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Month: March 2023

29 Mar

Evangélion on stage: Alessandro Marangoni Interview

Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco / News /

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco considered Evangélion “the high point” of his piano compositions. Written in 1949, Evangélion: The Story of Jesus, Narrated to the Children in 28 Little Pieces for Piano, was often misunderstood during the composer’s life. It was rarely performed and essentially forgotten for decades. In 2014 the Italian pianist Alessandro Marangoni made the world premiere complete recording of this cycle for Naxos. In collaboration with the Italian actress Claudia Koll as the narrator, he has performed Evangélion all over Italy and abroad in a multi-sensorial production conceived by director Stefano Sgarella.  On the occasion of an upcoming performance in Palermo on 3 April, 2023 (Mario’s birthday!), Alessandro kindly agreed to tell us about the show they have created and about his experience bringing this intense work to the public. 
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14 Mar

Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s guitar repertoire via his correspondence with Andrés Segovia

Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco / News /

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s 36-year collaboration with the legendary guitarist Andrés Segovia resulted in 35 works featuring the guitar. The correspondence between these two artists provides an unprecedented source of information for performers and scholars. Beginning in 2014, for his PhD thesis at the University of Surrey, the guitarist Benjamin Bruant began a six-year journey that led him to eventually gather and translate into English (from the original French) Segovia’s letters to MCT  as well as the extant letters by Castelnuovo-Tedesco, held in the Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco Papers at the Library of Congress. Published in 2021, his doctoral thesis, From Commission to Publication: a Study of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Guitar Repertoire Informed by his Correspondence with Andrés Segovia, presents his annotated translations of decades of correspondence along with commentary on each of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s compositions discussed in the letters. Benjamin kindly agreed to tell us more about his project in this recent interview. 
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