CUNEO CRONACA – Double musical event in Cuneo between Sunday 7 and Tuesday 9 July, curated by the Ghedini Conservatory: on the first evening the church of Santa Maria della Pieve hosts a concert coordinated by Susanne Scholz and Carmen Leoni, on the second evening Voxnova Italia performs in the church of San Sebastiano in a trio formation. Participation in the events, which are part of the 2024 Artistic Season of the Conservatory, is free and no reservation is necessary.
On Sunday 7 July at 8:30 pm, in the church of Santa Maria della Pieve (via Santa Maria), Susanne Scholz, professor of Violin and director of the Department of Early Music at the University of the Arts in Graz in Austria, and Carmen Leoni, professor of Harpsichord and Historical Keyboards at the Ghedini, will direct and coordinate the final concert of the instrumental baroque music workshop held by the two teachers between February and July. The concert, in which the students who attended the workshop will perform, includes pieces by the German organist and composer Georg Muffat (Suite alla Francese, Florilegium II, Faciculus III), the French composer and conductor André Campra (L’Europe Galante) and the great composer Johann Sebastian Bach (Ouverture No. 2 in B minor, BWV 1067).
During the workshop the students had the opportunity to experiment with the performance practice of the seventeenth and eighteenth century repertoire, in particular through the study of Muffat who in the preface of his workFlorilegia writes precise indications on the French Baroque style. The text contains invaluable information on tuning and the different tuning forks that existed around the eighteenth century, it enlightens us on the tempo, on the movements of the dances, on how to draw the bow (also on the arches especially in French music) and suggests indications on the ornamentation and on many other particularities of the musical practice of the period of Louis XIV and his most famous court musician, Jean-Baptiste Lully. These indications remain relevant throughout the Baroque period and, thanks to important ambassadors such as Muffat, they spread beyond France and were put into practice by composers who are still very well known today, such as JS Bach. Although playing mainly on instruments not from that historical period, by applying these indications and giving space to experimentation, one can obtain a broad and in-depth perspective of Baroque music.
Tuesday 9 July at 9pm in the church of San Sebastiano (Contrada Mondovì) Voxnova Italia, in trio formation, presents Madrigals ancient and new, an a cappella concert in which madrigals, villanelles and other pieces from the sixteenth century repertoire, by Luca Marenzio (To a fresh shore, At the first sight of you, Occhi sweet and sweet), Pietro Vinci (Eyes graceful and beautiful) and Adriano Banchieri (excerpts from La follia senile), are accompanied by two Italian premieres by contemporary authors already performed abroad on tour by the ensemble: the cantata Almeria, your scorched earth by the German composer Ernst Helmuth Flammer, on texts by Pablo Neruda and which also includes small percussions played by the singers, and Monteverdi-Fragments by Gianluca Verlingieri, inspired by the famous Lamento di Arianna and the madrigal Ecco murmorar l’onde based on a text by Torquato Tasso, both by Claudio Monteverdi. In Monteverdi-Fragments the voices will sometimes attempt to imitate the behavior of electronic synthesizers.
The trio of singers of the Voxnova Italia group is formed by the mezzo-soprano, actress and writer Virginia Guidi, the tenor and conductor Sandro Naglia and the American bass-baritone Nicholas Isherwood: the latter is also the protagonist of the masterclass The contemporary voice. Extended techniques from diphonic singing to the use of the microphone which will be held between Monday 8 and Tuesday 9 July and in which Isherwood explores with practical sessions and examples taken from the contemporary repertoire the extended techniques used in the 20th and 21st centuries in vocal composition and improvisation and their use in combination with electronics, inviting students to actively participate.
Isherwoodone of the world’s greatest interpreters of today’s music, is the author of the manual “The Techniques of Singing” published by Bärenreiter and founder of the vocal group Voxnova Italia: he has collaborated with some of the greatest composers of our time, including Bussotti, Carter, Crumb, Henze, Kagel, Kurtág, Messiaen, Scelsi, Stockhausen and Xenakis.
Voxnova Italy is a vocal group whose geometry varies from one to eight voices, and whose members have sung as soloists in major festivals and theaters around the world. The group, founded by Isherwood, debuted in Los Angeles with Stockhausen’s “Stimmung”, and the Los Angeles Times wrote: “the voices here might have been angels”, and subsequently performed at major festivals, theaters and museums , including the Venice Biennale, the Maxxi in Rome, Traiettorie Parma, the Ruhr Triennale in Germany together with the musicians of Musik Fabrik, the Codes Festival in Poland and many others.
