Filippo Del Corno: A coda di rondine
Same artist
Da Vinci Classics
Andrea Dulbecco, Andrea Rebaudengo, Aya Shimura, Carlo Boccadoro, Mirco Ghirardini, Paola Fre, Piercarlo Sacco, Sentieri Selvaggi
Physical Release: 29 January 2027
Sentieri Selvaggi and Carlo Boccadoro explore Matteo D’Amico’s chamber music, from the instrumental drama of The Nature in the Grave to solo works and the dialogues of his piano trio.
Coming soon · Available on the physical release date
Andrea Dulbecco graduated with honours in percussion under Franco Campioni at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan, where he also studied composition and graduated in piano. He specialised in vibraphone with David Friedman. He has performed as a soloist with Milan’s Angelicum Orchestra, the orchestra of the Graz Conservatory, the RAI Orchestra in Milan, the Sanremo Symphony Orchestra, O.D.A.I. (Italian String Orchestra) and the Novosibirsk Philharmonic. His chamber appearances include the Società del Quartetto, Teatro alla Scala and Società dei Concerti in Milan, Unione Musicale in Turin, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Amici della Musica in Perugia and the Accademia Chigiana. He has collaborated with Anatol Ugorski, Mario Brunello, Andrea Lucchesini, Pietro De Maria, Eliot Fisk, Giuliano Carmignola, Ennio Morricone and Giovanni Sollima. He is a longstanding member of Sentieri Selvaggi, conducted by Carlo Boccadoro, who has dedicated works to him; the ensemble has also recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. Alongside his classical career, he is an active jazz vibraphonist and has toured the United States, Mexico, Africa and the Far East. He has taught percussion at the Milan Conservatory.
Carlo Boccadoro
Carlo Boccadoro was born in Macerata in 1963. He studied at the "G. Verdi" Conservatory in Milan where he graduated in Piano, Percussion Instruments and Composition. Since 1990 his symphonic and chamber music has been presented in important concert seasons and concert halls, including: Teatro alla Scala, Venice Biennale, Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Musikverein in Vienna, Salle Pleyel in Paris, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, and many others. He has collaborated with artists from very different worlds, including Riccardo Chailly, Omer Meir Wellber, Robert Trevino, John Axelrod, Jim Hall, Gavin Bryars, David Lang, Mario Brunello, Moni Ovadia, Giovanni Sollima and many others. As a conductor, he has performed with the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, the Royal Philarmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra “G. Verdi” di Milano, and many others. He has performed hundreds of world premieres of contemporary music, often commissioned to the most authoritative Italian composers for the Ensemble Sentieri selvaggi, of which he has been artistic and musical director since 1997.
Sentieri selvaggi
Sentieri selvaggi was founded in 1997 by Carlo Boccadoro, Filippo Del Corno, and Angelo Miotto with the aim of bringing contemporary music closer to the general public. Over the years, the ensemble began collaborations with leading international composers such as David Lang, Louis Andriessen, James MacMillan, Philip Glass, Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman, and Julia Wolfe. Since 1998, Sentieri selvaggi has been a regular guest at Italy’s most prestigious concert series and major cultural events, as well as at significant international festivals (such as the Bang on a Can Marathon in New York, the SKIF Festival in St. Petersburg, and Sacrum Profanum in Kraków). In 2022, the ensemble held a residency at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, focusing on American music from recent years. The group’s catalog of publications and recordings includes several titles produced for Deutsche Grammophon, Einaudi, RaiTrade, MN Records, Velut Luna, Sensible Records, and Cantaloupe Music.
Piercarlo Sacco
Concert violinist, violist and conductor. Formed under the guidance of Ivan Krivenski, Pavel Vernikov, Salvatore Accardo and, for chamber music, with Rocco Filippini, Bruno Giuranna, Alexander Lonquich, Klaus Schilde and the Trio di Trieste. Awarded in several competitions (Perosi Biella, City Review of Vittorio Veneto, Mantua, Sandro Fuga di Torino, Accademia Filarmonica Romana) in 1992 he won the Prix Special du Jury at the Deuxieme Concours International du Violon Yehudi Menuhin (jury composed by Menuhin himself, Gidon Kremer, Vladimir Spivakov and Zachar Bron). In over thirty years of activity he has played as a soloist, chamber musician and concertmaster in contexts such as Teatro Regio in Turin, Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Teatro Ponchielli in Cremona, Teatro Regio in Parma, Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, Teatro Verdi in Pisa, Lyric Theater of Cagliari, Lincoln Center of New York, Cervantes Theater of Malaga, Coliseo Theater of Buenos Aires, Maison de Radio France of Paris, Salle Berlioz Paris, Rundfunk der DDR Berlin, Gasteig of Munich, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Radio-televizija Srbije, collaborating with directors such as Lorin Maazel, Georges Prêtre, Ton Koopman, Christopher Hogwood, Gennadij Rozdestvenskij, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos. Violinist and violist of Sentieri Selvaggi ensemble. Composers such as Carlo Boccadoro, Giorgio Colombo Taccani, Mauro Montalbetti, Carlo Galante have dedicated to Sacco several of their works. As a soloist and chamber musician he has recorded for Brilliant Classics, Decca, Sony, Deutsche Grammophon. Professor in several masterclasses, he teaches violin and chamber music at the Rusconi Institute and at the Piseri Foundation.
Since 2016 he has been musical director of Gli Archi del Rusconi chamber orchestra. In September 2017 he took part in the Jury of the 36th International Violin Competition Premio Rodolfo Lipizer.
Essential discography: 2014 Cafe 1930 (Brilliant Classics), 2016 Cadillac Moon (Sony),2017 Le sette stelle (deutsche grammophon),2018 La Calle92 (Brilliant Classics) best choice Musica magazine 2018 Paganini Live (Decca),2019 Giuliani: music for violin and guitar (Brilliant Classics) best choice Amadeus magazine.
Sentieri selvaggi was founded in 1997 by Carlo Boccadoro, Filippo Del Corno and Angelo Miotto with the aim of bringing contemporary music to a wider public. Over the years, the ensemble has developed collaborations with leading international composers, including David Lang, Louis Andriessen, James MacMillan, Philip Glass, Gavin Bryars, Michael Nyman and Julia Wolfe. Since 1998, Sentieri selvaggi has been a regular guest at Italy’s most prestigious concert series and major cultural events, as well as at important international festivals, including the Bang on a Can Marathon in New York, the SKIF Festival in St Petersburg and Sacrum Profanum in Kraków. In 2022, the ensemble held a residency at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, focusing on recent American music. The ensemble’s catalogue of publications and recordings includes titles released by Deutsche Grammophon, Einaudi, RaiT rade, MN Records, Velut Luna, Sensible Records and Cantaloupe Music.
Born in Rome in 1955, Matteo D’Amico studied with Barbara Giuranna, Guido T urchi, Irma Ravinale and Franco Donatoni. Since the early 1980s his music has featured at Italy’s leading contemporary music events and at prestigious venues abroad, in Paris, Athens, Prague, Madrid, London, Moscow and Tokyo, among other cities. His works have been performed by Dorothy Dorow, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Mariella Devia, Albert Dohmen, Arturo Tamayo, Paolo Carignani, Corrado Rovaris, Rinaldo Alessandrini, Daniele Gatti, Antonio Pappano, Gregory Kunde, Vladimir Jurovskij, the Hilliard Ensemble, the Quartetto Prometeo and Andrea Lucchesini, among others. His work focuses principally on the relationships between music, poetry, theatre and dance. Notable works draw on the poetry of Mallarmé (L ’Azur, 1988; Sonnets et rondels, 1993; Hérodiade, 2025), Tasso (Rime d’amore, 1998, conducted by G. Sinopoli), W . H. Auden (Auden Cabaret, special mention at the Prix Italia 2006), Brodsky (Flight from Byzantium, 2010, conducted by V . Jurovskij and commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra) and Marlowe (Veni veni Mephostophilis, 2011, conducted by A. Pappano and commissioned by the Accademia di Santa Cecilia). He has also worked extensively in sacred music, notably in his Stabat Mater (1999), setting sacred texts and writings by Vincenzo Consolo. He made his operatic debut in 1990 at the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte in Montepulciano with Gli spiriti dell’aria, a fantastical operetta commissioned by Hans Werner Henze. Subsequent operas include Farinelli, la voce perduta (OperaInCanto, 1996), Dannata epicurea (Teatro Massimo, Palermo, 2004), Patto di sangue (Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 2009), Le Malentendu (Macerata Opera Festival, 2009), Il viaggio di G. Mastorna (Rimini and Ravenna, 2021) and La vita nuda (Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, 2026). He has also composed major works for dance: Mascherata Veneziana (Arena di Verona, 1993), La Ronde (Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 1995) and Animae Corpus (Rovigo, 1999).
Instruments and Passions A Portrait of Matteo D’Amico Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee. William Shakespeare “It is a ruthless critique of the headlong pursuit of Well-being and Progress, of the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie and the respectable classes, of the Idols of triumphant materialism.” This was how, in 2006, Matteo D’Amico explained his decision to set The Entertainment of the Senses, W. H. Auden’s final poetic work, written shortly before his sudden death in 1973. In 2015,…
Instruments and Passions A Portrait of Matteo D’Amico Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee. William Shakespeare “It is a ruthless critique of the headlong pursuit of Well-being and Progress, of the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie and the respectable classes, of the Idols of triumphant materialism.” This was how, in 2006, Matteo D’Amico explained his decision to set The Entertainment of the Senses, W. H. Auden’s final poetic work, written shortly before his sudden death in 1973.
In 2015, this extended composition for voice and instruments gave rise to The Nature in the Grave, commissioned by the ensemble Sentieri selvaggi for the Milan Expo, with its focus on environmental issues. In a striking image, the title brings together the word grave, which closes each of the poem’s five sections, and Nature, emblematic of the occasion for which the new work was written. This is, then, a fully fledged instrumental suite, traversing and bringing together many of the salient moments of the substantial vocal work from which it derives. Yet it does so in no orderly fashion.
Rather, it moves to and fro, takes up and lets go, in a dazzling and at times disconcerting succession of ever-new, unpredictable rhythms, melodies and timbres. Unbound by any formal scheme, it is a kind of tribute to the pleasures of listening; for all that, it preserves the irony and mockery, as well as the stern admonition, of Auden’s text. “D’Amico’s rationality exists entirely within a way of thinking in sound and the concrete objects it produces […] in the sense of their entering into relationships and linking together in a feverish, whirling electrification” (Alessandro Mastropietro, La logica della libertà, 1999). These words aptly describe the point of departure of a young composer who, in 1984, had only recently completed his studies with Franco Donatoni and, in the two pieces for cello that make up Couplet, offered one of the first manifestations of an independent musical voice.
More than forty years of creative activity devoted chiefly to vocal music and opera have intervened, yet that voice remains immediately recognisable in the very recent La classe de danse, three pieces for piano (2025). Especially recognisable is his ability to delineate the principal musical figures with precision and to animate the sonic fabric with a quivering, almost physical vitality. D’Amico’s personal signature, sought and achieved in his earliest works as in his full maturity, lies precisely in this tenacious, finely attentive engagement with the substance of sound: in listening to its emergence, development and distribution, and in the clarity and distinctiveness of its vivid, frequent contrasts of dynamics, rhythm and timbre. In his music, sound refuses to be arid.
The two panels of Couplet face one another as in a mirror: two faces that resemble each other, yet wear different expressions. The first is nervous and restless, suffused with inexhaustible energy as it roams between the instrument’s extreme registers; the second is more questioning, but still charged with an underlying anxiety that drives it, at the close, towards a violent outburst of desperate lyricism. Nor should the title La classe de danse mislead us, seeming as it does to evoke a world of graceful young women in the manner of Degas. Its character is dark and mercurial, its piano writing almost always virtuosic: an aggressive virtuosity, full of contrasts and sudden pirouettes, delighting in confrontations between the instrument’s outermost regions, from the two hands’ headlong forays across the keyboard in Grand Fouetté to the subtle rhythmic intricacies of En dehors.
Rhythm presses forward, questions, implores, cries out, and finds repose in the passions and memories of Trio pour un ange (2015). There is the archetypal Angel of so many religions and schools of philosophy, the foremost intermediary between the sensory and the transcendent worlds. There is the Angel of Paul Klee and Walter Benjamin, gazing in anguish at the past as an irresistible wind propels it towards the future. And there is the delicate, human angel tenderly evoked by Alban Berg in the dedication of his Violin Concerto, present here once more in the memory of someone dear to the composer.
Together, these associations give rise to the work’s poetic conception and musical character. Restless, changeable writing, which on this occasion favours softer, rounder blends of timbre, drives the instrumental lines unremittingly forward. A perpetual upward striving from the lowest registers yearns to scale the heights of the upper ones, often moving through liquid, almost transparent sonorities. Yet it seems to be repelled from those heights, and so sets out again along different paths, alternating aggression and grace, song and fury, a spare melodic line and a gathering of tension: an inward, unsettled seismography of expression that can find rest only in the suspended non-resolution of a masterly work, in which the three instrumental voices become truly speaking characters.
“Musical time in D’Amico has a stratigraphic depth of its own: it can pause to listen closely to the roughness or sweetness of sound, or rush headlong through a chain of events; it can alter its psychological pace continuously and without rupture. In short, it can be truly complex, while showing itself increasingly willing to admit a further complexity: that of memory” (A. Mastropietro, ibid.). A connection with our lived musical experience is explicit in Madrigale (2004), as its very title suggests.
It is also evident in the circumstances of its origin: the piece reimagines, in purely instrumental terms, an earlier work for voice and instruments based on the celebrated verses of Bernard of Clairvaux’s prayer to the Virgin Mary, which open the final canto of Dante’s Paradiso. The formal structure retains the original division into contrasting musical episodes. Here, freed from any relationship with the literary text, they follow and oppose one another according to an exclusively musical logic, progressing from an initial state of dynamism towards a final stillness. The presence of the ancient prayer, and the allusion to it, emerge through drifting modal evocations.
Sound softens the contours of time’s flow, releases it from the anxiety of becoming, and projects it into a further, reconciled dimension. In doing so, it reaffirms the initial “ruthless critique of the headlong pursuit of Well-being and Progress”, of the insatiable greed that swallows and sweeps away everything. Music can still attain an ethical dimension.
Album notes: Sandro Cappelletto.
| No. | Composer / work / movement | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Matteo D’Amico The Nature in the Grave |
11:57 |
| 02 | Matteo D’Amico Couplet I |
6:59 |
| 03 | II | 5:22 |
| 04 | Matteo D’Amico Trio pour un ange |
13:53 |
| 05 | Matteo D’Amico La classe de danse Grand Fouetté |
6:01 |
| 06 | Demi plié suspendu | 5:21 |
| 07 | En dehors | 3:57 |
| 08 | Matteo D’Amico Madrigale |
6:51 |
Total playing time: 60:21
Available from 29 January 2027.
