Frédéric Chaslin

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The monumental breadth with which Brahms’s only concerto for violin and orchestra opens announces at once the scale of the undertaking, shaped on a model that runs from Beethoven to Schumann by way of Mendelssohn, through to the rustic, almost gypsy third movement. The concerto’s guardian angel was Joseph Joachim, one of the most extraordinary virtuosos of the nineteenth century. It was to him that Brahms deferentially submitted the score, inviting him to make any corrections needed. And as proof of the trust he placed in the great violinist, Brahms left him the whole cadenza of the first movement, something more than rare in the history of the nineteenth-century solo concerto.

Les chemins de l’amour (The Paths of Love) is one of the most famous and seductive songs written by a French composer. It was born in 1940 as a piece for voice and piano on verses by Jean Anouilh. The dedication went to the actress and singer Yvonne Printemps, who sang it in Anouilh’s Léocadia on 1 December 1940, in the tragic months of the Nazi occupation of France. Léocadia tells the delicate, poetic story of a young prince madly in love with a singer he knew for only three days.

The author of more than 150 mélodies between 1919 and 1961, Poulenc left a series of masterpieces such as the cycle of six mélodies for voice and piano on poems from the collection of the same name by Louise de Vilmorin, which Frédéric Chaslin has transcribed for orchestra. Composed in 1939, the set was first performed on 21 May 1942 at the Salle Gaveau by Geneviève Touraine with the composer at the piano. The penultimate song, «Fleurs», is dedicated to Solange d’Ayen, Duchess of Ayen and fashion editor of the French edition of Vogue.

The sudden death of a dear friend brought Francis Poulenc closer to the Catholic faith, which he never left, honouring it with a series of sacred works and with that operatic masterpiece Dialogues des Carmélites of 1957, from which the Gloria is separated by only two years. Poulenc indeed said that the idea for the Gloria came to him while he was working on the Dialogues. As Nicola Campogrande, composer in residence at Teatro Comunale, has observed, «one is tempted to say that Poulenc did not set the sacred text to music but used its sound and its rhythm, adding them to his own sonic palette», at times irreverently. «As I wrote — the French composer admitted — I thought of those frescoes by Gozzoli in which the angels stick out their tongues, and also of those serious Benedictine monks I once caught playing football».

One of the most renowned choral ensembles on the international scene, the Chorus of Teatro Comunale di Bologna has been directed by Gaetano Riccitelli, Leone Magiera, Fulvio Fogliazza, Fulvio Angius, Piero Monti, Marcel Seminara, Paolo Vero, Lorenzo Fratini, Andrea Faidutti and Alberto Malazzi. Since September 2021 it has been led by Gea Garatti Ansini.

The chorus has taken part in various recordings, including anthology projects with Luciano Pavarotti and June Anderson. It has appeared abroad many times: at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam and the Internationale Maifestspiele in Wiesbaden, at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in London (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Daniele Gatti), at the IV Mstislav Rostropovich International Festival in Moscow, on several tours of Japan, at the Savonlinna Opera Festival and at the Festival Internacional de Santander. In Italy the Chorus has worked with the Ravenna Festival under Riccardo Muti; it took part in a performance of Berlioz’s Te Deum at the PalaDozza in Bologna with Claudio Abbado on the podium; with Michele Mariotti it opened the Lingotto Musica season in Turin. Notable too are its appearances at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro and at the Festival Verdi in Parma, in particular for Stiffelio, a production awarded the special «Franco Abbiati» Prize.