Requiem by Gaetano Panariello
From early to contemporary practice in the name of the “Neapolitan School”
A series of meetings by Gaetano Panariello
In collaboration with La.Vi.Co (Laboratorio vivo di composizione)
For the International Holocaust Remembrance Day (Concerto della Memoria)
The Pietà de’ Turchini Choir
Giuseppe Lettiero, vibraphone
Luigi Del Prete, piano and organ
Davide Troìa conductor
This chamber REQUIEM, with intimate and collected filters, follows the tradition: the text is set to music entirely in its thirteen numbers, plus the repetition of the initial Requiem aeternam (Requiem aeternam, Kyrie, Dies Irae, Tuba mirum, Rex tremendae, Recordare – Confutatis, Lacrimosa, Domine Jesu, Hostias, Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei, Requiem aeternam).
The first performance, in a reduced form with only piano and vibraphone, took place in Naples in March 2010 in the church of S. Caterina da Siena for the season of the Early Music Centre. The current version, created for the Concerto della Memoria, keeps the vocal structure unchanged (soloists and choir) but extends the instrumental ensemble to the organ.
Each single number has its own “special sound”, defined by its own particular tone color, determined by both the use of the voices and the instruments chosen from time to time. In this manner, the text of the Requiem reveals itself to be the true key to the reading of the whole work: it generates the emotions and sounds that enter the listener and leave him to float around the room, because every musical gesture belongs to certain words. We are invited not only to emotional listening, but to feel completely part of the strongly evocative whole, to the point of realizing that we are completely immersed in a collective prayer.
The solo voices (some with greater prominence – above all, the tenor -) represent the voices of souls that occasionally come out of the mass (the whole choir) but then re-enter the mass as attracted by it and from which they cannot definitively detach themselves.
The Hostias depicts, at the moment of the Offertory, the collective prayer for which there is no instrumental presence: it is the pure voice of men and women (of the faithful gathered in prayer), that resembles the souls of which memoriam facimus and for which the passage from death to eternal life is invoked.
The piece moves away from the traditional musical representation of the terror of the man locked in a confrontation with his own nature, of his rebellion in the face of death, of his dismay at the threshold of the unknown, it rather describes the disillusionment and sadness of the contemporary man in the face of the awareness of his limited being.
Gaetano Panariello, Neapolitan composer and teacher, was mentored by Aladino Di Martino and Franco Donatoni for composition and by Carmen Gambardella and Tita Parisi for piano.
Lecturer in Italian Conservatories since 1982, he helds the chair of Composition at the “S. Pietro a Majella” in Naples, since 2008. He was adjunct professor of Musicology at the University of Salerno. From 2000 to 2005 he was Director of the “D. Cimarosa” Conservatory of Avellino.
Active since 1980 as an author of opera, symphonic and chamber music, he has been featured in the programs of the San Carlo Theater in Naples since 1992 with the ballet Immago. He immediately becomes one of the main composer-guests of the theater: Il Guarracino, Biancaneve, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Pinocchio, I Cantori di Brema, Al lupo, al lupo, Viaggio in Italia, Peter Pan, Un bambino di nome Gennaro. Some of the works expressly composed for the Neapolitan “Massimo” (San Carlo Theater) and replicated with success and critical acclaim at the Nuovo Piccolo in Milan, in the La Scala seasons, at the Palazzo Tè in Mantua, at the Giuditta Pasta Theater in Saronno, at the Scuola Civica in Milan, at the Piccinni in Bari , at the Rendano di Cosenza, at the Verdi in Salerno, at the Gesualdo in Avellino, at the Ravello Festival, at the Nuova Consonanza Festival in Rome …
His international career, as well as in Europe, brought him to the United States with important commissions (inauguration of the CAC Centre of Tulsa in Oklahoma in 2006; celebration of the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the John Hopkins Orchestra of Baltimore in 2008 (Triple Piano Concerto , oboe, bassoon and orchestra and subsequent touneè in New Jersey in 2009) and in Brazil (Il libro degli esseri immaginari).
Author of sacred music (two oratorios – Nativitas and Sacrum Opus – a Requiem, a Magnificat for three choirs, numerous Motets and sacred compositions that have become part of the repertoire of prestigious choral associations all over the world), he has published and recorded music for the Casa Musicale Sonzogno ( Milan), Simeoli (Naples), E.S.I. (Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane), Gruppo Elettrogeno Publishing House (Rome).
In 2016 he started an artistic residency with a group of students, La.Vi.Co. (Laboratorio Vivo di Composizione), for the Church of San Rocco in collaboration with the Pietà de’ Turchini Foundation, entitled “La Scuola Napoletana nella contemporanea pratica” (The Neapolitan School in contemporary practice).
Davide Troìa, graduated in Choral Music and Choral Direction with C. Pagliuca, Composition with A. Di Martino and G. Panariello, Instrumentation for Band, Piano with A. Di Donna and Singing with V. Profeta. He attended the two-year specialization course in Choir Conducting with Norbert Balasch at the National Academy of S. Cecilia in Rome; the course of Choir Conducting, Choral Practice and Early Vocality “R. Goitre ”with G. Acciai; courses on contemporary choral music with B. Zanolini, G. Hollerung, G. Graden. He has attended numerous early music seminars with C. Cavina, G. Banditelli, C. Ansermet, R. Invernizzi, A. Florio, and at the Civic School of Music in Milan with R. Gini and C. Miatello.
He is the founder and director, since 1990, of the “Exsultate Deo” Polyphonic Choir, at the helm of which he has won prizes in national and international competitions. Since 2013 he has conducted the Pietà de’ Turchini Choir and since 2015 the Children’s Choir of San Rocco.
Davide Troìa combines his activity as conductor with that of countertenor, carrying out solo and in group activities.
He has made numerous elaborations for choir and held the role of juror in Choral Composition competitions.
He is professor of Choir Direction and Choral Composition at the “L. Canepa” Conservatory of Sassari.
The Pietà de’ Turchini Choir was established in 2013 from the “Liberi di Cantare” project, for the enhancement of the Church of San Rocco in Chiaia. The choir gathers 40 members and is entrusted to the direction of Davide Troìa. The repertoire explored is very vast: sacred, profane and popular, a cappella and with instruments, from the Renaissance to the Contemporary. Participation in the Choir is open to all and takes place through periodic auditions, its main objective is to approach music and concert activity in a joyful way. In less than three years of activity, the Choir, has already completed several projects and performed concerts for the Early Music Centre season and for other festivals in Campania.
SOPRANOS
- Rosa Andreone*
- M. Teresa Cataldi
- Graziella D’Acierno
- Renata Greco
- Maria Pia Prisco
- Valentina Scepi
- Lia Scognamiglio*
- Rosanna Sodano*
- Fabrizia Spada
- Antonella Venditti
CONTRALTOS
- Antonella Ausanio*
- Eleonora Brescia
- Daniela Candreva
- Paola Ciranni
- Tiziana De Bellis*
- Carla Ranavolo
- Gabriella Sisillo*
- Marilia Tortora
- Marina Vagnoni
- Elena Vellusi
TENORS
- Salvatore Di Fraia
- Daniela Esposito
- Roberto Franco
- Giovanna La Fianza*
- Salvatore Morelli
- Lucia Pariante
- Leopoldo Punziano*
- Gabriella Valente
- Edgardo Visciola
BASSOS
- Fulvio Acciavatti
- Enzo Bucciero
- Carlo Calabrò
- Claudio Ciliberti
- Giuseppe Di Prisco
- Aldo Fiorillo
- Stefano Di Fraia*
- Sergio Petrarca
- Vincenzo Vasca
* soloists
