Vimbayi Kaziboni

“In 1949, at the age of 26, I learned to jot down folk songs by ear at the Institute for Folklore in Bucharest. Many melodies stayed with me in my memory, and so in 1951 the Romanian Concerto was born,” recalled György Ligeti. The public performance of the piece, which echoed the quirky sound of village bands, was soon banned: “under the Stalinist dictatorship, even folklore was allowed only in politically correct form.” The premiere of Púrpura for viola and orchestra by Filippo Del Corno, a work jointly commissioned by the Haydn Foundation and the Orchestra I Pomeriggi Musicali, is followed by a revolutionary moment in the history of European music: From England. In June 1941, the BBC’s German Service replaced its usual call sign with the opening sequence of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The note values of the legendary motif of “fate knocking at the door” — three short, one long — correspond in Morse code to the letter “V” for “Victory.” This sequence became the nucleus of the orchestral work, which begins dramatically in C minor and ends, triumphantly, in C major. In France, the Fifth was even dubbed the “Chant de victoire,” perhaps a reading very close to Beethoven’s own, who had less in mind a grim fate than a hymn to the French Revolution with a solemn oath to the Republic.