Kluwer, Assicurazioni Generali (Lucca), Esedra Educational Institutes, Guidi Gino Spa, Piero’s ice creams, Lucar TM – Toyota Dealer, MAG, GOD Law Firm, Toscotec, Unicoop Florence, Vodafone – Lucca.
Lucca Classica also received the High Patronage of the European Parliament this year.
The Lucca Music Association thanks the Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca Foundation, the Banca del Monte di Lucca Foundation, LDM associated dental practice, MondialCarta, patrons pursuant to the Art Bonus law.
Tags: Lucca Classica Music Festival ready tenth edition
