Duo Dillon-Torquati will be back on stage for a reprise of “Beethoven Perspectives”, a project devoted to the Complete Sonatas and Variations by the great Ludwig Van, coupled with three different New Music pieces related to his music.

After acclaimed performances in New York and Vienna, the Duo will propose the first concert of the project on 17th October for Amici della Musica di Ancona and on 24th October in Milan, for “Festival Musica al Tempio”, alongside the Italian Premiere of Helena Winkelman’s “Vis à Vis Goya”, Seven miniatures inspired from Goya’s drawings.

More, on 1st November, the Duo will perform “Distant Voices, Still Lives” project at Accademia Filarmonica di Rovereto in the beautiful venue of MART, featuring works a.o. by Brahms, Fauré, Zemlinsky and Sciarrino.

Emanuele will be back on stage with LIVE Concerts in September, firstly for Accademia dei Cameristi di Bari, a glorious Institution active since more than 20 years and promoting young talents tutoring from experienced musicians. This year project will be devoted to Piano Trios, the rare “Tristia”, Liszt’s own arrangement of his famous Piano piece “Vallee d’Obermann”, Saint-Saens colorful version of Liszt Poème Symphonique “Orpheus”, and the seminal and dark Piano Trio in g minor op. 3 by Ernest Chausson. Concerts will take place at 8,30 pm in Auditorium La Vallisa in Bari on the 7th and in Chiostro dei Minori Osservanti in Fasano on the 8th, together with young talents Christian Sebastianutto (violin) and Ilario Fantone (cello).

After some days, it will be the turn of an All Fauré Project for the 17th Edition of “La Via Lattea Festival” in Lugano (Swiss), with long-term musical partners flutist Manuel Zurria and cellist Francesco Dillon. Beautifully lyrical works by Gabriel Fauré for piano like a selection of Preludes op. 103 and his last Nocturne, and some important chamber works, will be presented alongside two World Premieres written for the occasion by Swiss composers Jurg Frey and Mario Pagliarani for the Trio. This brand new program will take place on 12th and 13th September at the wonderful venue of Trevano Castle, close to Lake Lugano.

Emanuele Torquati will take part in this year Satie Vexations Marathon that, due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, will be streamed online from midnight of May 17th throughout the day! His participation is scheduled at 5 pm.

“Every May 17th since 1992 at Teatro Miela in Trieste, Italy, we celebrate Erik Satie’s birthday.
Every year.
We won’t let this pandemic stop us.
We are terribly aware of the serious and dangerous perspective that live music and all the live performances are facing in this moment.
Therefore we are trying to react with the most effective instruments suitable for our pataphysical bowler hatted protector: humor and perseverance” – Teatro Miela Bonawentura, Trieste (Italy)

Duo Dillon-Torquati will be performing extensively in 2020 and it will start on 17th January at prestigious 97th Season “MICAT IN VERTICE” at Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena with a program mainly devoted to Ludwig van Beethoven. The Duo will play luminous A Major Sonata op. 69 and the extremely concise and modern C Major Sonata op. 102 n. 1, alongside seminal Debussy G minor Sonata, another masterwork written for this ensemble. The program will be completed by a funky piece by Australian composer Kate Moore, winner of several awards and commissioned by important institutions, the shimmering “Velvet”, composed in 2010. After couple of days, the Duo will be on stage again in Sicily, and back to Catania for “Associazione Musicale Etnea”, with the very same program except for Schumann’s gem Fantastic pieces op. 73 in the original version for cello and piano.

On 27th February, they will be come back in Vienna for their project “Beethoven Perspectives”, started in New York on last October, which present 21st works commissioned by the Duo alongside Beethoven Sonatas and Variations. This time, concert will be at Italian Cultural Institute, under the sponsorship of CIDIM “Suono Italiano”, and will include Third and Fourth Sonata plus the bright Mozart Variations and Daniela Terranova’s “Variazioni sul Bianco” European premiere. On 1st March, Duo Dillon-Torquati will present “Distant Voices, Still Lives” at Filarmonica Rovereto, a concert series which take place at the MART, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rovereto. “Distant Voices, Still Lives” is a journey on the thread of memory, a search, a pursuit of  a multitude of fugitive voices: voices that tell a story, voices that sing, absent voices, voices only evoked. It is a musical journey for cello and piano, through romantic Lieder (Brahms, Zemlinsky, Liszt), contemporary Lieder (Pagliarani and Dionisi), ancient songs re-invented (Adès), the ghosts  of well-known songs (Stardust in Sciarrino), transformed into a game of mirrors and echoes that seeks to transcend the barriers of style and type in order to create a new red thread between sounds which are only apparently distant one from another.

Duo Dillon-Torquati will present two different All-Schumann Projects on next 12th and 14th December.

A World Premiere written by Lorenzo Troiani “Ciò che resta del fuoco”, will be premiered for Amici della Musica di Ancona on 12th December during a Residency of the Duo, alongside seminal works of Robert Schumann such as Fantasiestucke op. 73, and Transcriptions of Sonata op. 105 and Kinderszenen op. 15 made by cellist F. W. Grutzmacher.

On 14th December the Duo will present “Labirinto Schumann” project for the Festival Orizzonti, new concert series organized by Amici della Musica di Perugia. This second concert will be only devoted to Schumann and enriched of texts from Schumann’s Letters to Clara selected by musicologist Elena Abbado and interpreted by actress Greta Oldoni.

Duo Dillon-Torquati will perform Arturo Fuentes new Double Concerto for cello, piano and orchestra, “Infinito”, under the baton of John Axelrod. World Premiere of this new work, devoted to Emanuele Torquati and Francesco Dillon and commissioned by Orchestra Haydn, will take place on December 3rd at Auditorium in Bolzano, and will be performed again on 4th December in the Philarmonic Hall in Trento. The piece is inspired by Leopardi’s masterwork “Infinito”:

Sempre caro mi fu quest’ermo colle,

E questa siepe, che da tanta parte

Dell’ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.

Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati

Spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani

Silenzi, e profondissima quiete

Io nel pensier mi fingo; ove per poco

Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento

Odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello

Infinito silenzio a questa voce

Vo comparando: e mi sovvien l’eterno,

E le morte stagioni, e la presente

E viva, e il suon di lei. Così tra questa

Immensità s’annega il pensier mio:

E il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare.

Complete Beethoven’s Sonatas and Variations for cello and piano will be presented from Duo Dillon-Torquati alongside 3 New Works written by Italian rising talent Daniela Terranova,  mercurial Mexican composer Arturo Fuentes and  extroverted Swiss composer and violinist Helena Winkelman. The event will take place at Italian Academy at Columbia University in New York, in three consecutive evenings, from 10th to 12nd October, at 7 pm.  Duo Dillon-Torquati proposes an innovative Journey, putting in perspective Ludwig van Beethoven with New Music. Anticipating the 250th anniversary of his birth, each recital will also feature the premiere of a work for cello and piano by a living composer whose work is inspired and informed by Beethoven’s.

Emanuele Torquati suonerà il suo prossimo Recital a Firenze il 24 luglio, presso il Museo del Novecento, nell’ambito del “Festival Firenze Suona Contemporanea”.

Il fil rouge del progetto richiama un elemento presente nell’immaginario occidentale riguardo al Giappone, ovvero il Giardino Zen. Il fulcro attorno al quale si dipana questo luogo della fantasia sono gli Studi composti tra il 2011 e il 2013 dal più importante compositore giapponese vivente, ovvero Toshio Hosokawa, idealmente riconducibili a quelli del suo illustre predecessore Claude Debussy. Ognugno di essi parte da un elemento musicale in maniera quasi calligrafica, composta prima da 2 Linee, poi da 3 e infine da uno scarno Lied. 

E nel canto estatico di “Piove vita” del compositore siciliano si ritrova la componente espressiva e più diretta del nostro ideale Giardino. Una goccia appuntita e inflessibile è il fulcro di “Stalagma”, concisa immagine musicale composta da Silvia Borzelli, Italiana di stanza ad Amsterdam, in ricordo dell’uccisione della giornalista russa Anna Politovskaja. Dal dramma umano passeremo poi alla cullante inquietudine insita nella “Berceuse” scritta da Francesco Filidei, che è anche un gioco mirabile di slanci e sospensioni. Sospensioni inesistenti nel rutilante “Mambo” di Luca Francesconi, che partendo da un incipit del grande jazzista cieco italo-americano Lennie Tristano lancia a folle velocità le mani del pianista in una sfida virtuosistica.