Pilgrimages of the Soul Music and Vision 26 settembre

Pilgrimages of the Soul
GIUSEPPE PENNISI visits
Italy's Sagra Musicale Umbra

The Sagra Musicale Umbra is the oldest music Festival in Italy. Its 65th edition has had special features when compared with any other European festival: it was a nine day journey (10-19 September 2010) through an entire region where it combined the beauty of landscape, monuments and arts that have few parallels anywhere. The integration between music, on the one hand, and various forms of visual art, on the other, has been an essential element of the nine days -- with nearly twenty five concerts and lectures.
Traditionally, The Sagra Musicale Umbra is a festival of 'spiritual' music. This does not mean that it is a festival of religious or sacred music. The intention is to offer, in St Francis' region, music dealing with themes that talk to the soul. This 2010 edition is named 'Pilgrimages of the Soul' because the nine days of concerts (at least two every day) are in nine different localities. The 'pilgrimages' are a search in that they do not have a specific point of arrival. Indeed, almost emblematically, they start with two 'unfinished' works: Bruckner's Ninth Symphony and Schubert's Symphony in B minor. Thus, the search itself is 'unfinished'. Also, it is not only a search on a Roman Catholic and/or a Christian path; after a High Mass in Perugia's Cathedral, the first concert was, on 11 September, a musical meetings of several cultures and religions of the Mediterranean Basin in the remarkable setting in the Church of San Bevignate where the early Gothic purity is imbued with the Knights Templar and the Crusades.
The central part of the Sagra was a celebration of Luigi Cherubini on the 250th anniversary of his birth. Past editions of the festival have had a fundamental importance in making Cherubini's music known to the rest of the musical world, after the disappearance of most of his compositions since the second half of the nineteenth century. This year, the Sagra presented a substantial anthology of his most important works. First among them the Requiem in C minor composed in 1816 for the reparative funeral of King Louis XVI; it is one of the scores most revered in the nineteenth century for its dramatic power, in which the ghost of the French Revolution finds expression in the composer's pessimistic dismay as an artist who survived one of the most tragic events of modern history. Also, the Sagra offered the rare and extraordinary Capriccio, forty minutes of virtuoso piano without intermission, a true keyboard madness which combines polyphonic artistry with intimate expressiveness. Composed in 1789, Capriccio is undeniably full of anticipations of the future, even of Romanticism. Finally, the Sagra offered Cherubini's finest string quartet.
The Sagra also paid homage to Giovanni Battista Pergolesi in the three hundredth anniversary of his birth with his well-known Salve Regina and Stabat Mater as well as with a reconstructed Vespro della Beata Vergine edited by the musicologist Malcolm Bruno on the basis of a variety of Pergolesian religious compositions.
A final comment before focusing on the four concerts heard by your reviewer. The Sagra takes place only in two theatres: the seven hundred seat nineteenth century Teatro Morlacchi in Perugia and the small two hundred seat Teatro Cuccineli in Solomeo. Most of the performances are in churches or in museums. This year, for the first time, the Sagra experimented with presentation, by art specialists, of the visual aspects of the places where the different events were held. The experiment was successful because it showed the links between music, on the one hand, and architecture and visual art, on the other.
An innovation of this Sagra was that it did not start with its tradition of many decades -- an opera or a concert in Perugia's Teatro Morlacchi. As mentioned above, the inauguration took place on 11 September -- a date full of meaning. Thus, the first event was a 6pm High Mass co-celebrated by the Archbishop and two priests in the grand San Lorenzo Cathedral, in the real heart of Perugia. As with any High Mass, this was a celebration with singing. The vocal ensemble 'Laurence Feininger' from Trento sang ancient Gregorian compositions discovered in the 'Laurence Feininger' library, one of the largest libraries of Roman Catholic music in the world, mostly music pre-dating the Council of Trent -- thus going back to the first centuries of the previous millennium.

Coro Laurence Feininger. Photo © 2010 Adriano Scognamillo
On the left side of the Cathedral, the chorus directed by Stefano Gianotti and accompanied by Stefano Rattini at the organ, sang highlights from the Missa in Nativitate Beatae Nariae Virginis and the Credo Regis, two anonymous fourteenth century Gregorian Compositions; the congregation was engrossed.
A few hours later, at 9pm, in the Templar Church of San Bevignate, the first inaugural concert by the intercultural Hespèrion XXI complex, created and conducted by Jordi Savall, took place. The Church has been utilized in a variety of ways over the centuries -- even as storage -- but it had major repair and refurbishing work to bring it back to its ancient splendor. It is not used for religious purposes but for conferences, lectures and concerts. The Templar Church was a meeting point of cultures, but also a point of cultural conflict; there are traces in its frescoes, especially in the materials employed and in the special techniques of manufacturing, full of Arabic and Persian influence. The four performers came from Spain, Morocco and Greece, and employed instruments (oud, moresca, samur, viella, rebab) either dating from several centuries ago or modeled after those of the pertinent periods. Seeing the instruments being played in the Templar Church with its frescoes was a pleasure for the eyes.

Jordi Savall. Photo © 2010 Adriano Scognamillo
The concert was divided into four sections, and each section included a short program of Jewish Sephardite, Andalusian, Berberian and Arabic music to show their similarities, especially in the use of micro-tonalities. This is quite astonishing because, in a way, micro-tonalities were rediscovered after several centuries in the music for twelve tone row as developed by the Viennese school at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the Sephardite, Andalusian, Berberian and Arabic music played by Hespèrion XXI there was considerable rhythm, but also a spell of Mediterranean melancholy which almost folded each individual piece of music and the entire concert. A fascinating exercise and a pure pleasure for the ears as well as an understanding of the cultural unity of the Mediterranean Basin -- a unity that music shows better than many other forms of artistic expression.

Hespèrion XXI. Photo © 2010 Adriano Scognamillo
Hespèrion XXI has already produced fifty seven CDs, a few DVDs and also books with CDs. If account is taken of the difficulties of performing now music of several centuries ago, as well as of the many possibilities offered to each musician, it is remarkable how Hespèrion XXI can combine individual creativity and team work in a dynamic synthesis of musical expression, the historical stylistic research and the imagination of the 21st century musicians.
On 12 September 2010, the Sagra offered two events: a piano concert in the Franciscan Museum of Montefalco (a bus ride of nearly one hour from Perugia) at 5pm and a full symphonic concert in the Teatro Morlacchi at 9pm. The piano concert focused on waltzes and nocturnes, mostly by Chopin, but also by Karganoff, Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Weber, Schumann, Bertini, Fauré and Debussy.

Bart van Oort. Photo © 2010 Adriano Scognamillo
Bart van Oort is internationally known and does not require any introduction. He played for nearly two hours on a 1849 Pleyel piano. A joy of mostly romantic music strikingly contrasting the symphony concert just a few hours later.

David Afkham conducting the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester. Photo © 2010 Adriano Scognamillo
At the Teatro Morlacchi, the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester conducted by David Afkham performed Hindemith's Mathis der Maler symphony and Bruckner's Sympony No 9 in C minor. David Afkham is twenty eight years old. The average age of the one hundred and ten members of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester is about twenty-three. They dealt with these two most difficult and very different symphonies with skill, talent and enthusiasm.

The Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester. Photo © 2010 Adriano Scognamillo
In the 1930s, Paul Hindemith was dealing with the drama of the artist's involvement in politics; his writing is very tense and full of undertones. In 1896, Anton Bruckner was preparing himself for death -- a serene death, as he was a rigorous practicing Roman Catholic, with a major late romantic work he never completed. The Teatro Morlacchi is a seven hundred seat wooden structure with three rows of boxes. With the fire of these young performers it became a true music box. The audience, captivated by the performers' enthusiasm, erupted with accolades and standing ovations.
Copyright © 26 September 2010 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

ITALY
ANTON BRUCKNER
FRANZ SCHUBERT
PAUL HINDEMITH
FRYDERYCK CHOPIN
ALEXANDER BORODIN
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY
CARL MARIA VON WEBER
ROBERT SCHUMANN
GABRIEL FAURE
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
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