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Commissioned and dedicated to
Francesco Dillon and Emanuele Torquati Premiere: 8, 10, 12, October 2019 New York, USA Columbia University, The Italian Academy Emanuele Torquati (piano) Francesco Dillon (cello) |
Concert note
Around 1814 Beethoven (1770-1827) was almost totally deaf, he was only 44 (I'm the same age while composing this piece), and he was living in Vienna. Between 1815 and 1817 he was seriously ill and had spent a lot of money in his brother Kaspar who died of tuberculosis in 1815. Beethoven became in a dispute with Kaspar's wife, Johanna, over custody of their son Karl. In this context, in 1815, the sonatas for cello and piano Nr. 4 and Nr. 5, Op, 102 where composed. My piece "Questo mare" share the program with this sonata of Beethoven and, obviously, some of these terrible moments in the life of Beethoven remained in my mind while I was composing it. I imagined the emptiness and, at the same time, the unmeasurable passing of time that could have caught him. On this piece I therefore explore the feeling of silence and in a more theatrical approach the way Beethoven bitted the piano in order to hear the music he was playing. "Questo mare" is composed as a Studio di Concerto, in the sense that this score precedes a "Double concerto for cello and piano" dedicated to Francesco and Emanuele, which premiere will be held in Italy at the end of 2019. This double concerto is named "Infinito" and it's inspired by the homonyms poem of Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) written in 1819, which finishes with this beautiful line: Shipwreck seems sweet to me in this sea - Il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare. Arturo Fuentes |