2024-01-27 08:07:50
«History should not be changed with cancel culture. In opera there are too many directors who follow a banal tradition or are provocative. Does Caterina Caselli produce music of our time? Welcome.” Also on the program is a piece that Philip Glass dedicated to him
TURIN It is the sign of a journey that continues, the journey of full maturity. Riccardo Muti took the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under his wing in 2010. Now the first energies go to his young «Cherubini», to teaching and to the Wieners. But in Chicago he remained conductor emeritus, and the long European tour together with this sound battleship which assimilated transparency and singability with the shiny enamel of the brass instruments, arrived yesterday at the Lingotto in Turin.
Tonight we go to La Scala and on Monday to the Rome Opera. In Italy Muti also moves the baton towards our musical colors. There is an early piece by Richard Strauss present in the three concerts: Aus Italien. The Italian premiere of The Triumph of the Octagon, a piece that Philip Glass dedicated to Muti after visiting him in the dressing room in Chicago, where he surrounded himself with memories, transforming it into a small house. There is a photo of Federico II’s Castle in Puglia, which he sees from his trullo. Glass was struck by the octagonal shape of a fortress similar to an imposing stone crown fallen from the sky. «He wrote not by evoking the castle in music, but by a numerical symbol, 8, which for the ancients had a profound meaning, it was the number of cosmic balance. It’s a 10 minute minimalist piece. From the adagio like an uninterrupted river, almost repetitive despite its changes, it ends suddenly without a real ending. It is music that in crescendo rises towards a hypothetical sky, into nothingness. It doesn’t make people jump in their seats in a bombastic way but it envelops you.” You rarely instantly spot today’s composers. “Real. There’s Boulez, Penderecky… Glass has a recognizable style and language of his own. It’s like when he listens to Callas, Pavarotti or the Wieners and says: it’s them. Among Italians I appreciate Sollima and Roberto De Simone, he also gave a lot to popular music, and Naples has shamefully forgotten him. Does Caterina Caselli produce music today? You are welcome. Since the 1900s there have been columns that should be repertoire. But it is a state that has forgotten itself.”
With Turin, Muti is having a special relationship.
How do you beat the routine? Working, working and working. Knowing that the world of sounds can never be possessed, perfection does not exist, it cannot be achieved.” Do you see an heir? «There are serious young people, even in Italy. But I don’t want to name names. You don’t go from the ground floor to the attic in one day. The path is slow and tortuous.” After the European premiere, the Times of London ran the headline: «Riccardo Muti at 82 has never been better than this».
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January 27, 2024 (changed January 27, 2024 | 09:07)
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