The new season of Domus Artium, the prestigious circuit of international concerts and social gatherings held inside spaces of high artistic and historical value around Rome, opens on January 27th with a concert and evening at Palazzo della Cancelleria, one of the most beautiful buildings in the city, as well as the city’s first entirely Renaissance palace.
For its second year of programs, Domus Artium will showcase a departure from its previous season, moving from events held in private residences to public spaces, palaces of institutions, and high-profile museum and music venues.
A majority of these will be 16th century Rome locations of great magniloquence and iconicity that will host concerts and evenings featuring artists of the highest caliber on the international stage – monumental venues that exude even more charm through the atmospheric combination of majesty, high artistic value and the intimate excitement of chamber music performances featuring some of the most renowned names in classical music.
The concert will open to the sweet notes of Vocalise, an immortal melody written by Rachmaninov and known to be one of the most poignant pieces of music of the last century. This will be followed by Sonata Op. 65 by Britten, a leading 20th-century English composer who wrote the five-movement work for the celebrated cellist Rostropovich, to whom it was later dedicated. The concert will then journey further back in time with Chopin’s most intense Romanticism with the Sonata Op. 65, one of the very few pieces written by the composer in which the protagonist is not the piano alone. The performance will conclude finally with Astor Piazzolla’s Le Grand Tango.
“The debut last year of Domus Artium,” says Barrett Wissman, chairman of the arts management agency IMG Artists, “was a great challenge and at the same time a great thrill, coinciding moreover with the rebirth of live performance. The second year with an articulated program held in prestigious venues means that we have tapped into and stirred a widespread demand for culture and beauty, while also finding a willingness from institutions to be open to unusual experiences.”
Domus Artium’s program is further enriched and rendered truly original by its social aspect: each evening concludes with a different dinner and tasting experience, starring established chefs alongside pop icons. Thus is the case of the evening at Palazzo della Cancelleria that, to inaugurate its season of events to be held in Italy’s capital, will feature a cult signature of Roman culinary excellence such as Enzo al 29, in which high quality blends with great iconicity from food to drink with wine pairings of excellence from the La Corte dei Papi winery.
Domus Artium: the upcoming calendar of events
Spotlight on Feb. 20th for opera icon Angela Gheorghiu at the Auditorium Parco della Musica. Accompanying her will be Maestro Gianluca Marcianò for the Fondazione Lerici Cultura Ets which will be working in collaboration with Domus Artium in organizing a Gàla that same evening.
On March 14th, the grand talent of Pinchas Zukerman and his trio find maximum expression in the setting of Palazzo Colonna. Highly suggestive in particular in Beethoven’s Trio Op. 70, No. 1, known as the “Spectre Trio” set in an evocative atmosphere that couldn’t find a more fitting setting.
Prominent among this year’s great new features is the new collaboration with the Galleria Borghese, which will set the stage for Domus Artium’s at a to-be-announced event this spring.
Not only is the overall program of the new Domus Artium season one of great appeal, but it also features profiles of original artists such as noted Canadian pianist Hélène Mercier who will perform alongside violin and cello stars Renaud Capuçon and Kian Soltani. Also with them will be the first clarinetist of the Paris Orchestra since 1981, Pascal Moraguès. The quartet will embark on the performance of a dense program dedicated to the Quatuor pour la fin du temps, Olivier Messiaen’s mystical masterpiece written by the composer during his imprisonment in a German prisoner of war camp in 1941. It remains one of the highest examples of chamber music of the 20th century.
Then, on May 26th, Midori, the great Japanese musician shrouded in a mysterious aura, will perform at the Casino dell’Aurora in Villa Boncompagni Ludovisi – a museum inside which is the only Caravaggio fresco in the world – with a recital of music for solo violin by Bach. The event will also feature Vittorio Sgarbi as speaker with an unusual reading for similarities and contrasts between Caravaggio and Bach.