Irvine Arditti — Opening concert

This edition's opening concert marks a milestone in the festival's history. Having Irvine Arditti open the programme is an opportunity we had never before been able to secure: he is one of the performers who has done most for the music of our time, and a name inseparable from a large part of the violin repertoire written over the past five decades.

To this is added an equally exceptional circumstance: three of the composers featured in the programme will be present at the festival. Hilda Paredes, one of the most representative living composers of new music, will attend with In Memoriam Thomas Kakuska; Joan Magrané, a Catalan composer with an extensive international career, with Aus; and Mateu Malondra Flaquer with Modular Violin, a piece that will receive its premiere at this recital. The programme is completed by Il piccolo catalogo dei sospiri by Berislav Šipuš and Kadosh by Sarah Nemtsov.

That composers and performer should share the same space as the audience turns the concert into a singular event: into an open conversation about how a new work comes into being and how it is passed on.

Beyond his legendary career as first violin of the Arditti Quartet, Irvine Arditti has also brought many works to life as a soloist. He was born in London in 1953 and entered the Royal Academy of Music at the age of sixteen. He joined the London Symphony Orchestra in 1976 and, two years later, became its co-leader at the age of twenty-five. He left the orchestra in 1980 to devote more time to the Arditti Quartet, which he had founded while still a student.

Irvine Arditti has premiered a wealth of large-scale works written expressly for him. Among them are Xenakis's Dox Orkh and Hosokawa's Landscape III, for violin and orchestra, as well as Ferneyhough's Terrain, Francesconi's Riti Neurali and Body Electric, Dillon's Vernal Showers, Jonathan Harvey's Scena, Pauset's Vita Nova, Reynolds's Aspiration and Sciarrino's Le Stagioni Artificiali, all of them for violin and ensemble.

Violin recital
Programme:

– Berislav Šipuš — Il piccolo catalogo dei sospiri (c. 7 min.)
– Sarah Nemtsov — Kadosh (c. 16 min.)
– Hilda Paredes — In Memoriam Thomas Kakuska (c. 10 min.)
– Joan Magrané — Aus (c. 7 min.)
– Mateu Malondra Flaquer — Modular Violin (c. 23 min.)