English | Italiano

HOMEdx_en.jpg

The third edition of the Luciano Berio Festival, organized by the Centro Studi Luciano Berio with the patronage and contribution of the Municipality of Radicondoli, was held in Radicondoli (province of Siena) from May 24 to the 26.
The key word of this year's Festival, Traversata (crossing), is the title of one of the most intense theoretical texts of Berio's maturity. Interpreted in different metaphorical and concrete terms, it has been taken as a symbol of the passage toward 2025, the centenary of the Berio's birth.
The Festival featured various performances, public events, an exhibition, seminars, and readings-concerts in different venues within and outside the Tuscan village.
The Traversata is part of an international project dedicated to Berio's Sequenze that was launched in 2023 by the Centro Studi Luciano Berio in partnership with the Amici della Musica of Florence in a series of workshops in Radicondoli, Darmstadt and Cagliari. The 2024 Festival featured three exceptional musicians: the internationally acclaimed guitarist Eliot Fisk and accordionist Teodoro Anzellotti - dedicatees of Berio’s Sequenza XI and Sequenza XIII, and violinist Francesco D'Orazio, an outstanding interpreter of Sequenza VIII. They were joined in the Festival's opening event (in the village’s main piazza) by the Filarmonica Rossini of Florence, conducted by Giampaolo Lazzeri.

For the complete program of the Festival, click here.
For the photos of the Festival, click here.

FLB2024_Locandina.jpg

As part of the 2023 edition of the Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Darmstadt Summer Course), a workshop was held on Berio’s Sequenzas I, II and XIV, featuring Angela Ida De Benedictis, Claire Chase, Lucas Fels and Gunnhildur Einarsdóttir, with the collaboration of Giovanni Cestino.

During the workshop, each of the three Sequenzas were discussed in depth, combining performance practice with the direct analysis of archival sources. The workshop was an occasion for reconsidering the relationship between performance practice and musicological research, as complementary and “applied” disciplines interacting with each other. In this sense, the corpus of Berio’s Sequenzas offers a perfect “working environment” for testing the longstanding issue of integration between theory and practice.

The workshop was opened on August 12, with a Performance-Lecture on Gesti for solo recorder (1966) (click here). This piece—a sort of “extra” in the Sequenzas cycle—was analyzed as a methodological case study to unpack some of the recurring issues the genesis, performance practice and publishing history of Berio’s solo compositions. After that, the focus was on Sequenza I for flute (August 12), Sequenza II for harp (August 13), and Sequenza XIV for cello (August 14). A final discussion followed on August 15.