The Great Academies, the Masters and the Students

A series of concerts curated by Antonio Caggiano

 

MarCH – JUNE 2025

The Great Academies, the Masters and the Students is a series of four concerts, scheduled from March to June 2025, which aims to celebrate the exceptional link between musical tradition and emerging talent. Each concert of the season sees the alternation of established masters and their promising students, all from the most prestigious European music academies. The series offers the opportunity to listen to performances that mix the past and the present, the consolidated mastery and the energy of young musicians, for a rich and engaging musical experience.

At the Edge of the Night: Fragments of Light and Shadow
The first concert of of the series features the young musicians of Trio Concept, a group of three extraordinary talents, currently studying at the Hochschule in Basel. The ensemble will explore a territory in which “sound seems to dissolve at the edges of perception, like an echo that gets lost in the night”, as they themselves affirm. Their musical offering “goes beyond the simple question of dynamics or instrumental writing”; it is a profound reflection on the fragility of music, on its elusive nature and on the alternation between light and darkness. The programme includes pieces by authors such as Lili Boulanger – who died when she was just twenty four years old, sister of the very famous composition teacher Nadia - Kaija Saariaho, Maurice Ravel, Salvatore Sciarrino and Wolfgang Rihm. Each piece tells a story of distance, transformation and mystery, giving the audience an experience suspended between the tangible and the intangible.

Virtuosity and Passion: The Double Bass between Past and Present
In the second concert of the series, Maestro Giuseppe Ettorre, double bass teacher at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena and first double bass at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, will be joined by his brillant student, Fabrizio Buzzi, currently first double bass at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, and by the pianist, Pierluigi Di Tella. This concert, in which virtuosity is the protagonist, will guide the audience on a journey through the world of the double bass, with a programme ranging from historical to contemporary compositions. It will start with Giovanni Bottesini, move onto Franz Schubert and Gustav Mahler, up to the present day with a piece by Nicola Sani dedicated to Ettorre, which had its world premiere at La Scala in 2024. A concert that, thanks to the meeting between masters and students, will offer the audience not only a virtuosity of the highest level, but also a reflection on the transmission of musical tradition through the generations. An event aimed at lovers of chamber music and those who want to discover the double bass in a new, original light.

Repetition and Rhythm
The third concert of the series features the Chigiana Percussion Ensemble, a group in residence at the Accademia Chigiana. Made up of the best students of the summer advanced training courses, the ensemble boasts a notable concert career. In addition to participating in all the years of the Chigiana Summer Festival, its prestigious curriculum includes performances at the Ravello Festival, the Ravenna Festival and the MAXXI Museum in Rome. The programme will focus mainly, but not only, on minimalist music. Spectators will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the radical minimalism of the masters, Steve Reich and Philip Glass, protagonists of a musical revolution with their repetitive and hypnotic structures. The concert will continue with works by some of the main disciples of this movement, such as the American Julia Wolpe and the Italian Giovanni Sollima, who have pushed minimalism in new expressive directions. The piece by Freedman / Samuels, characterised by obvious jazz influences, will introduce an improvisational and rhythmic dimension to the performance. The energy and the expressive power of this group will make the musical experience a journey of high emotional tension.

Music from Exile
The season concludes with a concert by the clarinetist José Luis Estelles – teacher at the Hochschule for Music and Dance Köln, Conservatorio superior de Musica San Sebastian – together with the pianist Amedeo Salvato.

Music from Exile explores the musical production of composers who fled, were imprisoned or were persecuted by those in power for racial, artistic and political reasons. The concert opens with the Kaddish by Maurice Ravel, one of the oldest Jewish prayers, linked to the idea of loss, and continues with the Sonata by Moisej Vajnberg, a Polish composer who, to escape the Nazis, fled to the Soviet Union where, despite his friendship with Dmitrij Shostakovich, he was placed on the blacklist of artists accused of “formalism” and arrested in 1953. From captivity in Stalag VIII-A, where Olivier Messiaen composed Quatuor pour la fin du temps in 1940, we move on to the rhythmic and sonorous rainbows of György Ligeti, whose artistic production is decisively marked by his escape to Vienna in the aftermath of the 1956 Budapest uprising. In the same year that Messiaen composed his Quatuor, the Spaniard Julián Bautista fled from the dictatorship of Francisco Franco and took refuge in Argentina where he wrote the Fantasia Española of our programme. The concert ends with a mix of Latin jazz and classical music by Paquito D’Rivera, a Cuban clarinetist and composer, who has been a political refugee in the USA since 1980.

The season, The Great Academies, the Masters and the Students thus offers an extraordinary overview of the new generations of musicians who, under the guidance of great masters, are contributing to the history of music of our time. An opportunity to appreciate the talent, the passion and the innovation that animates the classrooms of the most prestigious music academies in Europe.

Antonio Caggiano
Artistic Director for musical activity at Dello Scompiglio

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29 MarCH 2025
AT 7.30 pm

Trio Concept

At the Edge of the Night: Fragments of Light and Shadow

music by Saariaho, Boulanger, Rihm, Sciarrino, Ravel

Kaija Saariaho, Notturno, for solo violin

Lili Boulanger, D’un soir triste

Wolfgang Rihm, Fremde Szenen III

Salvatore Sciarrino, Ai limiti della notte, per solo cello

Maurice Ravel, Trio in la minore
I. Modéré
II. Pantoum (Assez vif)
III. Passacaille (Très large)
IV. Final (Animé)

Trio Concept

Edoardo Grieco  violin
Francesco Massimino  cello
Lorenzo Nguyen  piano

2025_Trio Concept

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“This programme was born from the desire to explore that elusive territory in which sound seems to dissolve at the edges of perception, like an echo that gets lost in the night. It is not just a question of dynamics or instrumental writing; it is an existential condition, a state of music that becomes fragile, elusive, as if it were always on the verge of disappearing. The alternation between light and darkness runs through each piece, bringing with it a sense of distance and transformation.

Kaija Saariaho’s Notturno for solo violin opens the programme like a voice emerging from silence. The Finnish composer’s writing works on the fragility of sound, reducing it to its essential elements until it becomes almost impalpable. It is a night made of shadows and whispered sounds, of distant resonances that seem to question their very existence. Saariaho does not describe the night, she inhabits it, and we, listening to her, become part of it.

Lili Boulanger takes us into another dimension of darkness, different but equally dense with existential reflection. D’un soir triste is the last piece the composer wrote before she died, at the age of just twenty four, consumed by illness. It is not just a melancholic piece; it resonates like a farewell. The harmony is dense, suffocating, each chord weighs like a memory that one cannot let go. Here, the sound does not dissolve, as in Saariaho, but is charged with pain, with a sense of inexorability. Her sister, Nadia, the most celebrated composition teacher of the last century, has never stopped mourning her, considering her an extraordinary talent, endowed with a unique musical sensitivity and a rare expressive depth.

Wolfgang Rihm, with Fremde Szene III, takes us even further, into a night that is no longer just a time, but a state of mind. Here, the music moves in fragments, gestures that are interrupted, tensions that are never resolved. It is as if the night were inhabited by distant echoes, by voices that are no longer recognised, by memories that do not find a conclusive form. In Saariaho the sound dissolves, in Boulanger it is charged with emotional weight; in Rihm it is always on the point of  disintegrating, of escaping. The title – translated as Foreign Scenes– evokes precisely the sense of man’s alienation.

Salvatore Sciarrino takes everything to the extreme with Ai limiti della notte, for solo cello. Here, the sound is reduced to the bone; subtle harmonics, infinite silences, the boundary between sound and breath that thins until it almost disappears. It is music that lives on the margin of the possible, like a shadow that dissolves before being properly seen.

The programme closes with Maurice Ravel and his Trio in A minor. Having reached the extreme of darkness, here the sound finds a more defined form and glimmers of light appear again, as in the sky before dawn, still alternating with areas of darkness. The third movement, the Passacaille, is the centre of the work. The passacaglia is a form of persistant variations; a repeated bass on which the music builds its discourse, like an obsessive thought that always returns. Here, Ravel treats it with extreme delicacy, allowing the sounds to become gradually rarefied until they almost disappear.

Trio Concept

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Trio Concept was formed in 2013 by three musicians from Turin—Edoardo Grieco (violin), Francesco Massimino (cello), and Lorenzo Nguyen (piano). In October 2024, the ensemble decided to change its original name—from Trio Chagall to Trio Concept—to emphasize the cohesion of an artistic journey spanning over a decade, centred on the idea of the trio as the core of their musical activity and a constant source of creative inspiration. The new name is inspired by Michelangelo Buonarroti’s words, reflecting the trio’s artistic commitment: to seek out and present the beauty inherent in every work, which comes to life through performance, just as the sculptor reveals the perfect form within a block of marble.
Trio Concept was named an ECHO Rising Star for the 2025/2026 season and, following a three-week residency at the 2024 Verbier Festival Academy, was honoured with the Prix Yves Paternot, the festival’s highest honour in recognition of outstanding talent and potential. In June 2023, the ensemble became a YCAT Artist after a triumphant final performance at Wigmore Hall, London. That same year, it secured first prize at the Schoenfeld International Competition in Harbin, China, and was selected as the ensemble in residence for ProQuartet in Paris. In Italy, Trio Concept won the second prize in 2019 — with the first prize not awarded — as well as three special prizes at the “Premio Trio di Trieste,” becoming, with an average age of just twenty years, the youngest chamber ensemble ever awarded in the history of the competition. The Trio was also chosen by the jury of the Accademia Chigiana as the winner of the “Premio Giovanna Maniezzo,” was named “Ensemble of the Year 2020/2021” by Le Dimore del Quartetto, and subsequently became ensemble in residence for Comitato Amur for the year 2023/2024. The Trio has been supported by Associazione De Sono. The Trio recently debuted with Beethoven’s Triple Concerto in Taipei and has collaborated with artists such as Bruno Giuranna, Mathieu Herzog, and Giampaolo Pretto. Trio Concept is committed to the discovery and promotion of new repertoire, collaborating with contemporary composers to bring both present and past music to audiences. Beyond concerts, the Trio is also active in fostering dialogue with audiences and engaging younger generations through school visits and concerts for children. They have been invited to give Masterclasses at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in England and at the Lyceum Mozarteum in Havana, Cuba. The Trio performed in prestigious venues such as Wigmore Hall in London, Verbier Festival, Konzerthaus in Berlin, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Alte Oper in Frankfurt, Teatro La Fenice in Venice and National Concert Hall in Taipei. Edoardo Grieco plays a violin by Pietro Antonio Landolfi built in 1766, kindly provided by Irene Miller and by the Beares International Violin Society while Francesco Massimino plays the “Oro del Reno” cello, crafted by Gaetano Sgarabotto in 1948 in Milan.

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