The 2024 concert season is based on collaboration between the Amici della Musica and the Comune of Barberino Tavarnelle. This combined effort gives the musical association the confidence to plan and make decisions about their future activities. These remain focused on the two traditional seasons of the Festival at Badia a Passignano: one devoted to chamber music and one to orchestral and symphonic music. It is also the aim of the Amici to establish new traditions and to encourage study centres to spread and promote music more widely in the area. Among these are the New Year Concert in the church of Santa Lucia al Borghetto in Tavarnelle, and the Accademia Malaspina in San Donato in Poggio.
This part of the project springs from our conviction that raising awareness of our cultural heritage and increasing the appreciation of music among the local inhabitants of the Comune not only consolidates the present role of the association but also prepares the ground for future activities.
The Festival itself will include four concerts between 4 and 21 June reflecting the Association’s raison d’être: to combine tradition and innovation. The tradition of concentrating the two opening concerts in one weekend has been revived, with musicians from various backgrounds performing in fluid groupings, as was the case in the early years of the Pentecost Festival. This year too we are delighted to see the return of celebrated old friends to the Festival such as the Quartetto Adorno and the Trio di Parma and also the first appearances at Badia of great artists, including the clarinetist Nicolas Baldeyrou, the pianist André Gallo and the soprano Carmela Remigia.

The programming offers links between the concerts, from unquestioned masterpieces of nineteenth-century chamber music, such as the Archduke trio by Beethoven, the Death and the Maiden quartet by Schubert, Schumann’s quintet with piano, and the quintet with clarinet by Brahms. These works lead us to Franck and the late piano pieces by Brahms and to the sonata op.1 by Berg, an extraordinary work and an ideal starting-point for exploring developments in twentieth-century music.

In this context another theme emerges, taking us from Debussy to Ravel and Poulenc and from Prokofiev to Shostakovich, demonstrating all the ambivalence so typical of the Short Century, with links to and breaks from tradition, and with attention turned to folk music and dance, in an attempt to inject new life into classical forms.
The concerts planned to take place at Badia (in the cloister of the abbey at Badia) between 2 July and 6 August, featuring the Orchestra Regionale Toscana, also offer the chance to listen to great classical works, from Bach to Haydn to the celebrated concertos for cello by Schumann and Saint Saens, performed by the soloists Silvia Chiesa and E. Pagano.
In this Puccini year, Italian Music also takes the stage, from Vivaldi to Rossini up to the Italian style music by Schubert and Mendelssohn. Homage will be paid to Puccini himself on 2 July, with a recital by the acclaimed soprano Carmela Remigio preceded by the presentation of the reprint of Leonardo Pinzauti’s book on Puccini.