Concert of Oct 16th – On reservation
Concert of Oct 18th – Free Entrance
In the framework of the activities promoted by the Italian Embassy and the Italian Cultural Institute for celebrating the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, the 2019 Beijing Music Festival will bring to Beijing Audience two concerts named “The sounds of Italian Renaissance. Melodies and madrigals from Leonardo’s era”, which will be hold at the auditorium of the Italian Cultural Institute on the 16th October and at the Conference Hall of the CAFA Museum on the18th October.
The concerts, co-organized by the Beijing Music Festival，the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi, the CAFA Museum and the Italian Cultural Institute of the Italian Embassy, will present the instrumental and vocal music from the Renaissance age, which represents the “taste” of the music listen and played by Leonardo at his time.
On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, the Fondazione Levi hosted the exhibition Leonardo and his outstanding circle focused on the Leonardeschi, the circle of late Renaissance artists, direct or indirect students and followers of Leonardo, who contributed to a wider diffusion of the great Maestro paintings’ style in Europe during the XVI century. At the same time the Fondazione Levi and the Italian Cultural Institute promoted the organization of these concerts as one of the various activities hosted in Beijing to present different aspects, sometimes less known, of the era of Leonardo.
Program
Ugo and Olga Levi Venice Ensemble
A particularly positive collaboration was formed between the Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi and the Conservatorio di musica “Benedetto Marcello” of Venice after their cooperation in the 2015 and 2016 editions for the Fondazione Levi “Concerto delle Ceneri”, which saw the execution of two unique projects: the Messa a 4 cori by Giovanni Legrenzi, and the Passio Venetiae, respectively. The spirit of study and experimentation that animates both the Fondazione Levi and the Conservatorio “B. Marcello” of Venice has again come together in the project Leonardo in China, which sees a program that includes both Renaissance Italian music, and a repertory of Chinese music from that same era, which is sure to set the bases for interesting and stimulating prospects in the research of music in the future.
The Fondazione Levi has chosen, for these special concerts dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci, conductor Cristian Contadin and his students from the Dipartimento di Musica Antica (the Departmentof ancient music) of the Conservatorio “Benedetto Marcello”. The venetian Dipartimento di Musica Antica has in fact earned a place of importance, at a national level, with regards to the research, study, and production of music from the Renaissance and Baroque eras—in particular with regards to Venetian music. The professors of Canto Barocco (Baroque singing), Harpsichord, Recorder, Lute, Bass Viol, Baroque Violin, Vocal music, using a humanistic and Renaissance approach to learning, work to provide an education that is both specialistic and interdisciplinary for their young students and future musicians. Their studies, therefore, involve the execution of operas, concerts, seminaries, master classes, the reconstruction of musical, and historical/social events in important venues and prestigious institutions in the city of Venice, for example: the Basilica di S. Marco and the Teatro la Fenice.
Cristiano Contadin is an Italian viola da gamba player and the founder of the Opera Prima Ensemble, a chamber music group of internationally-acclaimed soloists devoted to the baroque repertoire. As a gamba soloist and continuo player, he collaborates with ensembles in Italy and abroad, including I Barocchisti, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, La Venexiana, Orchestra Sinfonica “G. Verdi” (Milan). Mr. Contadin teaches Viola da Gamba and chamber music at the Conservatory “B. Marcello” in Venice, and has also held teaching positions at the Academy of Music in Esbjerg, Denmark, the Conservatory “S. Giacomantonio” in Cosenza, and the “V. Bellini” Conservatory in Palermo, Sicily. He is the summer director of “L’Instituto Laboratorio di Musica Antica” (ILMA) in San Vito al Tagliamento. Mr. Contadin plays an anonymous Venetian bass viol from the 18th century.