PICTURES

PROGRAMME

(1756 - 1791)

Quartet in D Maj.

KV 285
for flute, violin, viola and cello
 
Quartet in A Maj.

KV 370
for oboe, violin, viola and cello
 
Quartet in G Maj.

KV 285/a
for flute, violin, viola and cello

Adagio in A Maj.

KV 580/a
for english horn,

two violins and cello
 
Adagio in C Maj.

KV 617/a
for glass harmonica
 
Adagio and Rondò

in C KV 617
for glass harmonica, flute, oboe, viola

and cello

PERFORMERS

Lavard Skou-Larsen: violin I
Branko Kabadaic: viola, violin II
Adriane Savytzky: cello
Claudio Montafia:

flute
Mario Frezzato:

oboe, english horn
Gianfranco Grisi: glass harmonica

INFORMATION

DATE:
25 JULY 2006
 

TIME: 21,15

PLACE:
Courtyard of Honour, Torrechiara Castle

Glass harmonica: GIANFRANCO GRISI
A tribute to Mozart from the city of his birth on his 250th birthday

FESTIVAL DI TORRECHIARA 2006

“At eight in the evening my wife happily gave birth to a son. (…) Thank God, both baby and mother are well. The boy is called Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfangus Theophilus”. On 27 January 1756 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born, “a miracle, by the grace of God, which was revealed in Salzburg”.
On the 250th anniversary of this event which forever made its mark on the history of music, a renowned group from Salzburg pays homage to their great “compatriot”, by offering some of the masterpieces from Mozart’s chamber works together with the presentation of an instrument as particular as the glass harmonica which, played by the blind virtuoso Marianne Kirchgaessner, fascinated Mozart so much that he was inspired to compose two pieces, included in the programme.

Salzburg Chamber Soloists
In 1991, in an initiative of the violinist Lavard Skou-Larsen, some of the best students of Salzburg’s Mozarteum are brought together with musicians who have already established themselves internationally, to create the Salzburg Chamber Soloists. The group varies from small chamber groups to a chamber orchestra and tackles a vast repertoire ranging from the baroque to the classics, through to the avant-garde and jazz. The spirit and the sound of the ensemble reflect the atmosphere of Salzburg itself which represents an important meeting point for central European culture, profoundly influenced by charismatic personalities, namely: Bruno Walter, Sandor Vegh, Bernhard Paumgartner and Nikolaus Harnoncourt.
Considered one of the best chamber ensembles in the world the Salzburg Chamber Soloists have been applauded in prestigious concert halls and theatres all over the world: the Berlin Philharmonie; the Alte Oper, Frankfurt; the Victoria Hall, Geneva; the Grosser Saal of the Mozarteum, Salzburg; the Champs d’Elysées and the Carousell du Louvre, Paris; the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam; the Koningin Elizabethzaal, Antwerp; the Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires; the Teatro Municipal of Rio de Janeiro, the Bunka Gaikan, Tokio, the Masonic Auditorium, San Francisco...
Their discography is also extensive with music by Mozart, Schubert, Shostakovitch, Vivaldi, Piazzolla (Dino Classics, Denon, Coviello Classics).

Lavard Skou-Larsen
Born in Porto Alegre (Brazil) he began his violin studies at the age of five with his father Gunnar, then continued in Vienna with Ernst Moravec.

In 1976 he entered the Mozarteum Academy under the guidance of Helmut Zehetmair, achieving a diploma with merit. His education was significantly influenced by several eminent people, namely Sandor Vegh, Henryk Szering and Nathan Milstein. Having made his debut at the age of nine, performing as a soloist both in Austria and Brazil, he twice received the Christa Richter Steiner Prize of the Association of Friends of the Mozarteum Academy and in 1978 was awarded a study bursary donated by Henryk Szering.
He has won numerous international prizes: Jugend Musiziert (Austria), Concertino Praga, Festival dei Giovani Solisti di Bordeaux, Eldorado di San Paulo del Brasile, Sergio Lorenzi di Trieste (together with the Salzburg Piano Trio).
As soloist and conductor he has collaborated with renowned orchestras: European Union Chamber Orchestra, New Sinfonietta Amsterdam, Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia, Geneva Chamber Orchestra, Essen Folkwang Chamber Orchestra, Kammerakademie Neuss, Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, Orchestra Sinfonica di Porto Alegre as well as playing an instrument, also with the Salzburg Piano Trio, at important international festivals.
His numerous recordings as soloist and conductor are found on the Dino Classics, Denon, Stradivarius, Movieplay, CPO, Marco Polo and Coviello Classics labels.
He teaches violin and practical orchestra studies at the Mozarteum Music Academy in Salzburg and founded the Salzburg Chamber Soloists, of which he is also the artistic director and konzertmeister.

Gianfranco Grisi
An eclectic musician who unites a rare creative ability with a rigorous academic education (piano, composition, conducting, and choral conducting): he has written film music, the sound track for documentaries, chamber music, pieces for chorus and orchestra and for the theatre, winning several prizes as a result: (Concorso Internazionale Federazione Cori del Trentino, Concorso Nazionale di Como...). He has been invited to perform at national and international festivals and for various television networks, RAI, Mediaset, ORF, ZDF and ARD among them He took part in the “Sounds of the Dolomites” event, playing the glass harmonica with the cellist Mario Brunello and Marco Paolini; with Vinicio Capossela he created an experimental concert event at Mantua and presented two compositions at the Venice Galuppi Festival and the Top Wine event as part of “Sounds of the Dolomites”.
As orchestrator and conductor, memorable work includes the opera Laurin by L. Canori (CD and RAI broadcast) and the Grand Concert for the Summer Solstice [Gran Concerto per il Solstizio d’Estate] with the Prague Virtuosi (CD Calig).
Since 1997 he has been performing live concerts with some completely original instruments: glass harmonica, cowbells, English concertinas.
He is the founder and conductor of the chamber orchestra Dissuono, dedicated to twentieth century music as well as performing an ethnic repertoire as a duo with the guitarist Franco Giuliani and with the Nono quintet.

From the Glass Harmonica to the Crystal Harmonium
It was the physicist and statistician Benjamin Franklin who in 1761 invented a new instrument of rotating glasses, rubbed by a moistened finger (Harmonica), thus ennobling what had until then been a sociable pastime. He placed glass bowls one inside the other in descending order of size, supported on a horizontal rod which passed through a hole at the apex. They were rotated by means of a pedal leaving the hands free to rub the glass bowls.
At the end of the 1700s a keyboard was added which avoided direct contact with the bowls. This was the glassharmonica for which Mozart composed the two pieces on the programme. They say that the particularly celestial and atmospheric sound emitted by the instrument (which also began to be used for hypnosis sessions) caused local police in several towns to forbid its use because it “damaged nerves”. Thus the instrument fell into disuse.
For years Gianfranco Grisi has dedicated himself to the study and the development of the type of glass harmonica which uses glasses, or rather a manual glass harmonica (a return to using fingers to circulate the rims) and, inspired by Bruno Hoffman’s glass harp, he has devised an instrument whereby the positioning of 37 glasses allows the player, using three fingers of each hand, to play chords up to six tones and to play in all keys: he has called it Cristallarmonio (Crystal Harmonium).
 

Translation by Sarah J Hyde - www.thelanguage.biz
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