On Monday, January 1, at 6:00 p.m., the date of the long-awaited New Year’s concert is renewed in the Goldoni Theater. This event, now in its 18th year, is the result of a collaboration that connects the Livorno Foundation, the Pietro Mascagni Conservatory, and the Goldoni Theater Foundation: the Livorno Foundation, with its constant and intense commitment to support local culture, the Goldoni Theater. is increasingly oriented towards the dissemination and appreciation of music and performing arts, and the Mascagni Conservatory with the pedagogical and concert activity of the highest level, its students and teachers.
This year, the Mascagni Orchestra concert under the direction of maestro Lorenzo Sbaffi will offer a festive program that looks to Eastern Europe with the music of Shostakovich, Arutiunian, Chopin, and Elgar. The concert will be opened by Dmitri Shostakovich and the triumphant accents of his synthetic Festive Prelude Op.96, a joyous celebration that will soon come to life in the very vital and joyful themes and rhythms of the Shostak figure until the sumptuous finale with a Beethoven flavor.
The following Jazz Suite No. 1 surprises with a self-quotation of the well-known waltz, which is the soundtrack to Kubrick’s last film, Waltz No. 2, in a game of mutual memories and inventions, where the composer finds a highly original rendition of the instruments he calls to the stage, supporting ensembles and bold solo protagonists. A fun site, fresh and festive.
Armenian Alexander Arutiunian is one of the most important and performed composers of the 20th century and offers us his Trumpet Concerto with an engaging style, the page opens with a brilliant and sensitive classical reminiscence, with an almost expressionistic touch with a French sound; and the excited joy of the first theme then dissolves into an aura of a kind of faint melancholy. It is a work that challenges the performer, for this occasion, the young and talented trumpeter Paolo Rosi, to fully master all the techniques of the instrument, which is a difficult test for the performer and virtuoso.
After Concerto No. 2 in F minor for piano and orchestra, Op. 21, which is Fryderyk Chopin’s first concerto and has been a great success since its debut; the young composer had such personal success as a pianist that he was defined as the Paganini of the piano. The final movements are considered exceptionally technically demanding in a virtuoso play of fast dance trios. Edoardo Mancini, young but already a soloist on many Italian stages, will perform on the piano. Finally, the Mascagni Conservatory Orchestra will bid farewell to the audience at the Goldoni Theater with Edward Elgar’s beautiful Salut d’Amour, elegiac and romantic, in an orchestral version.
