Christmas Concert 2019 <br>22Homage to Federico Fellini22

Visioninmusica celebrates the traditional musical event just a few days before the Christmas holidays with a concert dedicated to the figure of Federico Fellini, on the eve of an important anniversary that will fall in 2020: the hundred years since the birth of the Rimini director.
Music and images are the stylistic figure of Visioninmusica and it is difficult to imagine better interpreters of Federico Fellini and Nino Rota. A symphonic suite with the most famous pieces of the soundtracks of the fellinian films, expertly arranged by Roberto Granata, is flanked by a Rossinian program: the overtures from Mr. Bruschino, The Cinderella and The Barber of Seville. The juxtaposition should not be surprising, if you think of the emblematic role that, in their field, both musicians have played: Rossini in the history of musical theater and Rota in the history of film music. Two dominant figures, both of which were an essential reference for the generations of composers who were contemporary and later. Following a non-bold parallelism, as is irrefutable the Rossinian legacy of all opera composers at least up to Verdi, so it is undeniable the impact and subsequent influence that Nino Rota’s music has had on the authors of columns that followed him. After all, Fellini-Rota is one of those magical – almost inscidifiable – marriages between the director and composer who have marked the history of cinema: as Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, Steven Spielberg and John Williams, Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Peter Greenway and Michael Nyman, to name other great pairings.
Fellini and Rota have collaborated on sixteen films, some of which beautifully embody the synthesis of music and image(The Calfs, The Road, The Sweet Life,8 1/2, Amarcord). As Giordano Montecchi pointed out, although the director’s role is believed to be prevalent compared to that of the composer, in fact in the case of Fellini and Rota the question is complicated, since in Fellini’s films the music plays its own narrative role and sometimes even supplants dialogues, so much so that it can be considered “music-character”.
The musical event is framed by two songs from the sacred repertoire. It is two arrangements for saxophone and orchestra: Federico Mondelci and the Philharmonic Gioachino Rossini will perform the so-called Ave Maria di Caccini and the Pastoral from the Concert made for Christmas night by Arcangelo Corelli. The attribution of the first piece to the sixteenth-century composer Giulio Caccini, or his circle, has long been questioned and traced back to a Russian composer – Vladimir Vavilov (1925-1973) – who first published it in 1970. Despite this, the song has enjoyed and enjoys great success, also thanks to the numerous recordings (Inese Galante, Andrea Bocelli, Eluna Garana, etc.) so much to be used, to remain on the theme, even in film soundtracks (Donnie Darko, 2001). The Pastoral is the last of the six movements of the eighth Concerto Corelli op. 6, published posthumously in 1714 in Amsterdam, for the types of Estienne Roger. As the musicologist Peter Allsop reconstructs, the concert was performed for the first time probably in Rome, on Christmas Eve 1689, at the apostolic palace, in the presence of Pope Alexander VIII and the College of Cardinals. According to tradition, the pontiff and the sacred college attended a musical performance that included a cantata above the nativity ofthe Child Jesus, before retiring to the Sistine Chapel for midnight mass. In a note of expenses of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, patron of Corelli, it is stated that on that occasion “Mr. Archangel for his concert” was paid 10 shields.

Program

Giulio Caccini (1551 – 1618)
– Ave Maria (orchestration R. Grenade)

Gioachino Rossini (1792 – 1868)
– Mr. Bruschino – Sinphony
– The Cinderella – Sinphony
– The Barber of Seville – Symphony

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Archangel Corelli (1653 – 1713)
Pastoral from the Concert for Christmas
Night

Nino Rota (1911-1979)
Film Suite for saxophone and orchestra (arr. R. Granata)
“Homage to Fellini on the 100th anniversary of his birth”
Orchestra Rehearsal
Amarcord
Rocco and his brothers
The Clowns
the road
The Parrot
The Godfather
The Sweet Life
Eight and a Half

FILARMONICA GIOACHINO ROSSINI

The Gioachino Rossini Philharmonic (FGR) was born from the initiative of Michele Antonelli, its first artistic director, who brought together a group of excellent musicians with a rich national and international activity behind it. The Philharmonic debuted on February 21, 2014, at the Pedrotti Auditorium in Pesaro. Since June 2015, the principal director is Donato Renzetti, with whom a new and profitable artistic path has been launched. The prestige of the orchestra, achieved in a short time, is consecrated by the record label DECCA (Universal Music group) which invites her to record, at the Teatro della Fortuna di Fano, a concert with tenor Juan Diego Florez.
In 2015 the Philharmonic debuted on the international scene with some concerts at the Beiteddine Art Festival in Lebanon, accompanying, among others, Anna Netrebko. In 2016 the FGR is the protagonist at the Royal Albert Hall in London for the Rosenblatt Recitals Series. In June of the same year, the Rossini project began on a journey that will take the orchestra to perform at the Verdi Hall of the Milan Conservatory, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Great School of San Rocco in Venice and the Olympic Theatre in Rome. At the 37th edition of the Rossini Opera Festival the FGR is on the main billboard with Il Turco in Italy.
Collaborations with international artists follow each other and it is worth remembering those with John Irvin, Sergey Romanovsky, Michael Spyres, David Parry, Ildar Abdrazakov and Ivian Lapez-Reynoso.
The Philharmonic also performed at the Royal Opera House in Muscat, Oman and the Musikverein in Vienna for The Journey to Reims. In April 2018, the box set of four compact discs entitled Complete Overtureswas released, containing the full recording of Rossini’s symphonies. In 2018 he released a new musical outreach project entitled Symphonic Music – a listening guide for non-experts. In 2019 the Orchestra gives life to the Brahms Project for conductors and participates in the Rossini Opera Festival with the resumption of the very rare Demetrio and Polibio.

FEDERICO MONDELCI
Saxophonist and conductor, Federico Mondelci is one of the greatest and most appreciated performers of the international music scene. Graduated in saxophone at the Conservatory of Pesaro, he also studied singing, composition and direction, perfecting himself at the Superior Conservatory of Bordeaux under the guidance of Jean-Marie Londeix and obtaining a diploma with “gold medal” unanimously. Federico Mondelci performs with the most important orchestras in the world such as the La Scala Philharmonic with Seiji Ozawa, The Moscow Soloists with Yuri Bashmet, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and the BBC Philharmonic. He has also collaborated with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and the Bangkok Symphony Orchestra.
His repertoire, extensive and varied, includes both works of the classical tradition, as well as music of the twentieth century and contemporary works (by authors such as Nono, Kancheli, Glass, Donatoni, Sciarrino, Scelsi, Gentilucci, Fitkin, Piovani and Nyman; some of them have composed expressly for him). As a conductor he was in turn joined by famous soloists such as Ilya Grubert, Kathryn Stott, Pavel Vernikov, Nelson Goerner, Francesco Manara, Natalia Gutman and Luisa Castellani. Federico Mondelci’s performances, both orchestral and chamber music, are engraved on Delos and Chandos labels.
In 1982 he founded the Italian Saxophone Quartet and in 1995 the Italian Saxophone Orchestra. Since then he has performed with both of these popular bands both in Italy and abroad.
To mark the bicentenary of the birth of Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone, he received an invitation from the St. Petersburg Philharmonic to perform as conductor and soloist in a gala concert held on June 26, 2014, as part of the prestigious season directed by Yuri Temirkanov. He will be back at the St. Petersburg Philharmonic in April 2020.
In 2017 Federico Mondelci was awarded the title of “Marchigian of the Year”.