Concert "Virtuosismo fragile" ("Fragile Virtuosity")

Organizer: Musica al Cuore

Orselina. Shrine of the Madonna del Sasso.

Saturday, October 18, 2025, at 7:30 pm. An aperitif will follow.

Free admission.

Age group: open to all.

• Organizer's website

An evening of chamber music between classicism and modernity: The Music at the Heart Association gives voice to two strong musical personalities-Ludwig van Beethoven and Erwin Schulhoff. Two composers separated by a century - united by expressive force, inner restlessness and formal audacity.

At the center of the evening is a rarity: Beethoven's famous "Kreutzer Sonata" Op. 47, originally composed for violin and piano, will be performed in a fascinating transcription for string quintet by Orfeo Mandozzi. This new version gives the work symphonic color and chamber transparency - a bold, modern approach to an iconic work in the violin repertoire. The ensemble: Barbara Ciannamea (violin I), Andrea Mescetti (violin II), Andrij Burko (viola), Alessandra Doninelli (cello I), Orfeo Mandozzi (cello).

The second part of the concert will feature Erwin Schulhoff's "Five Pieces for String Quartet": A key work of interwar modernity, which caused a stir at the IGNM Salzburg Festival in 1924. Schulhoff's suite of incisive miniatures combines Baroque dances with ironic parodies of the Viennese waltz, French wit and Bohemian folklore.

The works could not be more different: yet both tell of surges and ruptures, of virtuosity and vulnerability. Schulhoff, once celebrated, then persecuted and who died in 1942 in the Wülzburg concentration camp, is today the symbol of erased modernity.