NINETY STARS ARE BORN Music & Vision March 4

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NINETY STARS ARE BORN

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GIUSEPPE PENNISI tours Austria
with a young Italian symphony orchestra



The second half of February is a charming time to visit Austria; the snow is beginning to melt and the first signs of Spring can be smelt in the air. It is especially enchanting to tour Austria, from Styria to Vienna via Salzburg, in three buses with a young orchestra invited to perform four concerts during a week in some of the most prestigious halls of continental Europe. Before summarizing the journey, it may be useful to recall that last Autumn, the periodical Gig (incorporating International Arts Manager) devoted two full pages to the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma (OSR), a comparatively new formation in the Italian and European landscape. The Gig article is an important signal of the international attention received by a symphony orchestra which began operating only about eight years ago. Also a left-of-center Italian think tank (Astrid) is joining forces with a free market research institution (Istituto Bruno Leoni) for a study of OSR's artistic and financial success; the study will form the core of a forthcoming book on the Italian performing arts.

Francesco La Vecchia conducting the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma in Salzburg. Photo © 2010 Antonio Tirocchi
Francesco La Vecchia conducting the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma in Salzburg. Photo © 2010 Antonio Tirocchi

The OSR was the outcome of a training course financed by the European Commission and organized by the Arts Academy, a non-profit but fully private music school. Occasionally the Brussels bureaucrats do something good even for music. After the course, there was no employment in sight for the young musicians, so the Arts Academy mastermind -- the headstrong and highly experienced Maestro Francesco La Vecchia -- decided to seek funds to form an orchestra. Many thought he was a hopeless and helpless dreamer, but he met another dreamer, the president of a charity; in its turn, the charity owns one of the oldest Italian savings and loans associations and its profits are deemed to be channeled to social and cultural undertakings. The dream became a hard and solid reality -- and a source of stable long-term employment for ninety musicians (to be supplemented by contract instrumentalists as and when needed). At the time, their average age was twenty three.

The OSR has some important features:

1. It is the only completely private symphony orchestra in Italy, and one of the very few in Continental Europe. It does not receive any state, regional, provincial or municipal support -- even though in 2009 it was given a ten thousand euro grant (US$ 15,000) by the Ministry of Culture.
2. It is financed mostly by the Fondazione Roma, a nonprofit registered charity with a mission to 'organise social freedom'. The Fondazione Rome does not operate only in the field of music, but runs a private museum and performs important activities in the fields of health, education, scientific research and aid to the under-privileged. The OSR is also helped by a few locally-based small companies, and by an association of its subscribers and fans. The OSR also carries out charity activities, such as free concerts in small towns and even in jails.
3. The OSR has ninety permanent musicians with an average age now of around thirty, a budget less than one-sixth of that of the main symphony orchestra in the Italian capital (Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia) and a low-priced ticket policy to attract young and old people with modest incomes -- season tickets for thirty concerts vary from 90 to 260 euros according to the category.
4. The orchestra's music director and permanent conductor is Maestro Francesco La Vecchia, who is also principal guest conductor of the Berliner Symphoniker. La Vecchia has been music director of opera houses and symphony orchestras in Central Europe (Budapest), Latin America (Rio de Janeiro) and Portugal (Lisbon). He also often conducts in Shanghai's large concert hall.

During its eight years, the OSR has also gained an important place on the international music scene due to its tour of Brazil, Russia, the UK, Spain, Germany, Poland and China. After the Austrian tour, the group's next symphonic journey is slated for the USA and Canada in June. Significantly, the OSR was chosen by the Austrian Government as the Italian orchestra to participate in the 31 May 2009 celebrations for Haydn's bicentenary. As many of our readers may know, the Austrian Ministry of Culture and the Committee for the Celebrations of Haydn's Bicentenary had a brilliant idea: on 31 May, the day of the composer's death, twenty symphony orchestras and/or opera houses performed one of his greatest and best known oratorios, Die Schöpfung ('The Creation'). Due to the different time zones, Die Schöpfung day started in New Zealand and ended in Honolulu. An earnest radio listener could enjoy the different performances over 24 hours and appreciate the differences in conducting as well as in singing. Opera houses were included because in certain countries (such as Germany), Die Schöpfung is also staged as a music drama: computer technology and animation are a superb support in depicting the initial chaos, the creation of the animals, of the flowers, of the lakes, of the rivers and of the mountain as well as the Garden of Eden with the passionate duet by Adam and Eve. The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia did not appreciate that the OSR was preferred, and performed the work for its subscribers early in the Spring of 2009.

I have been a steady listener to OSR concerts, not only because they are set at convenient times (5.30pm on Sundays and 8.30pm on Mondays) in a pleasant 1,800 seat auditorium just a few steps away from my home in Rome. The main reason is that they offer an innovative program (as compared with the Accademia di Santa Cecilia and other major orchestras in Italy): the OSR combines Nono with Schubert, Stravinsky with Bruckner, Casella with Brahms, Tchaikovsky with Mailipiero, Liszt with Shostakovich. Until twenty years ago, such a blend was provided, in Rome, by the Italian public radio and television concerts, but these concerts were discontinued and the marvelous acoustically-perfect Roman auditorium was converted to a TV studio for mere entertainment and games.

This 2009-2010 season started on 17 October with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The program includes all of Beethoven's orchestral compositions, to be performed in eight of the thirty concerts, and also all of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and all of the Suites. The twentieth century is not forgotten: the OSR is recording all orchestral works by Martucci, Casella and Malipiero -- some of them are in the 2009-2010 season -- and offers two very rare and exquisite compositions by Respighi: Poema autunnale and Vetrate di Chiesa.

The Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma performing in Graz. Photo © 2010 Antonio Tirocchi
The Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma performing in Graz. Photo © 2010 Antonio Tirocchi

Finally, for a Christmas-New Year gift, a small blue and gold coffer with four Naxos CDs containing all the most significant compositions of Giuseppe Marcucci (1856-1909) and commemorating the centenary of his death. Nearly forgotten now, Marcucci was one of the few Italian composers specializing in symphonic music when melodrama was the main musical attraction. Toscanini had a veneration for him, and in 1932 organized a series of concerts to play all his works.

The Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma in Graz. Photo © 2010 Antonio Tirocchi
The Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma in Graz. Photo © 2010 Antonio Tirocchi

The Austrian tour (17-24 February) was anchored to two different musical programs. As is customary in OSR concerts, the first program combined a well known tone poem (Musorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition in Ravel's orchestration) with two tone poems (Respighi's Fontane di Roma ('Fountains of Rome') and I Pini di Roma ('Pines of Rome') less familiar to the Austrian general symphonic music audience. The second blended late nineteenth century Italian symphonic music (Martucci's Colore Orientale, Notturno No 2 and Tarantella) with very widely known orchestral music by mostly opera composers (Puccini's Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut, Verdi's overture to I Vespri Siciliani and Rossini's overture to Guillaume Tell). This quite astute programming allowed part of the second concert's compositions to be used as an encore to the first concert. In Graz, the encore was Verdi's overture. In Salzburg, the first concert was supplemented with Martucci's Notturno and the second with the final movement of Respighi's I Pini. In Vienna, at the Musikverein's Golden Hall, the accolades never seemed to stop: the first program was supplemented by Martucci's Notturno, Verdi's I Vespri and the second part of Rossini's Guillaume Tell overture. Naturally, due to the Musorgsky-Ravel and Respighi tone poems, the permanent ninety-strong OSR was expanded to 110, by including some of the best members of Rome's Teatro dell'Opera orchestra.

Francesco La Vecchia and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma in Vienna's Große Musikvereinssaal. Photo © 2010 Antonio Tirocchi
Francesco La Vecchia and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma in Vienna's Große Musikvereinssaal. Photo © 2010 Antonio Tirocchi

In Graz, the capital of Styria and the second largest city of Austria, the OSR performed in the 1200 seat Stefaniensaal, a beautiful and acoustically splendid hall built between 1905 and 1908 in pure Art Déco style. In Salzburg, the two concerts were held in the university's 700 seat Mozart Aula (because Easter Festival productions were being rehearsed in the other halls, and the Festival administration was also dealing with a complicated financial scandal). In Vienna, the OSR was invited to the Musikverein, that sanctuary to which only superior international orchestras are given admission. Fifteen minutes of accolades followed the Musikverein concert. It had started at 7.30pm and the encore ended after 10pm.

Francesco La Vecchia and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma in Vienna's Musikverein. Photo © 2010 Antonio Tirocchi
Francesco La Vecchia and the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma in Vienna's Musikverein. Photo © 2010 Antonio Tirocchi

Travelling with a hundred and ten young and enthusiastic musicians is a challenging and rewarding experience. Obviously, initially they were nervous in approaching an Austrian audience with the reputation of being much more sophisticated than their listeners in Rome. La Vecchia encouraged them in a fatherly way as they travelled from Graz to Salzburg and on to the terrific and terrifying Musikverein. Naturally, they unwound with a joyful party after the performance, even though their alarm clocks were set at dawn in order to catch a very early charter flight to Rome on 24 February, and to be ready to rehearse on 25 February for concerts on 28 February and 1 March (J S Bach's Brandeburg Concertos Nos 1, 2 and 3 and Orchestral Suites Nos 1 and 2 under the baton of Lior Shambadal).

Copyright © 4 March 2010 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

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AUSTRIA

VIENNA

SALZBURG

ROME

ITALY

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