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Andrea Manco
J .S.Bach C.P.E.Bach Mercadante Debussy Karg –Elert Varese Bozza Berio
Bach . Berio
Andrea Manco
J .S.Bach C.P.E.Bach Mercadante Debussy Karg –Elert Varese Bozza Berio
Bach . Berio
The album
The Bach-Berio project traces, in one disc, two and a half centuries of music history through listening to the mo st significant works dedicated to the transverse flute . The musical journey, which has the Baroque as its starting point and contemporary music of the 20th century as its finishing point, highlights the development and evolution of the musical language used for the flute , leading it to face and overcome its limitations in each era.
The Partita in A minor BWV 1013, written approx imately in 1722 , is one of the masterpieces dedicated to the flute by J.S.Bach: consisting of four alternating dances of different character, it highlights the virtuosic and sonorous possibilities of the transverse flute . Not far from writing compositions for string and keyboard instruments, Bach obtain s polyphony from a monodic instrument such as the flute, entrusting the extreme registers of the instrument with two opposing melodic lines.
The Sonata composed by his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in 1747 also in the same key has a different writing, more attentive to the cantabile nature of the melodic line despite retaining a polyphonic vision ; freer from a formal point of view, it is written to enhance the expressive and communicative abilities ofthe performer.
The journey continues with a theme and variations by Saverio Mercadante on the aria "La ci darem la mano" from W.A.Mozart's Don Giovanni. We are in the mid-1800s, and virtuosity, as often happens in this period, is more focused on surprising the listener with very technical and brilliant performances. The instrument is also changing , over the course of this century from the single-key conical wooden transverse flute to the transver se flute weuse even in our own day through various modifications.Thanks to new models with more keys, new materials, and innovations in technolo gy and construction , the dynamic and technical possibilities are increasing.
In 1913 Claude Debussy operates a revolution with Syrinx and uses the flute as never before: through new colors in sound , new harmonies and scales , he give s it new characters : representing in music the Greek myth of the god Pan, the flute is now dreamy , at times uncertain, warm , evocative, sensual, metaphysical.
Sigfrid Karg-Eiert welcomes various suggestions in his Sonata Appassionata : he can easily be called post-romantic but his score embraces modernity in its complex harmony and extreme agogic richness.
lt is 1936 when Edgar Varese dedicates Density 21.5 to George Barrere as the first piece performed with a platinum flute. The writing is taken to the extreme, both with 'extension and dynamics, and for the first time the flute is made to cross its natural limit as a melodic instrument: it becomes a percussion in strument , operating the keys without blowing.
In 1939 Image was published , a piece by Eugene Bozza that belongs to the French school of the early 20th century : extremely complex technically, it demands great personality from the performer.
Finally , dedicated to Severino Gazzelloni, Luciano Berio's 1958 Sequenza is the pinnacle of perfec tion reached in the second 900. Here we admire the flute expressing itself without more boundar ies in a discourse that alternates the most somber and meditative moments with the most extreme virtuosic outbursts using various contemporary techniques in a unique language .
The artist
Andrea Manco
First Flute of the Orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala and of the Scala Philharmonic since 2015. He studied at the "Tito Schipa" conservatory in Lecce under the guidance of Luigi Bisanti, graduating at 16 with full marks and honors. He studied at the Academy of Imola with Persichilli, Mercelli and Cambursano, in Florence with Marasco and at the "Conservatoire Superieure de Musique" in Geneva with Jacques Zoon.
Considered one of the most brilliant flutists of his generation, he obtained prizes in the major international flute competitions: "Francesco Cilea" of Palmi, "Leonardo De Lorenzo" of Viggiano, Yamaha Music Foundation of Milan, "Emanuele Krakamp" of Naples, "Pellegrini ”Of Cagliari, the XXXVIII InternationalCompetition of Budapest and the First“ Maxence Larrieu ”International Flute Competition in Nice. In 2002 he was chosen by Riccardo Muti as the first flute of the "Luigi Cherubini" Youth Orchestra, which he created. In 2003, at the age of 20, he obtained the position of first flute in the Orchestra of the Teatro Regio of Turin conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. He was invited, as first guest flute, by the orchestras: Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Opera di Roma, Stuttgart Philharmoniker, Hungarian National Philharmonic, Noord Nederlands Orkest, Symphonica Toscanini conducted by Lorin Maazel, touring Europe, USA, Japan, China and Israel.
He also has, as a soloist and chamber musician, concerts in numerous Italian and international festivals; in 2018 he was invited to the Lucerne Festival Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Chailly. He recorded for Warner Music, Brilliant Classics, Decca, Sony and for the CD’s of the music magazine Syrinx, Amadeus and Falaut. He teaches flute at the "Incontri col Maestro" International Academy in Imola and at the Teatro alla Scala Academy.