“Away from clichés, a living music”. This is the promise with which, almost a year ago, we launched our cultural project designed to show contemporary audiences how baroque music can still evoke vivid emotions.
Today, emotions are joined by wonder: the ultimate goal of every baroque art form. We are pleased to introduce the first of five videos that will make up a visual album of Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerti Grossi Op.6, our new recording that is due out Oct. 27, 2023 and will be preceded by four EPs focusing on as many concertos in the collection.
The visual album tells the story of an emotion: perceived, pursued and at times run-after, through the choreography of two contemporary dancers, it crosses imaginary out-of-time worlds. A journey to the beat of music, where Corelli’s music, performed by Accademia Bizantina and Ottavio Dantone, becomes a door to different places, eras and worlds.
One by one, the five videos become chapters of a tale in music shaped by colors, dance steps, faces, bodies and special effects that can, indeed, amaze the viewer through unexpected visual solutions, allowing for that sense of improvisation suggested by the music itself. Once again, a contemporary language meets and amplifies a beauty that crossed the centuries unaltered, ready to be grasped again.
The first video plays on the notes of the “Concerto Grosso Op. 6 – No. 3 in C minor: III. Grave” in a whirlwind of feelings that remind us of the flavor, the color, the gravitas of pain, separation, loneliness…
This is the first of a series of monthly releases that, through November, will let us approach the aural world of Corelli: one of the greatest and most important composers and violinists of the Baroque period, and also one of the originators of the concerto grosso as a musical form.
The emotions that the Fusignano-born composer wrote into his music in 1714 return today to resonate louder than ever and to be a delight not only to the ears but also to the eyes.
One year after launching the cultural project “The Exciting Sound of Baroque Music” with Georg Friedrich Händel’s Op.3 and Op. 6 Concerti Grossi, we are now ready to enhance our offer of Baroque suggestions with new music and new expressive stimuli, to reach out to an increasingly diverse and curious audience, in pursuit of our long-standing goal of giving music the chance to move us again, without prejudice and without boundaries.
Speaking of which, Accademia Bizantina’s social channels will still play an essential role in the project. Each video-episode of the visual album will be shared on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, followed and enhanced by exclusive content by our Conductor Ottavio Dantone who, at the harpsichord and sheet music in hand, will share with us his interpretation and commentary of the movements performed by the orchestra.
Eyes and ears wide alert, then: here comes an explosion of emotion, vision, wonder.
