Quintetto S. Cecilia & Leonora Armellini

Programme

 

L. Thuille
Sextet in B flat major op. 6 for piano and winds

N. Rimsky-Korsakov
Quintet in B flat major for piano and winds

Santa Cecilia Winds Quintet

Andrea Oliva flute 

Francesco Di Rosa oboe 

Lorenzo Guzzoni clarinet 

Andrea Zucco bassoon

Guglielmo Pellarin horn

Leonora Armellini piano

 

The resounding virtuosity, the brilliant energies, twirls and clear and aggressive rhythms of trumpets, horns, oboes and flutes present in the music of Bach, Handel or Vivaldi of the early eighteenth century are clearly present in the memory of the listeners. Then, too slow a technical evolution, set aside these instruments which for long decades were limited to strengthening their authority in the orchestra.
And here, at the end of the nineteenth / early twentieth century, a resounding rebirth again, not only in the realm of the orchestra signed by Igor Strawinski, but unexpectedly in the world of chamber music, the absolute realm of 'enemies' strings. A passage ensured and guided by a 'King' of chamber music, the piano, forced by physical form to play in a 'room', proud to find new companions with whom to share the characteristic features of the concertante style and stimulate unthinkable expressive skills in the new arrived.
The Trento Philharmonic has entrusted the reading of a masterful page by the maestro to a spectacular Santa Cecilia wind quintet, removed from the orchestra-symbol of Italy - and here supported by a young all-Italian piano star like Leonora Armellini - by Strawinski Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, perhaps still vaguely experimental, followed by a work fully immersed in the chamber music, even academic, of Ludwig Thuille faithful apostle of the most perfect chamber music embodied by Johannes Brahms.

The wind quintet, equivalent in importance to the string quartet, represents for wind instruments the most complete formation in terms of sound and rich in repertoire. The idea of the group invited to Trento is to recreate all the richness of orchestral timbres with this small, but heterogeneous, formation, treasuring, in the executive moment, the experiences collected by the protagonists during the tours in the most important international halls, while leaving free space also to the strong individual personalities that characterize 'Italianness in the world', awarded in the most important competitions of instrumentalism for 'wood' and 'brass'.

Winner of the "Janina Nawrocka" prize at the F. Chopin Competition in Warsaw (October 2010), Leonora Armellini graduated at the age of 12 with Laura Palmieri and then perfected herself with Sergio Perticaroli at the Academy of S. Cecilia in Rome. He always draws great inspiration from the lessons with Lilya Zilberstein at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg and Marian Mika, with whom he deepens in particular the Chopinian repertoire. Leonora Armellini has given more than 300 concerts in venues such as Carnegie Weill Recital Hall in New York or Musashino Concert Hall in Tokyo. In so much activity he finds time to take care of chamber music too, demonstrating, as in the project presented in Trento, a very particular artistic sensitivity.