Stresa Festival 2023 • 62nd edition

Islands of music to land on, a sound archipelago to explore: it is with this evocative metaphor that the artistic director Mario Brunello presents the 62ᵃ edition of the Stresa Festival, which will take place from 14 July to 8 September 2023 in the renowned tourist resort on the banks of the Lake Maggiore, in the beautiful Borromean Islands and other surrounding sites.

“Let's imagine Stresa Festival 2023 like a sound archipelago” – he says Mario Brunello – “and let's imagine drawing a new map of the area where islands of music are added to the islands and beauties that Lake Maggiore has always offered. A new archipelago to navigate and discover, made up of islands with well-defined characteristics both by musical genres and by the great artists who will inhabit them.”

And there will be four 'islands' on which to land to participate in a variety of musical events, #jazz, #classic, #baroque is #young, in addition to the usual ones #album, opportunities for meetings and informal chats with the guest artists of the festival.

The protagonists

Among the protagonists of Stresa Festival 2023, Yuja Wang is Nicola Piovani, the flutist Andrew Olive, the clarinetist Alessandro Carbonare, the violinist Alena Baeva, the pianist Angela Hewitt, theRadio France Philharmonic Orchestra, L'Octet of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and again the voice of Vincenzo Capezzuto with The arpeggio, early music ensemble directed by Christina Pluhar, the ensemble La Fonte Musica with Michael Pasotti, besides of course the same Mario Brunello.

Places

Center of the Stresa Festival 2023 as always, it will be the large auditorium of the Palazzo dei Congressi, the historic location of the exhibition, with its precious acoustics completely renovated and now renamed Stresa Festival Hall; there will be then The Catapult, the "portable" concert hall designed by the architect Michele De Lucchi, which has become famous all over the world, and other events will be hosted on the magnificent Islands of Lake Maggiore, in the mystical setting ofHermitage of Santa Caterina del Sasso, at the suggestive sixteenth-century church of Our Lady of the Countryside, to St. Leonard and al Landscape Museum of Verbania, and finally in the industrial warehouse of the Herno logistics, main sponsor of Stresa Festival, for a touch of metropolitan atmosphere.

The program

The Stresa Festival program is divided into two parts: the first part of the events takes place from 14 to 29 July, the second from 18 August to 8 September.

#Stresa festivaljazz

#Stresafestivaljazz, in July, is the first island, where two great international stars will be heard, Arthur Sandoval (14.7.) e Nicola Piovani (15.7.) The subsequent appointments will feature young international musicians such as the guitarist Matteo Mancuso (19.7.), the vocal group Accent (21.7.)" and theHalliGalli Quartet (18.7.).

Also in July the brass of Billi Brass Quintet (26.07.) will be hosted on the Isola dei Pescatori, while a new and particular experience will be offered by Rigoletto (22 and 23.7.), i.e. Verdi's opera in an open-air chamber version, conceived by the director Gianmaria Aliverta, with the public who will be able to follow the story by entering the heart of the story, face to face with music, singing and an original scenography.

#Stresafestivalyoung

#Sresafestivalyoung is a newborn island, inhabited by young people for the young people of the area, by their music, their passions and the desire to be present in the music of yesterday and today. And they have proposed the Renaissance for the Festival Miss dux Ferrarie of Josquin Desprez (28.7.), which will be interpreted by young singers and instrumentalists in the sixteenth-century church of Madonna di Campagna in Verbania, in a suggestive combination of music and art.

From the past we jump to the future because among the proposals of #Stresafestivalyoung there is also the electronic music of Teho Teardo (29.07.), for a performance by the lake dedicated to young people and all those who want to experiment.

#Stresafestivalbaroque

#Stresafestivalbaroque is instead a musical island with an ancient sound that will inaugurate the second part of the Festival in August: The four Seasons of Vivaldi, reinterpreted by the brilliant composer Max Richter, will be played on ancient instruments by Brixia Musicalis, directed by Elisa Citterio also soloist on the violin, and will see on stage two great contemporary dancers and choreographers, James Wilton is Sarah Jane Taylor (19.8.).

Another leap of five hundred years into the past, to relive the evening in which Monteverdi changed the history of music with The Combat of Tancred and Clorinda (20.8.), but also the experience of a matinee with i Madrigals at the Landscape Museum (20.8.), with The music source is Michael Pasotti.

There will also be the welcome return of an artist who impressed the audience at the last edition of the Stresa Festival, Vincenzo Capezzuto, for an evening at the origins of great Neapolitan popular music with The arpeggio is Christina Pluhar (21.8.) and the double appointment with the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin by Bach, unattainable music, suspended, in a hermitage overlooking the lake, interpreted by Mario Brunello on the small cello (23 and 24.8.).

#Stresafestivalclassic

#Stresafestivalclassic is the largest musical island of the Festival: it includes the classical, romantic and modern repertoire, with a cycle of the most famous and original chamber works by Schubert, the Grand Duo for violin and piano (26.8.), the Arpeggione (29.8.) e the Octet (2.9.). Extraordinary performers such as Alena Baeva is Dmitry Ablogin, Sergey Malov (on the violin and the rare shoulder cello) e Flora Fabri at the fortepiano, theoctet of the musicians of the Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

And again, with a great instrumental repertoire, Romeo and Juliet of Prokofiev (30.8.) in a rare chamber version with harp performed by Metamorphosis Trio and from Andrea Oliva, Alessandro Carbonare is Fabrice Pierre and then continue with the Well tempered harpsichord of Bach with the pianist Angela Hewitt (5.9.), the touching Quartet op. 132 of Beethoven with the Barbican Quartet (1.9.) up to the "progressive" improvisations of a wild violin and cello, Matthias Bartolomey is Klemens Bittmann (6.9.), or to the virtuosity of a very young phenomenal trumpet player, Lucienne Renaudin Vary with Felicien Brut on the accordion (27.8.). The same trumpet sounds can be heard at dawn, at the first light of the sun on the lake seen from Sass Dal Pizz, an unparalleled panoramic point in one of the Album of the Festival.

Finally, symphonic music, which will bring the explosive star of the piano to the stage of the Festival Hall Yuja Wang (3.9.), which will unleash fireworks in the two Piano Concerts of Ravel; just as engaging will be thereRadio France Philharmonic Orchestra directed by Peltokoski moth which in the second part of the evening will propose the famous version of the Pictures at an exhibition of Musorgsky orchestrated by Ravel himself.

At the conclusion of the review the Concert symphony and two big lasts Symphonies of Mozart with Le Concert de la Loge directed by Julien Chauvin (8.9.).

#Album and Minus One

Then there are the #Album, a precious and unusual invention of the Stresa Festival, special moments that the artists give to the public, accompanied by a glass of wine, or for a walk or a chat in the gardens of Villa Taranto and in other surprising places.

Not only that, the artists of the Festival will offer amateur musicians the experience of minus one, that is, playing together in a trio or quartet, experiencing for once the thrill of a great performance, in the small church of San Vittore, a jewel of the Isola dei Pescatori, and in the church of San Michele in Stresa.

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(Photo above, La Catapulta on Isola Bella, credit Lorenzo Di Nozzi ©Stresa Festival; below, another evocative location of the Festival, the Hermitage of S. Caterina del Sasso)