Some extraordinary playing from Michelangelo Carbonara and Giulia Soscia for the series directed by Prof Franco Ricci at the Tuscia University in Viterbo.

Prof Ricci has written many important books which includes the only biography of Francesco Siciliani ( renowned artistic director in Florence,Milan and Rome who launched Callas in her unsurpassed bel canto roles ).
He also wrote a biography of the little known composer Vittorio Rieti and has many of his original compositions.
One of which today was the world premiere of the reduction for four hands by Giulia Soscia of the original two piano version written for Gold and Fitzdale :Second Avenues Waltzes.

A duo that plays as one as was evident from their performances of Stravinsky ,Rieti and Respighi.
A clarity and rhythmic precision that gave such architectural shape to Stravinsky’s original version of the Rite of Spring.From the subtle beauty of the opening to the insinuating harmonies and rhythms that takes us to the great baccanale that caused such a scandal at its first performance in Paris under Pierre Monteux.The Rite of Spring is a ballet and orchestral concert work written for the 1913 Paris season of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Nijinsky.When first performed at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées In Paris on 29 May 1913 the music and choreography caused a sensation’ Stravinsky’s score contains many novel features for its time, including experiments in tonality,metre,rhythm,stress and dissonance and is regarded as among the first modernist works.The music influenced many of the 20th-century’s leading composers and is one of the most recorded works in the classical repertoire.

There was Parisian elegance in the waltzes by Rieti a world evidently much influenced by Poulenc and Satie but also with a very original voice of pungent rhythms and contrasts.

b. 1898 – d. 1994

Vittorio Rieti was a Jewish-Italian composer. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, he moved to Milan to study economics. He subsequently studied in Rome under Respighi and Casella, and lived there until 1940.In 1925, he temporarily moved to Paris and composed music for George Balanchine’s ballet for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, Barabau. He met his wife in Alexandria, Egypt and emigrated to the United States in 1940, becoming a naturalized American citizen on the 1st of June 1944. He taught at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore (1948–49), Chicago Musical College (1950–54), Queens College, New York (1958–60), and New York College of Music (1960–64). He died in New York on 19 February 1994.His music is tonal and neo-classical with a melodic and elegant style.

Respighi’s Pines of Rome was played with great washes of sound and sumptuous contrasts before the menacing build up to the enormous final outburst.It is a symphonic poem in four movements for orchestra completed in 1924 by Ottorino Respighi and transcribed by him for four hands.The piece, which depicts pine trees of Villa Borghese;Near a catacomb;Gianicolo;Appian Way at different times of the day, is the second of Respighi’s trilogy of tone poems based on the Eternal city, along with Fountains of Rome (1917) and Roman Festivals (1928).It premiered on 14 December 1924 at the Augusteo Theatre in Rome with Bernardino Molinari conducting the Augusteo Orchestra (S.Cecilia).Children are playing by the pine trees in the Villa Borghese Gardens , dancing the Italian equivalent of the nursery rhyme “Ring a Ring o’Roses”and “mimicking marching soldiers and battles; twittering and shrieking like swallows”.The children suddenly disappear and shadows of pine trees that overhang the entrance of a Roman catacomb dominates.It is a majestic dirge, conjuring up the picture of a solitary chapel in the deserted countryside with a few pine trees silhouetted against the sky. The third is a nocturne set on the Gianicolo .The full moon shines on the pines that grow on the hill of the temple of Janus, the double-faced god of doors and gates and of the new year. Respighi took the opportunity to have the sound of a nightingale recorded and requested in the score that it be played at the movement’s ending, the first such instance in music. The nightingale was recorded in the yard of the McKim Building of the American Academy in Rome.In the final movement Respighi recalls the past glories of the Roman Empire in a representation of dawn on the great military road the Appian Way. In the misty dawn, as a triumphant legion advances along the road in the brilliance of the newly-rising sun. Respighi wanted the ground to tremble under the footsteps of his army

Remarkable performances that brought these three works vividly to life with perfect balance,transcendental control and technical brilliance.

Here is the link to the concert that can be enjoyed for the next few months. https://youtube.com/watch?v=KOI97IH8CbM&feature=share

“Michelangelo is a very special talent, I haven’t encountered such a talent in a very longtime…
meeting such a talent is not only a great pleasure, it is much more: it gives faith to the future in music”
FOU TS’ONG

Michelangelo Carbonara was born in 1979 in Salerno (Italy), starting musical studies when he was five. He owes his piano formation to Sergio Perticaroli, William Grant Naboré and Fou Ts’ong. At seventeen, he graduated with top grades from the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in Rome under the guidance of Fausto Di Cesare. In 1999 he achieved his Piano Specialization Degree with top grades at the Academy of Santa Cecilia, earning the Grant for the Best Graduate of the Year in the class of Sergio Perticaroli. Michelangelo furthered his studies at the Salzburg Mozarteum in Austria and the Académie Musicale de Villecroze (with Dominique Merlet) in France. In 2001 he was admitted to the famous International Piano Foundation “Theo Lieven” and the International Piano Academy Lake-Como (headed by the legendary Martha Argerich), to follow the master classes of Fou Ts’ong, Leon Fleisher, Graham Johnson, Dmitri Bashkirov, Alicia De Larrocha, Peter Frankl, Claude Frank, William Grant Naboré, Andreas Staier and many other luminaries. He has won numerous national and international piano competitions (around 20 prizes). At 18 he made his international debut with orchestra in Austria, where he played the Third and the First Beethoven Concertos in the same programme. In 2003 he debuted in China, also giving a master class at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. His repertory is extremely broad and covers the entire Schubert Sonatas and almost all the piano works by Schubert, Weber, Brahms, Schumann, a lot of Beethoven’s, Clementi’s, Mozart’s Haydn’s Sonatas and dozens of Scarlatti’s. Particular attention is also given to Polish composers (amongst which Chopin, Szymanowski, Lutoslawski, Paderewski). For 2006 he is preparing Mozart’s complete piano Concertos. In the next months there will be releasing three compact disc of his piano playing by Tactus, Papageno and Geva labels. Other activities include composition and conducting.

Simplicity is the final achievement.” FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN

Giuliana Soscia, pianista, compositore, arrangiatore e direttore d’orchestra, menzionata accanto ai grandi nomi del jazz internazionale, nasce a Latina e si diploma nel 1988 con il massimo dei voti presso il Conservatorio “Santa Cecilia” di Roma. Intraprende subito un’intensa attività concertistica come solista e in gruppi da camera, vince i primi concorsi pianistici e consegue il Tirocinio in Pianoforte con Anna Maria Martinelli presso il Conservatorio O. Respighi di Latina, si perfeziona in interpretazione barocca con la clavicembalista A.M.Pernafelli e in pianoforte con il pianista, compositore Sergio Cafaro, dal quale attinge e matura l’idea di completare il percorso con l’arte dell’improvvisazione e del jazz, inclusa la composizione. Intraprende lo studio della fisarmonica e della composizione jazz e consegue il Diploma Accademico di II Livello in Composizione Jazz con il massimo dei voti e la lode presso il conservatorio “D.Cimarosa” di Avellino, che la porteranno a dedicarsi esclusivamente al jazz e ad affermarsi tra i jazzisti più riconosciuti dalla critica in Italia e all’Estero.Il 1 settembre 2017 abbandona per sempre la fisarmonica per tornare a dedicarsi esclusivamente al pianoforte e alla composizione. Svolge un’intensa attività concertistica, dal 1986 ad oggi. Si esibisce quindi nei più importanti Festival jazz e Teatri al mondo, comprese Televisioni e Radio nazionali, con i suoi progetti e come solista in importanti orchestre jazz, con un’intensa attività concertistica e consensi di pubblico e critica: Teatro San Carlo di Napoli , Teatro dell’Opera di Hanoi (VIETNAM), Teatro dell’Opera di Ankara (TURCHIA), Experimental Theatre dell’NCPA Mumbai (INDIA), GD Birla Sabhaggar Kolkata (INDIA), Civil Services Officer’s Institute New Delhi (INDIA), Qeen’s Hall di Edinburgh (UK), RSAMD di Glasgow (UK), Mac Robert Art Centre di Stirling (UK), il Byre Theatre di St. Andrews (UK), Sesc Campinas Saõ Paulo (BRASILE), Sesc Ipiranga Saõ Paulo (BRASILE), Teatro Pirandello di Lima (PERU’), ICPNA Lima Jazz Festival (PERU’), The India Council for Cultural Relations” di Kolkata (INDIA),“India Habitat Centre, Stein Auditorium” di New Delhi (INDIA) , Festival “16th East West Music & Dance Encounters from Feb 4 – 18, 2018” a Bangalore (INDIA), IIC di Marsiglia (FRANCIA), IIC di Addis Abeba (ETIOPIA), Auditorium Parco della Musica di Roma, Sala Accademica del Conservatorio “Santa Cecilia” di Roma, Sala Verdi del Conservatorio G.Verdi di milano, Teatro Menotti di Spoleto 65° Coupe Mondial Accordeon, Roccella Jazz Festival, Casa del Jazz di Roma, Teatro Verdi di Trieste, Dean Benedetti Jazz Festival con la Fondazione Festival Pucciniano, , EJE European Jazz Festival di Cagliari, Lucca Jazz Donna, 54° Festival Pontino di Musica FONDAZIONE CAMPUS INTERNAZIONALE dI Musica, “ Il Jazz Italiano per l’Aquila” , Teatro Lirico G.Verdi di Trieste, “Musica sulle bocche International Jazz Festival” e tanti altri.