From Bartók to Schilingi and Francesconi. Luigi Di Fronzo · la Repubblica · 30 October 2002.
The string quartet in the second half of the twentieth century is tonight’s subject at Teatro Dal Verme. The Arditti Quartet, among the ensembles most committed to modern music, performs for Percorsi di musica d’oggi 2002.
Alongside Bartók’s historical Fifth Quartet from the 1920s, Kurtág’s debut Quartet Op. 1 from the late 1950s and Luciano Berio’s Notturno, Third Quartet, are two works by younger Milanese composers. First, Il colore del blu by thirty-one-year-old Jacopo Baboni Schilingi, an intimate piece written in 1999, from an artist educated at Milan Conservatory and the Sorbonne and appointed by Berio to direct the education department at Florence’s Tempo Reale.
The other Milanese contribution is Luca Francesconi’s Third Quartet, Mirrors. The creator of Buffa Opera, premiered at Teatro Strehler in June, is entering the international operatic arena these days with Ballata, based on Coleridge, at Brussels’s La Monnaie.
World-famous, the Arditti Quartet is nearing thirty years of intensive concert activity founded on hundreds of world premieres.
Arditti Quartet, Teatro Dal Verme, Via San Giovanni sul Muro 2, 8.30 p.m. Tickets €8/16; information 02 2049954.