OnFebruary 26 at 7 p.m., the Italian Cultural Institute Cologne will present a piano recital by Carlo Boccadoro in its theater hall.

With his concert, the pianist, composer and musicologist Carlo Boccadoro presents a broad selection of pieces by contemporary Italian composers and thus a wide-ranging panorama of new Italian music, which is characterized by great creativity and a diverse, sometimes even contradictory aesthetic. The program includes the very short, almost aphoristic pieces by Giorgio Colombo Taccani, the rhapsodic reflections by Fabio Massimo Capogrosso and pieces by Francesco Filidei, which are characterized by great lightness. In addition, there are compositions by Filippo Del Corno, which bring past and present into dialog, as well as the hectic, minimalist perpetuum mobile by Ludovico Einaudi and the ironic Bach interpretations by Cesare Picco. The austere abstractness of Carlo Galante's piece contrasts with the swirling tones of Silvia Colasanti, but also with the piece Cruel Beauty by Boccadoro himself, which places a melody by Claudio Monteverdi in a completely different context. The multi-layered program ends with two quieter moments, with the sparse piece by Mauro Montalbetti forming a contrast to the very gentle and transparent Adagio by Federico Gardella.

Carlo Boccadoro was born in Macerata in 1963. He studied at the "G. Verdi" Conservatory in Milan, where he graduated in piano and percussion. Since 1990, his music has been performed at major festivals and in the most prestigious concert halls in Italy and around the world. As a conductor and pianist, he has performed hundreds of world premieres of contemporary music. In 2004, Luciano Berio commissioned him to compose the children's opera La Nave a Tre Piani for the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, which was performed under the composer's direction at the Auditorium in Rome in 2005 and then performed again at the Teatro Regio in Turin in the same year. He has also written five other chamber operas and composed music for numerous theater productions. He is one of the founders of the Sentieri selvaggi cultural project, which organized a festival at the Teatro Elfo Puccini in Milan from 1997 to 2022 and of whose ensemble he has been the artistic and musical director since 1997. Since 2017, he has also been artistic director of the concert season of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. Since 2023 he has been artistic advisor to the Teatro Bonci in Cesena. He has been on the academic council of the Santa Cecilia Conservatory since 2023. He is the author of several publications and has collaborated with Radio3 on music radio programs for over 25 years.

Free admission