July 20, 2020
ASIAGOFESTIVAL 2020
Now in its 54th year, Asiagofestival raises its curtain from Aug. 9 to 15, offering once again this year a program rich in meaning and interest, which nothing has sacrificed to the many organizational difficulties due to the historical moment we are living in.
The originality of the musical proposal is immediately evident from the first two concerts, which feature vibraphone and marimba, two extraordinary percussion instruments capable of leading the listener into sound universes of great rhythmic and timbral suggestion. Andrei Pushkarev will perform on vibraphone, Pavel Beliaev on marimba: among the world’s most respected percussionists in their respective instruments, they share a very long association with the legendary “Kremerata Baltica,” the orchestra founded in 1997 by violinist extraordinaire Gidon Kremer, with whom they have both performed around the world.
The festival will then open on Sunday, August 9, which, for the first time in the festival’s history, will be held in the wonderful outdoor setting of Regency Square, in front of the striking facade of Asiago Cathedral. The program, centered on transcriptions made by the performers themselves of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Alessandro Marcello and Astor Piazzolla, will also feature Julius Berger, who will play his extraordinary cello tuned according to the very special Baroque tuning known as the “little cello,” a name that recalls the tuning used by a much “smaller” cousin of the cello, the violin. The heart of the program will be the premiere performance of the piece commissioned from Andrei Pushkarev by Asiagofestival and dedicated to the city of Asiago, “The Cimbrian Fantasy,” a colorful reinterpretation for cello and vibraphone of some of the most beautiful songs from the priceless heritage of Cimbrian melodies, handed down unchanged for centuries on the Asiago Plateau (the concert will begin at 9 p.m. and in case of bad weather will be held, at the same time, at the Millepini Theater in Asiago).
It continues on Tuesday, Aug. 11 within the walls of the Interrupted Fort in Camporovere with an extremely varied program that aims to probe and explore every timbral and expressive recess of the marimba and vibraphone, reviewing compositions starting with Prokoviev and winding through Piazzolla’s tangos, the music of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, and some jazz and swing suggestions. (The concert will begin at 5 p.m. and in case of bad weather will be held at the Millepini Theater at 9 p.m.).
The festival continues on Aug. 13 by showcasing another instrument that can technically be defined as a percussion instrument: the piano, which, absent from the 2019 edition, returns to the Millepini Theater stage to pay tribute to one of the indispensable cornerstones of all music history, Ludwig Van Beethoven. In fact, this year marks the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of the unsurpassed Bonn composer, to whom Asiagofestival is dedicating an entire concert. Thanks to the piano of the admirable Argentinian pianist Jose Gallardo, a very longtime friend of Asiagofestival and again on the Plateau after a few years, and the cello of Julius Berger we will be accompanied through some of the most extraordinary pages of Beethoven’s repertoire for these two instruments, milestones in the development of the cello as a solo instrument and “equal protagonist” in the chamber music dialogue with the piano (the concert will be held at 9 p.m. at the Millepini Theater).
Concluding the 2020 edition of Asiagofestival will be the traditional concert of the Assumption, which will therefore be held on August 15 in St. Matthew’s Cathedral (beginning at 9 p.m.) and will feature at the console of the king of instruments the very young and talented organist Antonio Pantalone from Abruzzo, winner of the first prize in the first edition of the International Organ Competition “Fiorella Benetti Brazzale – City of Vicenza,” held in October 2019 in the City of Palladio and dedicated to the memory of Asiagofestival’s founding organist Fiorella Benetti Brazzale, whose children and grandchildren still continue to organize the Asiago music festival. The program focuses on some of the giants of organ composition (Bach, Widor, Reger) to which is flanked by the performance of the Postlude on the “Salve Regina” by Maestro Pierangelo Valtinoni from Vicenza, a former guest composer of Asiagofestival, who created the piece precisely for one of the rehearsals of the International Organ Competition “Fiorella Benetti Brazzale – City of Vicenza,” which, therefore, serves as an ideal link between the Asiago evening and the Vicenza competition.
Each concert has free admission-thanks to the support of the Municipality of Asiago, St. Matthew Parish, and Gran Moravia, Burro delle Alpi, Fratelli Brazzale Superior Butter, and Alpilatte-and will be introduced by a brief introduction to take the audience on each of these short but intense musical journeys.
Entry, seating arrangement and sanitation of the premises will be regulated according to current Covid-19 regulations.