Chamber Music Concert III: Suspended Between Two Worlds

Maurice Ravel contributed to the musical innovation of the first thirty years of the twentieth century, in France and far beyond its borders, expressing himself through an eclectic language that took inspiration from Spanish accents and gestures, the amazing blend of great orchestral craftsmanship and addictive melodic spirals, the seductions of Viennese-flavored waltzes, the American operetta, the old New Orleans jazz, ragtime and blues.

In his string quartet, Ravel shows emotional reticence, strong innovations but all embedded in traditional forms, abandoning the vagueness and formlessness of early French Impressionism, in favor of a return to classical standards.

Also known as “the Ravel of Florence”, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, has lived a life suspended between his old and his new homelands. Italian of Jewish origin, in 1939, when the fascist regime enacted the racial laws, he sadly left Firenze and fled to the United States, finding work in Hollywood, where he was hired to make movies’ soundtracks.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco, in connection to Ravel, felt a need to tell, to show sound images and colours using warm and sharp timbers, counting on a very rich and flowing melodic talent. He has used a so called “conservative language”, equally linked to late nineteenth-century Romanticism, to the Impressionism and to Spanish folklore. He also devoted himself to the composition for guitar throughout his life and this quintet contains some of his most inspired pages.

The concert includes intermission.

Free admission.