Trionfale

Riccardo Muti Conductor Riccardo Muti has been regarded as the Toscanini of the present day. Not just a Toscanini-style taskmaster who preaches fidelity to the score and presides over intense, hard-driven performances, Muti insists on beautiful tone as well as disciplined ensemble, capitalizing on a youthful Italian glamour. In 2021, Muti led the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concert for the sixth time and was heard leading the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a performance of Verdi's Requiem. Muti was born in Naples on July 28, 1941. He initially learned piano and violin under his father, a physician. He attended the Verdi Conservatory in Milan, studying composition with Bruno Bettinelli and conducting with Antonino Votto. Muti won the Guido Cantelli Conducting Competition in 1967, leading to his professional debut with the RAI Orchestra in 1968.

Marco Bellocchio's trenchant VICTORY MARCH is about the madness of military life and its children's power games. It deals with the psychological ravishing of a sensitive and literate young man during the first year in his service in the Italian army. He is abused and shoved about by officers and non-commissioned personnel, and when he has the audacity to become a good soldier, he is shunned by the other trainees. The soldier, Passeri, is played by the talented Michele Placido, who was the youngest brother in THREE BROTHERS and the teacher in FOREVER MARY, both made after this film. Much of the movie treats Passeri's relationship with a strict and possibly psychotic young officer (Franco Nero) and his sluttish young wife, played by French actress Miou-Miou.

Fratti è un piccolo quartiere di Corvina, città di provincia in un futuro molto prossimo. Baldi ed Ercole sono il punto di riferimento di un gruppo di anziani, che si ritrovano al bar New Age che per anni è stato la sede della Casa del popolo, prima che in politica sbiadissero tutti i colori. Quando una legge molto controversa impone ai pensionati di dedicare ore al "volontariato coatto", Baldi, Ercole e gli altri decidono di ribellarsi. Sfidando le proprie fragilità e patologie, affrontano un potere invincibile in apparenza, ma che rivelerà, spesso in modo comico, la sua vulnerabilità. Un'avventura rocambolesca, piena di colpi di scena e botte di fortuna, che porta i protagonisti di questa storia a vivere una vicenda umana, politica e sociale dai risvolti non previsti e addirittura inimmaginabili.

The English composer and conductor Matthew Taylor (b. 1964) readily confesses to a fascination with the music of Carl Nielsen. Several of the works here take their inspiration directly from Nielsen; another is a tribute to Vagn Holmboe, the leading Danish composer in the generation after Nielsen. As with Nielsen’s own music for winds, Taylor’s shows a similar blend of symphonic purpose and bucolic humour.