Fabio Vacchi
Beethoven e la primavera ritrovata
World première - Commissioned by Maggio Musicale Fiorentino for the period March - May 2020
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Le nozze di Figaro, Overture
Symphony in G minor K. 550
Concert in D minor K. 466 for piano and orchestra
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Thanks to Enel for supporting the project "New music for this period"
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Beethoven, e la primavera ritrovata
The piece originates from an in-depth reading by Fabio Vacchi of The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela and from the commission of a melologist from the Paris Mozart Orchestra always inherent in the figure of the great South African politician and Nobel laureate. "I was struck by the positive energy that Mandela drew from music: from jazz and rock & roll, with their sources in the blues, and from Beethoven. But he also left me breathless - writes Vacchi in the room program - his strength of spirit, thanks to which the letters that friends and family wrote to him were able, according to him, to make spring break into his cell. A profound imaginative association has sprung within me with the release from the lockdown, from fear and anxiety, just in time to rediscover spring, life, and perhaps to start looking at it in another way. "
Ouverture from Le nozze di Figaro
On May 1, 1786, the first of the three masterpieces created by Mozart in collaboration with Lorenzo Da Ponte debuted at the Burgtheater in Vienna: Le nozze di Figaro. The literary source is the much discussed comedy by Beaumarchais Le mariage de Figaro, guilty of arousing suspicion and fear for its satirical-political contents. Mozart, however, manages to get around the obstacle by concentrating his attention on the pinwheel of amorous misunderstandings, traps, suspicions, clandestine encounters and agnitions that follow one another relentlessly in the Wedding. And so, from the very first bars of the famous Ouverture Mozart gives his music a very tight, exuberant, irresistible rhythm and that swirling swarm of string quatrains drags us in a moment into the folle journée of Figaro and his companions: it is the apotheosis of the movement at the pure state, which underlines the excitement of a day full of events and expectations such as that of the protagonist's wedding.
Symphony No. 40 in G minor K. 550
1788 is the year that marks Mozart's farewell to the symphonic genre with the last three Symphonies - K. 543, K. 550, K. 551 - created in just three months and perhaps conceived as the only great sound fresco. In the summer of that year Mozart went through a very troubled period. After the poor success of Don Giovanni in Vienna, the composer is distressed by debts and tried by economic hardship and therefore hopes to recover with those three symphonies composed in an extraordinary creative impetus. Between the serenity that pervades the Symphony K. 543 and the solemn grandeur of the K. 551 Jupiter, the Symphony in G minor K. 550 stands out for its “nocturnal” and painful character. The four movements of the symphony (Very Allegro - Andante - Minuetto - Allegro molto) welcome within them a new feeling of profound uneasiness that winds through the orchestra from start to finish. If the first movement, deprived of the canonical slow introduction, stands out for the immediate attack entrusted to the strings - among the most evocative ever written - the Andante that follows takes on noble and elegiac tones. The Minuet alternates baroque severity and gallant movements, while the Allegro molto (which also inspired the Scherzo of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony) closes the work with a rapid and inexorable motion of strong dramatic impact.
Concert in D minor K. 466 for pianoforte and orchestra
In the years following his move to Vienna, Mozart divides his days between composing and concerts as a soloist on the piano. There are many and very high-quality concerts made in those years, produced to meet the needs of the Viennese public who appreciated the genre so much. However with the passage of time Mozart transformed the concert for piano and orchestra, considered a genre of pure musical entertainment, into something new, in a laboratory where to experiment, while respecting the classical form, new expressive solutions. A perfect example of this new concept is the Concerto for piano and orchestra in D minor K. 466 composed in February 1785. For the first time in a concert Mozart adopts a tragic tonality like the D minor, dramatizing the dialectical comparison between the two individualities sound in the field. In the three movements (Allegro - Romanza - Rondò) we see soloist and orchestra facing each other as two opposing entities in a climate full of pathos. Rapid switch-ons, continuous tonal oscillations, fast-paced rhythms and restless melodies are at the center of this work which reveals new aspects of Mozart's creativity and which thanks to this "pre-romantic" guise secured the favor of posterity. Permanently entered into the repertoire, it is said to be Beethoven's favorite Mozart concert, who also composed its cadences.