Listen to the audio version of the article
In northern Sardinia, radiating from Berchidda, jazz is heard for the 36th festival founded by trumpeter Paolo Fresu. As always, the beginning is on the Livorno-Golfo Aranci ferry, with the brass instruments of Rusty Brass; and the finale in the Peschiera di San Teodoro, one of the most beautiful nature trails in Sardinia. Then in the mountains, among the castles of Bolzano, for the Festival which ranges from ancient music to the young people of the Conservatory who play in the gardens, to the great symphony. Finally, I jump across the Channel for one of the masterpieces of the twentieth century.
Berchidda (SS)
From 8 to 16 August here is the thirty-sixth edition of the Time in Jazz festival. Among the musicians Tullio De Piscopo, Malika Ayane, Eivind Aarset, Guano Padano, Farafina, Dhafer Youssef, Roberto Ottaviano, Gianni Cazzola, Savana Funk with Willie Peyote, Colle der Fomento with Dj Craim and The Battery. Concerts also exhibitions, book presentations and meetings with the authors, activities for children, in the festival directed by the jazz musician Paolo Fresu. Not only in Berchidda but also in other towns and villages in northern Sardinia: Arzachena, Banari, Bortigiadas, Buddusò, Budoni, Cheremule, Loiri Porto San Paolo, Luogosanto, Mores, Oschiri, Porto Rotondo, Puntaldia, San Teodoro, Tempio Pausania and Tula.
Bozen
From 31 July to 3 September here is the Bolzano Festival, which on the 6th at the Teatro Comunale welcomes two performers such as the conductor Antonio Pappano and the violinist Julia Fischer, together with the European Union Youth Orchestra (EUYO). In addition to the EUYO, there is also another orchestra in residence, the Gustav Mahler Jugend Orchester, which on the 17th will play with Jakub Hrůša, new musical director of the Royal Opera House in London. The Antiqua review is organized within the festival, with its concerts in the courtyards, in the ancient palaces, in the Gothic churches. Then “Music in the courtyard”, which sees the young musicians of the Conservatory in instrumental formations in the various courtyards of the city (03.08, 16.08, 21.08). Finally, the 64th F. Busoni Piano Competition will take place from August 23rd to September 3rd, a good opportunity for close listening – by participating in the preliminary rounds and then in the finals – of the cornerstones of piano literature, interpreted by young talents.
Glyndebourne (UK)
From 4 to 27 August, eight performances of Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress”. Thus he returns to the famous opera festival in the Sussex countryside, with the characteristic picnic in the long interval, a fundamental staging of this work by the Russian composer, a high text of twentieth-century musical theatre. This staging is an evergreen of the Festival – rightly so, given the admirable correspondence to the music of David Hockney’s sets and costumes. It debuted in 1975, revived several times, presented abroad (also at La Scala in 1979, conductor Riccardo Chailly). “Like Proust, Stravinskij was among the first to understand that in an age like the twentieth century we build with synthetic, inauthentic materials anyway; and only the rescue corridor passes through the pastiche, as an original creative-critical act of invention ‘above’ and ‘half’.” (Arbasino). Hockney managed to create a visual equivalent of music. As Stravinsky “reworks” centuries of opera – and similarly one of the greatest English poets, WH Auden, proceeds with the libretto, so Hockney behaves with the prints of Hogarth which inspired the composer and the librettist. The hatches and lines of the
engravings by Hogarth “explode” on stage, in the cheerful idioms of British Pop Art.