Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Sollima, Queen, Metallica, Piazzolla: Barocko

Celloplay Quartet: Nasce nel 2015 dal desiderio di quattro musicisti che da anni si conoscono e lavorano insieme, in multiformi contesti musicali. Un quartetto di violoncelli per sfruttare l’enorme gamma timbrica e espressiva che questo strumento possiede.
Caratteristiche fondanti del nostro gruppo sono il costante confronto che non diventa rivalità, lo scambio proficuo per approfondire insieme lo studio dell’interpretazione e della tecnica dello strumento; la voglia di rileggere il repertorio con un occhio diverso, vivace, curioso e aperto ai molteplici stimoli.
I componenti del quartetto hanno fatto percorsi molto diversi per provenienza geografica, età, percorso artistico personale. Questa eterogeneità è linfa vitale per il gruppo: non ci sono maestri e allievi, non c’è un leader, non ci sono ruoli fissi, ma un continuo scambio di idee e suggerimenti.
Questo incontro ha anche stimolato la curiosità per la musica di tutti i tempi e di tutti i generi, cercando di superare i limiti che spesso vengono imposti, per suonare tutta la musica "bella", a qualunque genere appartenga.
Così il repertorio spazia da Bach a Piazzolla, da Purcell ai Queen, da Vivaldi a Sollima, attraversando quindi tutti i generi musicali: dalla classica al rock, dal pop alla musica sudamericana.
L’obiettivo del CelloPlayQuartet è quello di suggerire l’idea di una società dove persone di formazione e generazioni differenti possano incontrarsi, vivere e lavorare in armonia, convinte del fatto che ognuno può arricchire l’altro grazie agli intenti e ideali comuni.
Il linguaggio musicale compie spesso questi piccoli miracoli: un insieme di persone di provenienza e generazioni differenti si incontrano lavorando in armonia, condividendo le energie e le esperienze, può dare un contributo, attraverso la bellezza della musica, a migliorare il nostro mondo.
Filippo Burchietti, Simone Centauro
Francesca Gaddi, Cristiano Sacchi

Antonio Vivaldi: (b Venice, 4 March 1678; d Vienna, 27/8 July 1741). Italian composer. The most original and influential Italian composer of his generation, he laid the foundations for the mature Baroque concerto. His contributions to musical style, violin technique and the practice of orchestration were substantial, and he was a pioneer of orchestral programme music.
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Astor Piazzolla: (b Mar del Plata, 11 March 1921; d Buenos Aires, 5 July 1992). Argentine composer, bandleader and bandoneón player. A child prodigy on the bandoneón, Piazzolla and his family emigrated to New York in 1924; in his teens he became acquainted with Gardel, for whom he worked as a tour guide, translator and occasional performer. Piazzolla returned to Buenos Aires in 1937 where he gave concerts and made tango arrangements for Aníbal Troilo, a leading bandleader; he also studied classical music with Ginastera. In 1944 Piazzolla left Troilo’s band to form the Orquesta del 46 as a vehicle for his own compositions. A symphony composed in 1954 for the Buenos Aires PO won him a scholarship to study in Paris with Boulanger, who encouraged him in the composition of tangos; the following year he resettled in Argentina and formed the Octeto Buenos Aires and, later, the Quinteto Nuevo Tango, which performed at his own club, Jamaica. Piazzolla left Argentina in 1974, settling in Paris, where he composed a concerto for bandoneón and a cello sonata for Rostropovich, among other works.
Piazzolla’s distinctive brand of tango, later called ‘nuevo tango’, initially met with resistance. Including fugue, extreme chromaticism, dissonance, elements of jazz and, at times, expanded instrumentation, it was condemned by the old-guard, including not only most tango composers and bandleaders but also Borges, whose short story El hombre de la Esquina Rosada was the basis for Piazzolla’s El tango (1969); like tango itself, Piazzolla’s work first found general approval outside Argentina, principally in France and the USA. By the 1980s, however, Piazzolla’s music was widely accepted even in his native country, where he was now seen as the saviour of tango, which during the 1950s and 60s had declined in popularity and appeal. In the late 1980s Piazzolla’s works began to be taken up by classical performers, in particular the Kronos Quartet, who commissioned Five Tango Sensations (1989). In all he composed about 750 works, including film scores for Tangos: the Exile of Gardel (1985) and Sur (1987). Shortly before his death, he was commissioned to write an opera on the life of Gardel.

Danny Elfman is an American composer, singer and songwriter whose work spans film, television, the stage and the concert hall. His long collaboration with director Tim Burton includes scores for Batman, Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas. He also wrote the theme for The Simpsons, which appears alongside Bernstein’s Maria in the CelloPlay Quartet’s Barocko programme.

Giovanni Sollima was born in Palermo in 1962 into a family of musicians. He studied in Palermo, Salzburg and Stuttgart, and, still a teenager, embarked on a brilliant international career as a cellist, collaborating with Claudio Abbado, Martha Argerich, Jorg Demus and Giuseppe Sinopoli.

Alongside his career as a soloist, his creative curiosity led him to explore new frontiers in the field of composition: his unmistakable style is characterized by interplay between different genres: minimalism, rock, electronic and ethnic music from all over the Mediterranean area, with echoes of ancient and baroque music, on the basis of a thorough classical training.

His music has been played by classical performers such as Yo-Yo Ma, Riccardo Muti, Antonio Pappano, Daniele Gatti, Gidon Kremer with the Kremerata Baltica, Ivan Fischer, Mischa Maisky, Viktoria Mullova, Yuri Bashmet with the Moscow Soloists, Sol Gabetta, Katia and Marielle Labeque, Ruggero Raimondi, Mario Brunello, Bruno Canino, La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra, the Santa Cecilia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Il Giardino Armonico, the Accademia Bizantina, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Amsterdam Sinfonietta, the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Berliner Philharmoniker String Quintet, the Berliner Konzerthausorchester, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Manchester Camerata, the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and the pop stars Patti Smith, Larry Coryell, Mauro Pagani, Stefano Bollani, Elisa (protagonist of his opera Ellis Island).

For cinema and television he has composed music for Peter Greenaway (The Tulse Luper Suitcases and Nightwatching), John Turturro (Evidence for a Sicilian Tragedy), Carlos Saura (La Jota), Marco Tullio Giordana (One Hundred Steps and The Best Youth), Lasse Gjertsen (Daydream). For the theater he wrote and performed music for directors such as Robert Wilson, Alessandro Baricco, Peter Stein. In 2006 Peter Greenaway chose his music for the large installation staged in Amsterdam in the fourth centenary of Rembrandt. In the dance field he collaborated with many great choreographers, such as Karole Armitage, Bebe Miller and Carolyn Carlson who, at the Venice Biennale, made him play on stage, among the dancers, using his scenic charisma.

As a soloist, or with different instrumental groups, he performed his compositions all over the world: the Carnegie Hall, the Merkin Hall and the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, La Scala in Milan, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Wigmore Hall in London, the Salle Gaveau in Paris, the Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, the Liszt Academy in Budapest, the Istanbul International Festival, the Tokyo Summer Festival, the Sydney Opera House, the Tanglewood Festival, the Santa Cecilia Auditorium in Rome, the Venice Biennale, the Ravenna Festival, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Kronberg Festival, the Kunstfest in Weimar, the Lockenhaus Festival, the Amsterdam Biennäle, the Piatigorsky Festival in Los Angeles, the opening of the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai with La Scala Orchestra, with tours in the UK, Holland, the U.S.A., Canada, Russia, Japan, China, Australia. His performances have taken him both to prestigious concert halls and to alternative venues closer to younger audiences, such as New York’s Knitting Factory, a landmark of the underground scene. Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Justin Davidson described him as “The Jimi Hendrix of the Cello”. His unusual performances include appearances in the Sahara Desert and underwater in a Sicilian gebbia, an irrigation water tank.

In 2012 he became the principal creator and artistic director of the dynamic 100 Cellos ensemble, whose itinerant festival performed in Rome, Milan, Budapest, Turin, Ravenna and Lucca over its first six years.

The Municipality of Milan commissioned Sollima to write the sound theme for Expo 2015, which inaugurated the new exhibition hall for the Pietà Rondanini by Michelangelo.

On June 2, 2017, for the Festa della Repubblica, he performed a concert at the Quirinale in front of the Presidents of the Republic and of the Chambers, and all the ambassadors from all over the world. At that time, he was also writing music for a forthcoming film by Anatoly Vasiliev.

His recordings include Aquilarco for Point Music/Polygram (at the invitation of Philip Glass), Works and When We Were Trees for Sony, Neapolitain Concertos and the Sonatas for Cello by Giovanni Battista Costanzi for Glossa Music, Caravaggio, 100 Cellos live at Teatro Valle and Aquilarco live in New York for Egea Music, Onyricon, Il Caravaggio rubato and A Clandestine Night in Rome for Decca.

Sollima plays a cello by Francesco Ruggeri (Cremona, 1679). Moreover he uses in his creations western and eastern acoustic instruments and electric and electronic instruments, mixed with others of his own invention, such as the aquilarco, and others especially made for him, like the tenor violin present in the paintings of Caravaggio and an ice-cello that in the winter of 2007 he played at 3200 meters above sea level, in an igloo theatre built on a glacier of the Dolomites.

Since 2010, he’s been teaching at the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, where he was awarded the title of Academician.

He publishes his works with Casa Musicale Sonzogno in Milan.

Led Zeppelin was a British rock band formed in 1968, with Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham. Its music drew on blues, folk and hard rock, often combining contrasting textures and large-scale forms. Stairway to Heaven, written by Page and Plant, moves from a quiet acoustic opening towards an expansive rock climax and is heard in a cello-quartet arrangement on Barocko.

Metallica is an American heavy metal band formed in 1981. Its music combines forceful rhythmic writing and guitar-driven textures with songs that also allow a more lyrical treatment. Nothing Else Matters, written by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich and released on the band’s self-titled 1991 album, is among its most widely arranged songs, including the version for cello quartet on Barocko.

Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky: (b Kamsko-Votkinsk, Vyatka province, 25 April/7 May 1840; d St Petersburg, 25 Oct/6 Nov 1893). Russian composer. He was the first composer of a new Russian type, fully professional, who firmly assimilated traditions of Western European symphonic mastery; in a deeply original, personal and national style he united the symphonic thought of Beethoven and Schumann with the work of Glinka, and transformed Liszt’s and Berlioz’s achievements in depictive-programmatic music into matters of Shakespearian elevation and psychological import (Boris Asaf’yev).

Queen is a British rock band formed in London in 1970. Its classic line-up comprised Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon. The group combined rock with elaborate vocal arrangements and elements of opera and theatrical performance. Bohemian Rhapsody, written by Mercury, has inspired numerous instrumental arrangements, including the version for four cellos recorded by CelloPlay Quartet.