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The sixteenth Vacanze a Milano season has not forgotten classical music. Tonight at 9 p.m., in Castello Sforzesco’s Cortile della Rocchetta, entered from Piazza del Cannone, the Coinema percussion quartet presents the first open-air Dialoghi chamber concert. Admission is free until the five hundred seats are filled; reservations are available during the stated booking hours.
The quartet comprises Cristian Calcagnile, Dario Palermo, Marco Pezzenati and Davide Ravioli. Coinema is recently formed, consisting of young musicians, all pupils of David Searcy. Their aim is to explore contemporary music’s different territories “in search of the infinite sonorities offered by the percussion world”.
The group recently performed with percussionists from Freiburg’s Staatliche Hochschule at a Milan concert conducted by Bernhard Wulff, and in Freiburg with David Searcy. Tonight’s programme is not easy listening, but is dedicated to those who love—and often have little opportunity to hear—music projected into the future.
The first half includes Stockhausen’s Tierkreis, inspired by the zodiacal signs governing the world, presented tonight in a new arrangement never performed before. The second opens with Steve Reich’s Music for Pieces of Wood, a rhythmic construction solely for claves, wooden instruments of African origin. It is particularly interesting as one of minimal music’s most successful examples, producing exquisite and unusual sonorities.
The second work is Quartetto by Baboni Schilingi, a young composer connecting here with the latest avant-garde experiments. It is conducted by Wally Pituello, a young pupil of Franco Gallini: another woman on the podium, finally no longer an exception.
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