Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

Now in its ninth edition, the free exhibition Palazzo Marino in music dedicates its ninth edition to the relationship between music, man and nature. Appointment on Sunday at 11am in streaming with the concert The Splendor of the Baroque Garden performed by the pro-Baroque Ensemble

Milan, June 3 2020 - Classical music festival for nine years Palazzo Marino in music, created in collaboration with the Presidency of the Municipal Council and organized by Equivoci musicali, offers free concerts in the splendid sixteenth-century Alessi Hall Palazzo Marino, seat of the municipal administration of Milan and center of political life. Every year a specific theme links the concerts, thus offering the public the opportunity to follow a wide-ranging historical-musical journey that recounts different artistic and cultural eras.

This year the common thread of the concerts offered from June to November will be nature, a constant source of inspiration in the history of music, a mirror of emotional states, but also a metaphor for an ideal of harmony of being with creation: a new season of six concerts dedicated to the profound, intimate and multifaceted relationship between man, music and nature.

Climate change is one of the key challenges of our time, a symptom of a relationship between man and nature that has changed radically over the centuries. With this edition we want to offer a tool to explore, through music, the changing relationship between man and the planet he inhabits. In fact, music has always directly narrated the moods and expectations, dreams and fears of men. The ability of sound to transform psychophysical space leads the listener to feel the warmth of the Mediterranean sun, to live the experience of someone who has crossed seas and deserts, to walk through shady and majestic forests or to feel the cold winter of the north and even the internal one of the soul. The imitation of nature in music, in fact, is not limited to reproducing sounds from the sea or birdsong but leads to perceiving the moods, the sumptuous dynamics, the unpredictable disturbances and the sweet rhythms of the evening. The sound, raw natural energy, is shaped, like a rock scratched by water, by the composer-creator who draws inspiration from nature itself. By describing nature in music, man opens a door onto himself and his time, an emotional and aesthetic threshold through which to perceive his own relationship with the world.

Davide Santi and Rachel O'Brien, artistic directors of Palazzo Marino in music

To inaugurate the IX edition, entitled De naturae sonis, on Sunday 7 June, the pro-baroque Ensemble will delight us with the concert The splendor of the baroque garden between the notes of Marco Uccellini, Heinrich Franz von Biber and Antonio Vivaldi, whose famous Concerto in D major for flute, strings and continuous bass "Il gardellino", op. 10 no. 3, RV 428. Baroque aesthetics loved to compose starting from the most fascinating sounds of nature or to imitate, through music, atmospheric and natural phenomena, as well as the singing of garden birds: thus was born the famous program music that Antonio Vivaldi would develop largely doing school.

On July 5th we will follow Il viaggio del sole with the Ensemble Terra mater. A concert that follows an ideal itinerary from Anatolia - the place from which in ancient times the Sun was thought to rise (the Greek word "Anatolé" meant the dawn of the day), through the entire Mediterranean, to finally reach the lands of the West which overlooking the ocean, until the XNUMXth century represented the extreme border of every ancient world map. The program will present an original lineup which will include songs drawn from popular and ancient music and from the oral tradition repertoires of the various Mediterranean cultures.

On Sunday 2 August the public will be immersed in L'Universo arboreo in the sound of the violin with Maestro Fulvio Luciani. To guide the spectators into the world of trees and wood, composers such as Franco Piersanti, pupil and assistant of Nino Rota, author of famous soundtracks and winner of three David di Donatello, who composed the solo violin version of his music for The Secret of the Old Woods by Ermanno Olmi. Also on the program are Presto, from woods and meadows by Fabio Vacchi and from the soundtrack of Olmi's film Il lavoro delle armi.
 
After the summer break, the event resumes on Sunday 6 September with pianist Federica Bortoluzzi presenting a program inspired by the reading of Albert Camus' "solar essays", entitled La mer Mediterranèe. It refers to the luminous Mediterranean culture, identified with summer, with the Mediterranean sea understood as a physical, aqueous, ever-changing, terrestrial place, and a place where the sensual knowledge of the world becomes an instrument of contemplation of Nature itself. In this Mediterranean, inhabited by men from many different countries, Camus always recognizes the same seed, the same "smile" and imagines it united by a single culture, outlined in the true meridian thought that has its roots in the Greek world.

On Sunday 4 October the duo composed of cellist Andrea Favalessa and pianist Maria Semeraro will accompany the public on Sentieri ai confine della notte. The night of Debussy's Sonata for cello and piano, evoked by the infinite timbral and technical possibilities of the instruments: pizzicatos, glissandi, sound effects on the bridge for the cello, juxtaposition of chords and swirling movements for the piano; the darkness and darkness of Louange à l'Eternité de Jésus by Messiaen, up to the night as a moment of abandonment to the imagination with I Nottambuli by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and of transport into dance in Notturno and Tarantella by Alfredo Casella, dissolution of rational brakes and man's identification with nature thanks to music.

The season closes on Sunday 1st November with the students of the G. Verdi Conservatory of Milan accompanying the public in Vom Winter bis zum Frühling (From winter to spring) starting from the cold atmospheres of Schubert's Winterreise and passing through Schubert's Liederkreis Op.24 Schumann to get to some of Strauss's Acht Gedichte aus “Letzte Blätter“ op.10. A true journey that tells in music the blossoming of spring after the frosts and ice of winter.

Due to the Covid-19 emergency, the concerts will be broadcast live from Sala Alessi on Sunday morning at 11:00 and will be visible for free on the YouTube channel of Palazzo Marino in music and the Facebook channels of Palazzo Marino in music and musical misunderstandings.

The season is also enriched by some collaborations and collateral initiatives such as #musicformilan created together with Irina Solinas and MAME – Mediterranean ambassadors music experience, which offers the tribute of some internationally renowned artists to the city of Milan via social media, #microcosmi, created by Francesca Scotti, author of novels and short stories, which involves the radio journalist Alessandra Tedesco, the pianist Luca Ciammarughi, the founder of Perimetro Sebastiano Leddi and other exponents of the world of culture and music in order to create some narratives starting from songs or sounds in capable of expressing the theme of the season and finally the precious collaboration of the Perimetro community of photographers, which will launch an open call aimed at professional and non-professional photographers, in support of the event Palazzo Marino in music, which will investigate the free interpretation of the link between nature and music.

The review Palazzo Marino in music is created in collaboration with the Presidency of the City Council and is organized by Equivoci musica. It is supported by Intesa Sanpaolo and has the contribution of the SEA Group. Technical sponsor Fazioli. The artistic direction is by Davide Santi and Rachel O'Brien. Artistic consultant is prof. Ettore Napoli. With the support of Intesa Sanpaolo and SEA Group.
 
Palazzo Marino in music