Giulia Peri soprano | Gregorio Nardi piano | Voci di sommersi (Voices of the Submerged)

• 27-01-2018

  20.30

  Ridotto del Teatro Grande

Music James Simon and Pavel Haas

For many years, Giulia Peri and Gregorio Nardi have collaborated on the research and execution of music for voice and piano by Jewish composers from all over Europe. This research has allowed us to present again to the public’s consciousness music which is of the highest quality, but performed very rarely or even completely forgotten. The concert program features two composers, Pavel Haas and James Simon, one Czech, the other German. Both belong to the ranks of the submerged: those who did not return from the Nazi camps. Pavel Haas (1899-1944), a student of Janáček, is a well-known and recognized composer today. His cycles of Lieder op. 1 and op. 18, of rare execution, recover the intense melodic vein of the Moravian tradition, offering it with splendid harmonisations and pianistic writing of great virtuosity. The Lieder production of James Simon (1880-1944), a pupil of Max Bruch from Berlin, is still, decades after the Nazi catastrophe, largely unknown. Described by his contemporaries as a man of vast culture and valuable conversation, he has composed numerous pieces in a style nurtured by all German culture, from choral to romantic Lied.