With “Al limite della notte”, the 17th event in the series of “Concerti di Tokyo Kudan Minami”, the week dedicated by the Institute to Salvatore Sciarrino, a leading figure in contemporary Italian music, came to a close on 15 November at the Auditorium of the Italian Institute of Culture of Tokyo.
Organised in collaboration with the Association for the spread of contemporary Italian art (Tokyo), the week opened with a three-day double workshop held by Sciarrino himself and dedicated to young composers and performers. At the end of these days of work, the final recital saw the performance of both the pieces composed from scratch by the young musicians and Sciarrino’s pieces.
In addition to the final recital of the workshop, a lecture by Sciarrino – effectively translated by Hidehiko Hinohara of the Tokyo College of Music, who is also a composer and has extensive experience in the Italian music scene – was held on 13 November.
The idea of bringing Sciarrino to Japan began with the Japanese premiere of his work “Lohengrin2 (1982 and 1984), performed at the Kanagawa Kenmin Hall in Yokohama on 5 and 6 October, as part of the theatre’s 50th anniversary celebrations. Organised by the Kanagawa Arts Foundation with Ai Hashimoto as the protagonist, Yokohama’s Lohengrin was conducted by Yoichi Sugiyama, also a composer as well as a conductor, who likewise conducted the final concert at the Italian Cultural Institute in Tokyo on 15 November, featuring Keiko Murakami (transverse flute), Kaori Tanaka (clarinet), Aki Kuroda, (piano), Aldo Campagnari, (violin), Yoshiko Hannya, (viola), Aki Kitajima, (cello), and Noriko Yakushiji, (soprano).
The concert rhapsodically traced the evolution of Sciarrino’s music from the early 1970s to the present day, offering Japanese audiences the opportunity to directly relive the unfolding of an artistic experience that has marked the history of contemporary music.
