Artistic Freedom in Music and Vision May 31st

Artistic Freedom
GIUSEPPE PENNISI visits the sophisticated
music festival in a Tuscan mountain convent
and stays for the full three days

This year too, the Montegral Academy held its annual three day festival at the end of the Spring in the breathtaking Convento dell'Angelo on the top of a Tuscan mountain. General information on the Academy was provided in Music & Vision on 10 May 2010 and there's further information at the www.montegral.com website. In short, the Academy was created some ten years ago on the basis of a long-term agreement between the Passion Fathers (owners of the Convent) and a foundation established under the aegis of the composer and conductor Gustav Kuhn, considered by Herbert von Karajan as his favorite heir. Its main purpose is to train instrumentalists and singers for two major festivals, the Tyrol Festival (www.tiroler-festpiele.at) in July (mostly opera) and the Alto Adige Festival (www.altoadige-festival.it) in September (mostly symphonic music). Often, the young musicians are recruited by Austrian and German orchestras and opera houses. An Austrian record company Col-Legno (www.col-legno.com) provides its own support and stirs that of savings & loans associations, banks and local authorities. Diversified financing is the road to artistic freedom.

The Convent at Montegral. Photo © 2011 Judith Pfahnl. Click on the image for higher resolution
In four years, the Montegral Festival has become the most sophisticated spring music appointment in continental Europe. From 20 to 22 May 2011, the Convent (seventy cells for monks and a few grand rooms for senior authorities, conceived for bishops and aristocrats) and a few hotels in the valley and in Lucca have had as their guests nearly forty musicians and an audience of no more than a hundred, the full capacity of the convent's 1830 neoclassical church.

Violinist Fjodor Lushch plays for some of the select audience at Montegral including, front right, composer/conductor Gustav Kuhn. Photo © 2011 Judith Pfahnl. Click on the image for higher resolution
The audience was, of course, very selective: the President of the Austrian National Bank, the Tyrol Prime Minister, a few Italian bankers and industrialists, a limited number of music lovers, chosen among those normally going to the July and September Festival in Tyrol and Alto Adige, very few journalists (but from all over continental Europe). A three-day retreat of this kind may make the media about an Austrian-German-Italian plot to take over the euro area. Nothing like that: just the pleasure of music in astounding surroundings.

Violinist Fjodor Lushch and composer/conductor Gustav Kuhn lead the procession from the terrace to the church at Montegral. Photo © 2011 Judith Pfahnl. Click on the image for higher resolution
The church serves as the main auditorium for the festival according to a strict ritual: 6pm aperitif on the terrace (with a breathtaking view over a Tuscan valley); 6.30pm a walk from the terrace to the church to the sound of the violin played by virtuoso Fjodor Lushch. Then a chamber music concert followed by dinner, and around 10.30pm a second chamber music concert until very late at night. On Sunday morning, Mass is celebrated in the church with a philological edition of Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle (with no orchestra but three grand-pianos).

The end of Girolamo Deraco's micro-opera 'REDazione' in Montegral convent's neo-classical church. Photo © 2011 Judith Pfahnl. Click on the image for higher resolution
Two ingredients are at the basis of the festival's success: a) young artists; and b) a careful balance between classical music (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart), nineteen century music (Catalani, Puccini, Mahler) and contemporary music (Ligeti, Deraco). There is also chamber opera, or rather micro-opera -- very few instrumentalists and soloists. Last year the micro-opera was Deraco's Checkinaggio on what happens at an airport check-in if terrorists or people thought to be terrorists fiddle in. This year Deraco premiered a 'Delirium Drama' titled 'REDazione': what happens in a newspaper newsroom if cell phones make everyone go mad. REDazione will go to a major Scandinavian contemporary music festival in the Summer, to Milan in September and to Rome in November.

The duo Akkosax - Hannes Sprenger, saxophone and Siggi Haider, harmonium - perform at the Montegral festival. Photo © 2011 Judith Pfahnl. Click on the image for higher resolution
Another feature is that the three young pianists Jasminka Stancul, Alfonso Alberti and Davide Cabassi started out in the Academy but are now well known in Europe and the US: recently, Italian Television devoted a one hour program only to Cabassi and the passionate way he approaches the piano. This year a new special entry in the pianist group was Vincenzo Maltempo. Finally, the chorus is made up entirely from soloists; eg two of the tenors (Zvetan Michailov and Andreas Schager) will have major roles in Parsifal and in Die Meistersinger at the Tyrol Festival in July. Wait for the review!

Patrice and Giuseppe Pennisi talk to composer Marcello Filotei at Montegral. Photo © 2011 Judith Pfahnl. Click on the image for higher resolution
In short, a full and extraordinary musical immersion. Thanks to the recordings, it is not only for the lucky few.
Copyright © 31 May 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

ITALY
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