Next Week (July 29), Alessio Bax Launches First Season as Artistic Director of Italy’s Incontri in Terra di Siena Festival
Next week, on Saturday, July 29, Leeds and Hamamatsu winner Alessio Bax launches a new three-year appointment as Artistic Director of Tuscany’s Incontri in Terra di Siena, with a week of events in and around the idyllic Villa La Foce estate (July 29–Aug 5) and performances at Germany’s Schloss Elmau (Aug 9 & 12). He will be joined there by 16 superlative chamber musicians: mezzo Sarah Connolly; violinists Joshua Bell, Nicolas Dautricourt, and Henning Kraggerud; violists Lise Berthaud and Lawrence Power; cellists Antonio Lysy and Paul Watkins; horn player Radovan Vlatković; pianists Lucille Chung, Julius Drake and Dan Tepfer; and the Escher String Quartet. Programming highlights include the European premiere of Tepfer’s Solar Spiral (2016), and Joshua Bell’s leadership of the beloved Mendelssohn Octet.
The Incontri takes place both indoors and out at the spectacular Villa La Foce in the Tuscan hills, as well as at the nearby medieval castle Castelluccio and venues throughout the Val d’Orcia region, a UNESCO Heritage site. Though only a two-hour drive from the Rome airport, the idyllic setting feels a world apart, and in past years the scenic festival has attracted the likes of Vladimir Ashkenazy, Maxim Vengerov, Ian Bostridge, and John Eliot Gardiner. As Classical Music put it:
“One of the best kept early 20th-century gardens in Italy is the fragrant setting for a festival that has spent 25 years celebrating music, visual arts, history, literature – and of course, being Italian, food and wine. It’s magic.”
As Bax explained in a recent “Meet the Artist” interview:
“[Incontri] is truly a unique festival and it has a deep connection with its surroundings, so I had to keep that in mind. I lined up a ‘dream team’ of my favourite artists and close friends who like to work together. And I tried to think of programs that are satisfyingly balanced, exciting, inspiring and fresh. I can’t wait to hear the results.”
With superstar violinist Joshua Bell, his regular recital partner since 2013, the Italian pianist presents an all-Brahms gala program on August 3. Also featuring celebrated Croatian horn player Radovan Vlatković, this will take place in the medieval hilltop village of Castiglioncello at the Church of Sant’Andrea, followed by a dinner at Monteverdi Tuscany, the luxury resort named “one of the four best hotels in Italy” by the UK’s Country & Town House magazine.
Bax also performs with his other most frequent recital partner, his wife and fellow pianist, Lucille Chung; their musical partnership has been described as “a marriage of wondrous colours and dextrous aplomb, subtly balanced to make a musical performance sound as one” (Music and Arts, UK). Joined by Italian-born cellist Antonio Lysy, original founder and music director of the festival and the winner of a Latin Grammy Award, they launch the Incontri season on July 29 with a program of Mozart, Rachmaninov, and Piazzolla at the Castelluccio, a 12th-century bastion on the La Foce estate.
The Castelluccio is also the setting for the festival debut on August 2 of jazz pianist Dan Tepfer, “a deeply rational improviser drawn to the unknown” (New York Times). Tepfer joins forces with the Escher String Quartet for the European premiere of his piano quintet Solar Spiral (2016), which draws on algorithms as well as his signature improvisations. These may also be heard when he extemporizes on Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and Vlatković completes the program with the horn solo from Messiaen’s transcendent Des canyons aux étoiles.
One of the few chamber ensembles to be awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Escher String Quartet makes its own first appearance at the festival with a concert that includes Mozart’s “Hunt” quartet along with quartets by Barber and Dvořák. The concert takes place at the 10th-century Romanesque Pieve di Corsignano church in Pienza, a regular festival venue, on July 30.
The following day, on July 31, the quartet returns for Rachmaninov, Grieg, and Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence at the 16th-century Triano Church in Montefollonico. Joining the quartet for this performance are Bax and three more of Europe’s finest chamber musicians: Norwegian violinist Henning Kraggerud, winner of both the Grieg and Sibelius Prizes; French violist Lise Berthaud, laureate of the Geneva International Competition’s Hindemith Prize; and Emerson Quartet member Paul Watkins, who has been hailed as “Britain’s finest cellist” (The Guardian).
Besides serving as Artistic Director of the Arctic Chamber Orchestra, Kraggerud is also a prolific composer with more than 200 works to his name. Three of these will be heard alongside Mozart’s Horn Quintet and Mendelssohn’s Octet in an August 4 chamber recital that also features Bell, Berthaud, Watkins, Vlatković, Lysy and members of the Escher Quartet in the courtyard of the La Foce estate.
The festival draws to a close with a vocal recital by British mezzo Sarah Connolly, a two-time Grammy nominee, on August 5. With collaborative pianist Julius Drake, who has consistently proven himself “the best in the business” (New York magazine), she makes her festival debut with art songs by Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Ivor Gurney, and Richard Rodney Bennett at the Teatro degli Avvaloranti in Città della Pieve, birthplace of the famous Renaissance painter Pietro “Perugino” Vannucci.
By way of a coda, the festival concludes at Germany’s Schloss Elmau, where Bax, Chung, Lysy, and Vlatković collaborate with violinist Nicolas Dautricourt and violist Lawrence Power on chamber programs of Mozart, Dohnanyi, and Fauré (Aug 9) and of Mozart and Brahms (Aug 12), among the dramatic peaks and forests of the Bavarian Alps.
More information about the festival is available here, and recent high-resolution photos of the pianist may be downloaded here.
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Incontri in Terra di Siena Festival 2017
La Foce, Tuscany, Italy
July 29–Aug 5
Schloss Elmau, Germany
Aug 9 & 12
Artistic Director:
Alessio Bax
Musicians:
Sarah Connolly, mezzo-soprano
Joshua Bell, Nicolas Dautricourt, and Henning Kraggerud, violins
Lise Berthaud and Lawrence Power, violas
Antonio Lysy and Paul Watkins, cellos
Radovan Vlatković, French horn
Alessio Bax, Lucille Chung, Julius Drake, and Dan Tepfer, piano
Escher String Quartet (Adam Barnett-Hart & Aaron Boyd, violins; Pierre Lapointe, viola; Brook Speltz, cello)
Performances:
Sat, July 29
Castelluccio
Alessio Bax – Lucille Chung – Antonio Lysy
Mozart, Rachmaninov, Piazzolla
Sun, July 30
Pienza
Pieve di Corsignano
Escher String Quartet
Mozart: Quartet No. 17 in B-flat, “The Hunt”
Barber: Quartet in B minor, Op. 11
Dvořák: Quartet in G, Op. 106
Mon, July 31
Montefollonico
Chiesa del Triano
Chamber Concert – Norway and Russia
Kraggerud, Watkins, Berthaud, Lysy, Bax, Escher String Quartet
Rachmaninov: String Quartet No. 1
Grieg: Violin Sonata No. 3
Tchaikovsky: Souvenir de Florence for string sextet
Wed, Aug 2
Castelluccio
Dan Tepfer – Jazz Piano
Tepfer, Vlatković, Escher String Quartet
Bach, arr. Tepfer: Goldberg Variations
Messiaen: “Appel Interstellaire” from Des canyons aux étoiles
Tepfer: Solar Spiral (2016) for piano quintet (European premiere)
Thurs, Aug 3
Castiglioncello del Trinoro
Chiesa di Sant’Andrea
Brahms Gala
Bell, Vlatković, and Bax
Brahms: Sonatensatz
Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 1
Brahms: Horn Trio Op. 30
Fri, Aug 4
La Foce
Cortile di Fattoria
Chamber concert – from Two to Eight
Bell, Kraggerud, Barnett-Hart, Boyd, Berthaud, Lysy, Watkins, Lapointe, and Vlatković
Mozart: Horn Quintet
Kraggerud: Voyage Douloureux; Til Sara; Duo Gemini
Mendelssohn: Octet
Sat, Aug 5
Città della Pieve
Teatro degli Avvaloranti
Sarah Connolly and Julius Drake
Schumann: Hans Christian Andersen Lieder (Op. 40)
Mahler: Rückert-Lieder
Brahms: “Ständchen” (Op. 106, No.1)
Brahms: “Da unten im Tale” (WoO 33, No.6)
Brahms: “Feldeinsamkeit” (Op. 86, No.2)
Brahms: “Die Mainacht” (Op. 43, No.2)
Brahms: “Von ewiger Liebe” (Op.43, No.1)
Ivor Gurney: “Most Holy Night”
Ivor Gurney: “Desire in Spring”
Ivor Gurney: “By a Bierside”
Ivor Gurney: “Sleep”
Richard Rodney Bennett: “The History of the Thé Dansant”
Wed, Aug 9; Sat, Aug 12
Schloss Elmau, Germany
Bax, Chung, Dautricourt, Lysy, Power, Vlatković
Aug 9: Mozart, Dohnanyi, and Fauré
Aug 12: Mozart and Brahms
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© 21C Media Group, July 2017