patrikpen: The Old and the New in Music and Vision 25 September

lunedì 7 novembre 2016

The Old and the New in Music and Vision 25 September

The Old and the New

Contrasting concerts at the Sagra Musicale Umbra,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

In my previous article (Light from on High, 24 September 2016) , I reported on the three major events at the Sagra Musicale Umbra 2016. However, it is also worth reviewing some of the other initiatives which, at first sight, may appear either less important or less relevant to the main theme of the festival. I attended a sample of midday concerts and theconcert of sufi music in San Bevignate Church, built almost a thousand years ago by the Templar, a religious order of knights whose purpose was to fight Islam and protect the holy places in Jerusalem and Palestine.

The midday concerts I heard in Palazzo del Pero were very good finalconservatory essays. On 17 September, I had the opportunity to listen to two very interesting and contrasting concerts. At 12 noon in the gorgeous Galleria Nazionale Umbra, the young but very professional ensembleNova Alta offered a concert called Seicento Stravagante ('The Extravagant Seventeenth Century') and at 9pm in the San Bevignate Church a mostly Tunisian group offered a program called Au chouer du Soufi.

The first comment is on the beauty of the contrasting key elements of the two concerts. Seicento Stravagante was entirely happiness and joie de vivre, whilst Au chouer du Soufi was full of melancholy, with the exception of an outburst of joy in the last number when the entire audience joined the sufi group, clapping their hands. The first concert was very joyful, the second sober and almost sad.

In the first concert, the Nova Alta small ensemble — David Brutti, Danilo Tamburo, Stefano Bellucci, Andrea Angeloni and Giulio Fratini) plays oninstruments as far as possible reconstructed using original seventeenthcentury tools, after a long search for instruments, mostly in Italy and inGermany. The instruments include a serpentona, a snake-like wooden instrument which can reach a very low register.

The program included sixteen short chamber music pieces. The listenercould feel the flavor of the comic or hilarious moments of Claudio Monteverdi's operas, such as the character of Iro in Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria or the duet between the two youngsters in L'Incoronazione di Poppea when both the page and young woman bid farewell to their respective virginity.

Also in the sufi concert, the ensemble is essential — two singers: Abir Naraouini, the protagonist and Moufadhel Adhoum, Mohamed Abdelkater Ibnaj Kachem on percussion, the Belgian Sébastien Willemins on piano, alocal choir, Spirito Santo Volumnia with French chorus master Agathe Biuolès and Korean director In-Sang Hwang.

Sufi philosophy and music is a mystic approach to Islam. To hear itbeautifully played and sung in a Templar Church gave a special ecumenical flair to the Sagra. Music can bring closer what politics makes more distant.