Francesco Filidei
ensemble ascolta
Kulturkirken Jakob
12 September, 9 pm
Tickets: 250/150 NOK
Italian composer and organist Francesco Filidei (born 1973) has gained a reputation for questioning the fundamental values of music itself. Is there music in a singer’s drawing of breath, or the accidental ovements of a finger on a violin string? Where does music begin, and can it ever end? These are the starting points for his large body of work that includes L’Opera (Forse) (2009), scored for an ensemble of six.
Filidei studied in Florence under Salvatore Sciarrino and the organist Jean Guillou, but his own compositions are rougher around the edges than his mentors. L’Opera (Forse), which translates as The Work (Maybe), requires two tables with birds, pots and various other objects, and instrumental and percussive passages are broken up with announcements from the musicians. Filidei is interested in the moments when the mechanics of performance, the processes behind the illusion, are revealed, allowing them to stand as music in their own right. Tonality represents life, noise is death.
This unconventional ‘exercise in madness’, as the composer calls it, supplies plentiful amounts of both, with a score requiring balloons to be blown, plucked and stroked in a grotesque rite.
ensemble ascolta are a new music ensemble based in Stuttgart, who have been promoting cutting edge sounds, from Erik Satie to Frank Zappa, since 2003. They are regulars at key international festivals including Huddersfield, Darmstadt, Lucerne, Donaueschingen, Wien Modern and many more.
Works by Francesco Filidei:
I Funerali dell’Anarchico Serantini
Esercizio di Pazzia I
I hate mirrors (WP)
Esercizio di Pazzia II
Opera (forse)
Piano Intermezzi by Alfredo Catalani, Ruggero Leoncavallo and Giacomo Puccini
ensemble ascolta
Florian Hoelscher – piano, conductor
Julian Belli
Erik Borgir
Andrew Digby
Boris Müller
João Carlos Pacheco
Markus Schwind
Speaker for Opera (forse): Rob Young. Staging: Matthias Rebstock.
I hate mirrors is commissioned by the Ernst von Siemens Foundation.
