Henri Matisse, La Leçon de piano, 1916. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Research-Led Performance: 20th Century Italian Piano Music
With this workshop the Research-led Performance cycle resumes, a programme inaugurated in 2016 that has become one of the most popular and widely appreciated activities of the Institute of Music. Its success is confirmed by the participation of leading figures among performers of twentieth-century music. Among them is Roberto Prosseda, a pianist who has gained international recognition through his recordings of the complete piano works of Mendelssohn and Mozart. In his concert activity, his in-depth engagement with the Classical repertoire has been combined with a sustained exploration of twentieth-century Italian compositions for solo piano.
This dual perspective, in which the aesthetics of Classicism intersect with linguistic innovation, together with a strong interest in the distinctive relationship that the soloist establishes with the audience, reveals a profound affinity with the conceptual foundations of Research-led Performance, a project that brings musicological research and performance practice into dialogue.
The workshop focuses on a selection of significant twentieth-century Italian piano works, featuring music by Alfredo Casella, Goffredo Petrassi, Luigi Dallapiccola, Aldo Clementi and Niccolò Castiglioni. The programme will alternate musicological sessions devoted to the analysis of the works with practical sessions dedicated to piano performance.
The musicological sessions of the workshop and the concluding concert are also open to the public, subject to availability.
Musicological sessions and final concert
TUESDAY 24 MARCH, 9–11
Gianmario Borio, University of Pavia / Fondazione Giorgio Cini
The BACH symbol in post-war Italian music and analytical observations on Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera
Susanna Pasticci, Sapienza University of Rome
Writing, gesture, performance: questions of poetics and compositional technique in the piano music of Casella and Petrassi
WEDNESDAY 25 MARCH, 11–13
Francisco Rocca, Fondazione Giorgio Cini
Tre Pezzi per pianoforte (1978) by Niccolò Castiglioni: analytical observations and sources of the compositional process
Michele Leggieri, University of Pavia
Aldo Clementi’s piano writing through the study of sketches
THURSDAY 26 MARCH, 18:30
Final concert, Auditorium ‘Lo Squero’
Henri Matisse, La Leçon de piano, 1916. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
