AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
CONCERT
Concert:
6:30 pm – West Building, West Garden Court
As part of A Celebration of Italian Art, Music and Film, jointly presented by the Italian Cultural Institute and the National Gallery of Art, the program features a concert by I Musici di Roma
PROGRAM
Gioacchino Rossini (1792 – 1868)
Ouverture da Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Transcribed for strings by Vincenzo Gambaro
Rossini
Une Larme
Theme and variations for cello and strings
Soloist: Pietro Bosna, cello
Alessandro Rolla (1757 – 1841)
Divertimento per viola ed archi
Andante sostenuto
Allegro alla polacca
Soloist: Massimo Paris, viola
Niccolò Paganini (1782 – 1840)
Il Carnevale di Venezia
Theme and variations for violin and strings
Soloist: Antonio Anselmi, violin
Rossini
L’invito (Vieni, o Ruggiero)
From Soirées musicales
Bolero
From Péchés de vieillesse
INTERMISSION
Selections from I Musici’s Oscar-winning film scores
Nino Rota (1911 – 1979)
Concerto for Strings
Preludio
Scherzo
Aria Finale
Written for Luchino Visconti’s Le notti bianche (1957)
Ryuichi Sakamoto (b. 1952)
Music for Strings
Written for Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987) Specially transcribed by the composer for I Musici’s
sixtieth anniversary in 2011
Luis Bacalov (b. 1933)
Concerto Grosso
Andante
Moderato
Allegro
Written for Michael Radford’s Il Postino (1996)
Specially transcribed by the composer for I Musici’s sixtieth anniversary
RSVP
FREE ADMISSION – OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
LOCATION:
National Gallery of Art
4th and Constitution Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20565
THE MUSICIANS
I MUSICI DI ROMA
Founded in 1951, I Musici di Roma is the oldest continuously active chamber group in Italy and one of the most respected chamber ensembles in the world. Formed as an ensemble that performs without a conductor, I Musici was one of the first groups to introduce eighteenth-century Italian music to twentieth-century audiences. The ensemble’s first recording of Vivaldi’s The
Four Seasons, cut in the early 1950s, has sold over twenty-five million copies in various editions, and contributed to the immense popularity of that work in the second half of the twentieth century. At the dawn of the digital age, I Musici was the first group to record a compact disc for Philips, and in
the 1970s it recorded the very first classical music video. Graduates of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the members of I Musici di Roma have brought Italian music to five continents, playing repertoire from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, including the works of contemporary Italian composers Luis Bacalov, Valentino Bucchi, Ennio Morricone, Ennio Porrino, and Nino Rota.
A consistent favorite at music festivals throughout the world, including the George Enescu International Festival in Bucharest and the Spring Festival in Budapest, I Musici di Roma continues to garner awards for its recordings on the Philips label. Among those are the Edison Award, Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, Grand Prix de l’Academie Charles Cros, Grand Prix des Discophiles, and Grand Prix International du Disque. For I Musici’s famous recording of
The Four Seasons, the Recording Institute of America generated a new level of award, the Platinum Disc with Inset Diamond.
I Musici di Roma appears at the National Gallery by arrangement with Barrett Vantage Artists, www.barrettvantage.com.
PROGRAM NOTES:
Gioacchino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, or the Futile Precaution has, since its premiere in Rome in 1816, remained one of the most popular of all operas, appealing to audiences of all ages. The opera is based on the eponymous play by Pierre Beaumarchais (1732 – 1799), which premiered in Paris in 1775.
Departing from the norm, the opera’s overture has no thematic connection with the arias that follow. The reason for this is an incident that is peculiarly fitting as a part of the history of this opera buffa. Following the premiere in Rome, Rossini accompanied the troupe for subsequent performances in Bologna. Somewhere along the way, he lost the parts for the overture, so the Bologna audience heard another overture that he had with him — the overture to Aureliano in Palmira. The substitute overture was such a success that Rossini decided to assign it permanently to The Barber of Seville.
Rossini’s Une Larme (A Tear) begins with a mournful theme and varia- tions, but his cheerful spirit takes over in a spirited finale. Rossini famously abandoned opera composing at the height of his career at age thirty-eight.
Announcing his retirement to a dismayed and bewildered public, he pro- ceeded to lead a life of leisure in Bologna and Paris and to rest on his laurels. He wrote almost nothing between 1832 and 1868 — the year of his death — but he could not keep his pen totally still. In 1835 he produced Soirées musicales, a collection of arias from his earlier operas and arrangements of some of them for instruments; and, in 1868 Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Youth), an extensive collection of pieces for various instrumental and vocal combinations, some newly composed and some rescued from his store of previously unpublished works.
Known in his own lifetime as a virtuoso violist, composer, and teacher, Alessandro Rolla found enduring fame as the violin instructor of the legend-
ary violinist Niccolò Paganini (1782 – 1840). Both Rolla and Paganini revolu- tionized their instruments, not only through their unprecedented skills as players, but through their commitment to composition. Both composed exercises and solo pieces that would elevate the level of technique required for future generations to master the violin.
It is fitting that I Musici di Roma brings highlights from its impressive collection of recorded film scores to this Celebration of Italian Art, Film, and Music. As the society that codified music and invented opera, it is only natural that Italy should have developed a world-class film industry and a generation of film composers on the forefront of a new art form. In the 1930s, Italy fol- lowed the Hollywood model and built the huge studio complex Cinecittà, which would provide the infrastructure for sustained commercial success. World War ii could have proven a stumbling block for cinematic production, but instead it inspired neorealist directors such as Vittorio De Sica (c. 1902 – 1974), Roberto Rossellini (1906 – 1977), and Luchino Visconti (1906 – 1976) to create their grim depictions of dismal social conditions and everyday hardships throughout the country. A lighter mood prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s, as films relied on stars such as Totò, Marcello Mastroianni, and Sophia Loren for entertainment. Two other successful post-war genres were the “spaghetti” Western, championed by Sergio Leone (1929 – 1989), and the art film, whose directors and cinematographers garnered praise as intellectual visionaries.
Nino Rota composed film scores prolifically, completing more than 150 between 1930 and 1979. In 1974, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on The Godfather, Part II. Alongside his film career Rota composed orchestral, choral, and chamber music. With a sometimes elegant, sometimes sinister tenor, his Concerto for Strings matches stylistically the string writing of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 – 1975), while offering a symphonic structure through motivic development. Rota composed Concerto for Strings specifically for I Musici di Roma, with the ensemble’s particular sonority in mind for the film music for Visconti’s Le notti bianche.
Ryuichi Sakamoto’s score for The Last Emperor won the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1987. Sakamoto’s score blends Chinese instruments — erhu (violin), diza (flute), gu-zheng (zither), and pipa (lute) — with a Western orchestral ensemble, giving the film both an eastern and western sonic palette. Sakamoto’s choice of consonant pentatonic themes identifies more with the film’s outgoing Qing Dynasty than the revolutionary sentiment that brought about its demise.
A naturalized Italian citizen born in Argentina, composer Luis Bacalov wrote scores to various “spaghetti” Western films early in his career, and crowned his film-score writing career by winning the Academy Award for Best Original Score for Michael Radford’s Il Postino. Bacalov collaborated with several Italian progressive rock bands in the 1970s, first adapting the soundtrack of The Designated Victim into a Concerto Grosso for the rock band New Trolls. Originally a rock concerto in eighteenth-century baroque style, the work took on a new life when he rewrote it for and dedicated to I Musici di Roma in honor of their sixtieth anniversary. In the score Bacalov writes,
“My personal thanks go to I Musici, who [have] carried their wonderfully sonorous world everywhere, for the honor of [having them play] this piece. May the sixtieth anniversary be a stimulus to continue their superb career.”
Program notes by Michael Jacko, music program specialist, National Gallery of Art