«The great 19th century» is the title of the new concert with which the Collegium Musicum continues his twenty-ninth concert season: it will be a tribute to two composers like the French Charles Gounod (1818-1893) and the Czech Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904), who crossed the 19th century with a recognizable writing style and some masterpieces that rightfully entered the history of music. The concert, with the Collegium Musicum orchestra directed by Rino Marronewill take place in the first instance Sunday 9 June, at 8pmIn the Molfetta Cathedral (in collaboration with the Wanda Landowska Festival and the music production center and record label Digressione Music, info and reservations 351.986.94.33, ticket for 3 euros which can be collected at the Info Point in Molfetta, via Piazza 27).
The event will then return to the stage Tuesday 11 June, at 19, in Bariin an event that will inaugurate the open-air concerts of «Music at Villa La Rocca» (via Celso Ulpiani 27, info and reservations: 340.499.38.26), in collaboration with the Apulian Academy of Sciences. Two masterpieces are on the program: the Petite Symphonie for wind instruments by Gounod and the Serenade in D minor op. 44 for wind instruments, cello and double bass by Dvořák. Before the music, there will be a listening guide from the musicologist Pierfranco Moliterni.
There Petite Symphonie, composed by Gounod in 1885, is a pleasant and delightful musical composition, which confirms the essentially melodic style of the suave Parisian artist. In this score Gounod is perfectly at ease in elaborating the themes contrapuntally and developing them with that elegant taste of instrumentation, aimed at highlighting the timbral scent of the harmonic invention. Divided into four movements, the Andante is the most sincerely Gounodian moment and fits appropriately between cheerful and playful outbursts of pungent instrumental effect.
There Serenade op. 44 was written by Dvořák in two weeks in January 1878, and published the following year by Simrock, with a dedication to the prestigious Berlin critic Louis Ehlert. After studying the score, Brahms wrote to his friend and famous violinist Joseph Joachim: «You could not have a better sense of sparkling creativity and fruitful and fascinating talent. Have it performed: I think it is a real pleasure for a wind instrumentalist to play such a score.”
The opening of the Serenade in D minor is entrusted to a march tempo, which recalls the style of Mozart’s Serenades relived by a sensitivity and energy of a strongly Slavic character. The love for the Czech land and its famous open-air music concerts is also manifested in the following movement, certainly similar to the spirit of a folk dance, the «Sousedská», which with its gentle and delicate movements recalls a sort of popular «Minuet». The «Andante con moto», in the sweetness of its melodic progression, highlights the dual expressive matrix of the author of the Symphony «From the new world», the unconscious and spontaneous one of many pages of sunny eloquence, and the more secretly reflective and emotionally profound one of the sacred passages. The supreme example of Dvořák’s compositional mastery is the freedom with which he constructs the final «Allegro tanto», a Rondo in which reminiscences of the initial March alternate with a lively Polka that leads us to the joyous D major of the Coda.
editorial board
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