SANDRO IVO BARTOLI & DEBRA FAST: "LA MUSICA DEI RICORDI"

Core Concept:

Last year, Italian virtuoso Sandro Ivo Bartoli collaborated with the Puccini Festival Foundation and Archivio Storico Ricordi for a concert in Bayreuth, Germany. Soon after, he had the opportunity to search Archivio Storico Ricordi's priceless collection of scores in Milan. What he found was, in his own words, “a treasure trove of musical marvels”. Inspired by such abundance of masterworks, he devised “La Musica dei Ricordi”, a concert series that took place at the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan to wide critical acclaim. Maestro Bartoli brings to Japan some of the pearls he discovered in Milan, alongside celebrated masterworks that were published by Casa Ricordi. The programme also includes two world premiere performances: David Plylar's arrangement for the left hand alone of Chopin's Etude Op.25 No.7 and a Fantasia for violin and piano “Rimembranze del Giappone”, an important work especially written for renowned Canadian violinist Debra Fast and Sandro Ivo Bartoli by Italian Maestro Luciano Damarati.

Nominal Support (Koen)

of the Embassy of Canada in Japan

Sandro Ivo Bartoli

Sandro Ivo Bartoli is a virtuoso pianist whose sumptuous playing has captivated audiences throughout the wolrld. A native of Pisa, he graduated from the Florence State Conservatory, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and collaborated privately with Russian piano legend Shura Cherkassky, who was instrumental in the beginning of his international career. In the early 1990s, with Cherkassky's encouragement, Mr Bartoli began to rediscover the Italian piano literature of the early Twentieth Century, soon establishing a trend and becoming its leading interpreter.

Heralded by the German press as “one of the most important musicians to have come out of Italy in the past three decades”, Mr Bartoli regularly performs a huge active repertoire that spans five centuries of music making. His playing has been praised for its kaleidoscopic range of tone colour and its breath-taking virtuosity, attributes that Mr Bartoli also brings to the better known repertoire of the Classical and Romantic eras such as the concertos of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Franck, Rachmaninov, Shostakovitch and Tchaikovsky among others.

He has played with orchestras such as The Philharmonia, the Hallé, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Deutsche Philharmonie, the Mozart Chamber, and has appearead at some of the World's most prestigious venues such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, at the Gasteig in Munich (where he performed alongside such giants as Martha Argerich and Rodion Shchedrin), at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, Nybrokajen 11 in Stockholm, Fundación March in Madrid, and at the Festivals of Avignon, Brighton, Bergen, Bayreuth, Norfolk & Norwhich, GAMO Festival of contemporary music in Florence, Serate Musicali Milan and Sagra Musicale Umbra.

Mr Bartoli's discography comprises the complete Concertos of Gian Francesco Malipiero with the Radio Orchestra of Saarbrücken (CPO, winner of the Diapason d’Or in 2008), works for piano and orchestra of Ottorino Respighi with the State Orchestra of Saxony (Brilliant Classics), the First Piano Concerto of Erik Lotichius with the Symphony Orchestra of St. Petersburg (Navona), and solo albums devoted to the music of Alfredo Casella, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Percy Grainger, Frédéryk Chopin, Ferruccio Busoni, ‘The Frescobaldi Legacy’ (Brilliant Classics, 5 de Diapason, 2013), and the complete Bach-Busoni transcriptions. His recent Liszt recording on Solaire, The Franciscan works, was hailed as “one of the best piano recordings of our time” (Fidelity) and “the work of a visionary artist” (Musicweb International). In the spring of 2017 Solaire will release Mr Bartoli's recording of Bach's Preludes and Fantasias.

Last year Mr Bartoli was appointed the Artist in Residence at the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, and has since acted as the ambassador of Giacomo Puccini's complete piano music which he will record in February 2017 using Maestro Puccini's very own 1901 Steinway. In 2015 he created Bianchi e Neri Piano Fest Tuscany, a summer concert series highlighting the piano music of Italian composers, which has become one of the most anticipated music events in Tuscany.

Mr Bartoli is the protagonist of two documentary films, ‘Mood Indigo’ (Nu Films, Amsterdam, 2013) and ‘Pianiste-Interpréte’ (Salto Films, Paris, 2014). For his outstanding work in the Arts, the City of Turin has awarded him the Gina Rosso Prize.

He lives in his native Tuscany.
www.sandroivobartoli.com

Debra Fast

Canadian violinist Debra Fast began her musical journey at the age of four, when she began studying the piano and later, the violin.

At fifteen she appeared on Canadian television performing the music of Bach and Schubert and since then has played with numerous Canadian orchestras including the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, the Victoria Symphony, the Ottawa Symphony, the North Shore Sinfonia, the Abbotsford, Okanagan, and Prince George Symphonies. Debra Fast has always dedicated a large part of her musical activities to chamber music: she was a member of the Armadillo String Quartet and a founding member of the Fidelio Quartet. A graduate of the University of British Columbia's School of Music, she has performed throughout Europe, Central America, Alaska, Canada, the Antilles, and most recently she toured Japan with the internationally renown Fondazione Festival Pucciniano.

In 2006 Debra Fast moved to Italy. Her intense solo activity brought her to fall in love with the historic Italian opera houses and picturesque communities throughout the country, leading to the creation in 2014 of Suono Solo, a special project exploring over four hundred years of solo violin tradition. In addition to presenting the music of giants like Bach, Tartini, Prokofjev and Paganini, Debra actively champions the lesser known violin literature. In 2016 she premiered A Wild Rose Grows Through an Old Tuscan Road, a work for solo violin especially written for her by Canadian composer Graig Robertson, which she also recorded for a special release by the Tuscan Regional Government. Suono Solo 2017 will highlight the music of Bloch, Baltzar, Bach and Paganini.

Since 2015, her summers are dedicated to Bianchi e Neri Piano Fest, where she appears throughout Italy with international pianist Sandro Ivo Bartoli. Her current season includes various recital programs of works by Beethoven, Bazzini, Rossini, Vivaldi, and Pergolesi. She will also be premiering Fantasia for Violin and Piano, a work by Italian Maestro Luciano Damarati.

Debra Fast is the Vice President of Accademia de' Concerti, a society promoting excellence in classical music. Within the society's activities, she plays alongside some of Italy's foremost musicians such as violinist Marco Fornaciari, trumpeter Andrea Dell'Ira, organist Matteo Venturini, and others. Yearly, Debra donates several recitals to Donatori di Musica, a philanthropic network of musicians, where she has the privilege to share her love of music with the families and patients in the oncology departments of hospitals throughout Italy.

Debra Fast performs on a mysterious violin which she inherited from her Great Grandfather who immigrated from Siberia to Canada following the Bolshevik revolution.