ASSOCIATION

In January 1978  a group of friends, passionate about music and faithful supporters of the Teatro Comunale in Florence, organised the inaugural concert of what became the Amici della Musica in the beautiful Romanesque church of San Pietro in Bossolo in Tavarnelle Val di Pesa, drawing on the support of a number of friends who played leading roles in the orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Particularly
important at this early stage was the encouragement and advice given by Salvatore Villani, first double bass in the Orchestra, who became the first Artistic Director of the early festivals and a major supporter. This beginning was more than gratifying: the young conductor Riccardo Muti attended the first concert, and impressed too by the beauty of the Pieve and the warmth of the public response encouraged us to
continue. The enduring support of musical friends, and of some local organisations such as the Misericordia and the “Fratres”; group, made it possible to present concerts of high quality from the very beginning. We were mindful of the need for quality in a climate in  which classical and chamber music had a lukewarm reception unless of the highest level. This also gained us the backing of the local administration and earned us the admiration of a discerning  public. Despite the often precarious situation in these early years, when we relied on musicians to play purely in a spirit of friendship, we staged a number of remarkable concerts (in 1980 there were no fewer than twelve); and for this our heartfelt thanks go to Anita Garriot, Renzo Pelli, Carlo Chiarappa, Pierluigi Mencarelli, Margherita Gallini, Andrea Nannoni and Marcello Guerrini, who generously offered their talents and their enthusiasm in the performance of wonderful music. Our ties with the  Maggio Musicale Fiorentino led the Association to establish a firm relationship with maestro Zubin Mehta, the newly appointed principal conductor of the Florentine Maggio Musicale orchestra. He came to a number of our events in Tavarnelle, and perhaps the most memorable occasion of those early years was when he presented a concert for us with the Orchestra del
Maggio in the church of Santa Lucia al Borghetto in Tavarnelle  on 5 June 1981. The programme chosen by Mehta included the Siegfried Idyll by Wagner, the Symphony no. 40 in G minor, KV 550, by Mozart and the Orchestral Suite no. 2 in B minor, BWV 1067 by Bach, with Renzo Pelli as the solo flautist. With the  pace of developments we realized that it was essential to establish a more stable basis for the Association in order to guarantee a certain continuity and a more systematic approach to the concerts, until then arranged with a certain degree of spontaneity. And so in May 1980 the Association was established legally with the statues making clear our goal: “… to perform music and to encourage musical listening and practice with the organisation of concerts and events and to promote the activities of music schools to further this end”. Our main goal, and it remains unchanged today, is to lend our support to all sorts of musical activity in the area and to channel various initiatives into an organic programme to involve and bring together musicians, students and our audiences.

One of the most pressing problems of those early years was the absence of a suitable location that would allow performances of a larger and more varied programme, as the Pieve di San Pietro in Bossolo could only house small groups. We then thought to introduce a prestigious event into our programme, still mostly devoted to chamber music, in an attempt to attract a larger audience. We hit on the idea of the Toscanini Prize, to be awarded to great conductors. This presentation, inserted into our traditional programme of concerts, further enhanced the reputation of the Association and proved  a very satisfying celebratory occasion both for us and for our supporters. The first two awards were naturally given to the two great artists who had honoured us early on with their support: in 1982 to Riccardo Muti and in 1983 to Zubin Mehta. They both received these prizes in person, during two extraordinary sessions of the local city council.

In 1985, when Carlo Maria Giulini received the prize, we organised a concert in his honour  performed by the Solisti Fiorentini  conducted by Riccardo Moretti, the programme including the ouverture of the Magic Flute by Mozart, the concerto for double bass  in A major  by Dragonetti (with Salvatore Villani as soloist) and the London symphony  n° 104 in D major by Haydn.

Particularly moving for us was the final award of the Toscanini Prize in 1989 to Myung-Whun Chung. On this occasion, as a mark of his friendship and esteem Myung-Whun Chung himself conducted the concert in his honour with the Soloists of Radio Montebeni, in a programme including  Haydn’s Funeral Symphony in E minor n° 44 and the Jupiter Symphony in C major KV 551 by Mozart. On these occasions we reached out, according to the terms of our statute to other important musical centres in the region, such as the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole and Radio Montebeni  (now Radio Toscana Classica) : sharing our aims, as they do,  we have built a warm rapport over the years. There is a special section on our website devoted to the Toscanini Prize. 

Following the high points of the early years there followed, towards 1985, a low period mostly due to the lack of support from local official bodies.The following year, 1986, however, with the return of the Vallombrosan monks to the monastery at Badia a Passignano, there was a distinct change for the better. The immediate spirit of collaboration and the extraordinary hospitality shown by the monks meant that the Festival was finally granted a fixed site in the monastery refectory where a regular series of performances could be staged. The refectory came to be something of a brand for the activities of the Association. For years indeed the beautiful monastery at Badia a Passignano became emblematic of the Amici della Musica di Tavarnelle and of the Festival of Pentecost, even when our activities spread beyond its walls. The move to Badia a Passignano also allowed us to consolidate our finances and gave us the opportunity to enlarge our circle of supporters. It was at this time too that we had our happy encounter with Harald Schoneweg, second violinist of the Cherubini Quartett, a lover of great music and also of Tuscany, qualities that inevitably drew him to our Association, where he eventually became its Artistic Director. Our friendship with Harald, with his wife Verena, and with the other members of the quartet provided just the support we needed to plan new and more ambitious activities. Such was Harald Schoneweg’s enthusiasm that he attracted a number of celebrated musicians to perform on the stage set up beneath the Last Supper by Ghirlandaio. And so began the tradition of the Festival of Pentecost: every year on three evenings major pieces of chamber music were played, mainly classical and Romantic but with frequent excursions into important works of the twentieth century. Our intention was to introduce more difficult pieces into a programme of better known works and we were very pleased that the public responded with warmth to these inclusions, matching our own satisfaction. From the very first year the Cherubini Quartett played a series of masterpieces, from quartets by Mozart, Schubert and Wolf, together with the famous Quintet in C major by Schubert and the Sextet op. 18 by Brahms. There was special significance for us in the performance of the Quintet in G major. op. 77 by Dvorak when Salvatore Villani joined the Cherubini Quartett, in celebration of those closest to our Association and marking the transfer of the artistic direction of the Festival. After this start when we drew on the talents of what we considered our own family in 1988 we reached out to famous guest performers, with appearances from the celebrated clarinetist Hans Deinzler and the pianist Ulrike Goldbeck. The programme included a Trio and Quintet with clarinet by Brahms, Piano Trios by Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Ravel, and pieces by Schumann and Debussy. The 1989 Festival, with the Linos-Ensemble focus was on twentieth-century music, with the Quintet op. 39 by Prokofiev and the Fantasy-Quartet by Britten; the last evening bravely offered the well-loved Octet by Schubert together with the Zodiac by Stockhausen. In 1990 we welcomed two marvellous performers, Irena Grafenauer and Maria Graf, who offered an evening of mainly twentieth-century French music for flute and harp. The festival continued with Mozart’s clarinet quintet with Wolfgang Meyer and the Cherubini Quartett, the Sonata for flute, viola and harp by Debussy, the Introduction and Allegro by Ravel,and the Death and the Maiden quartet by Schubert. In 1991 the Camerata Bern, one of Europe’s most lauded instrumental ensembles, took the stage with their conductor, Thomas Furi, in a glorious programme: the Four Seasons by Vivaldi, Bach’s Brandenburg concerto no 5, Serenades and Divertimenti by Mozart and two Symphonies for strings by Mendelssohn, but also a stirring arrangement of Quartet no 8 by Shostakovich, for string orchestra. In the following year, 1992, together with classical works by Mozart, Schubert and Schumann, we ranged beyond classical confines to include Bela Bartok’s Contrasts and Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, performed in the year of his death: among the players were, François Benda, Christian lvaldi and Franco Petracchi. A new feature of the Festival that year was a Liederabend, the baritone Dietrich Henschel accompanied by the pianist Fritz Schwinghammer, in an attempt to raise awareness of the genre, so popular beyond the Alps yet so little known in Italy. In 1993, to fulfill a promise made some time before, the three Festival evenings were devoted to the Cherubini Quartett’s playing of the Beethoven’s Quartets , from the op. 18 no. 4, and the Rasumovsky op. 59 nos 1 and 2, to the Quartet, the Harp, op. 74 and the Serioso op. 95, before reaching the monumental op. 131 and 132. Looing back we are happy to recall in 1994 the guitar recital by Alvaro Pierri, the Quintets for strings by Brahms and Dvorak,the Souvenir de Florence by Tchaikovsky, the Octet by Mendelssohn and the splendid concerts by the Trio Fontenay and the Quartett Vogler in 1995, with quartets by Ravel and Janacek played together with such famous works such as the Archduke Trio by Beethoven and the op. 100 by Schubert. In 1996, to celebrate the first ten years of the Festival, the Cherubini Quartett were again joined by Irena Grafenauer and Maria Graf. To mark the anniversary, a commemorative booklet was published with space also devoted to sites of local historical and cultural interest in the comune of Tavarnelle that created such a splendid setting for our concerts. During this period the historic organ in the Pieve of San Pietro in Bossolo, built in the nineteenth century by the Paoli di Campi family, was restored thanks to the determination of Don Franco del Grosso, for whom we organised concerts and fundraising. The first decade of the Festival showed the heartening progress made by the Association: our firm finances and stable site had allowed us to broaden our activities and engage with the local Middle School, with the Tavarnelle Music school and with the young musicians in the area.

From 1989 in addition to the Pentecost festival we arranged a series of summer concerts in the cloister at Badia a Passignano, known as “I Concerti di Badia”: this open space allowed for larger groups and more complex performances. The inaugural concert, Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, with the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, was conducted by Roberto Gabbiani (then director of the Chorus at  the Teatro della Scala in Milan), a performance which the public received with unprecedented and perhaps still unrivalled enthusiasm. Since then the  “Concerti di Badia” have continued with great success.They undoubtedly reached a peak with the  Petite Messe Solennelle by Rossini, again conducted by Gabbiani, when the  ORT, the  Orchestra of the Tuscan Region, first played at the Badia but to where they returned regularly with conductors such as Dorian Wilson, Donato Renzetti and Alessandro Pinzauti. Among memorable performances were the Fifth Symphony by  Schubert, the Fourth Symphony, the Italian, by Mendelssohn, and the  Sinfonia Concertante KV 364 and Flute Concerto KV 313 by Mozart with soloists Andrea Tacchi, Danilo Rossi and Fabio Fabbrizzi. Our consolidated relationship with the instrumentalists of the ORT and with those of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (brought together in July 1993 in the Cloister of  Badia to perform the Serenade for strings op. 44 by Dvorak and the Petite Symphonie by Gounod, under the direction of Mario Bruno) enabled us to revive the traditional performance of chamber music in the Pieve of San Piero in Bossolo, offering the spring concerts to the public and also broadening  our support base. After these early years, with notable performances from  Bruno Canino, Marzio Conti, Michel Debost, Jean Fourmeau and Eduard Melkus, finally the Concerti della Pieve could rely on a loyal public. Together with the complete sonatas for flute and basso continuo and the Musical Offering by Bach and the  Stabat Mater by Pergolesi, we proposed works by Hindemith, Varése and Berio, and brought the public closer to the great Lieder by Schubert, Schumann and Brahms, always mindful as we were of the need for performances of the highest quality and of our didactic mission. Those years also saw the introduction of  a sacred music repertoire ranging from Gregorian Chant to medieval and renaissance works. We are particularly grateful for the support we received for this programme from Mario Bruno, Marco Ortolani, Paolo Faggi, Fabio Fabbrizzi, Andrea Tacchi, Ursula Koenig, Paolo Nardi, Marco Severi, Alberto Simonelli, Folco Vichi, Federico Bardazzi, Michele Marasco and Ladislao Petru Horvath among the many artists whose goodwill towards us has never flagged. Some of the concerts of this season were planned specifically for schools and for young performers in the area who were encouraged by the chance to display their talents to the public and to perform alongside renowned musicians  As though this were not enough, we responded to requests for a series of concerts in the summer and autumn to be held in San Donato in Poggio and in the Castello di Santa Maria Novella. As we approached the trials posed by the year 2000, we found the quality and range of the music offered by the Association very rewarding, but it required an increase in the size of the Steering Committee. The artists at the Festival di Pentecoste, which could always rely on an extraordinary response from the public, included the Fonè Quartet, the Mirò Quartet, the Trio Arcadia, the Kreisler Quartet from  Vienna, the Cuarteto Casals and soloists such as Pietro de Maria, Sadao Harada, Pier Narciso Masi, Corrado Giuffredi, while the ConcertI di Badia drew among others Gabriele Ferro, Luca Pfaff, Michele Campanella, and Paolo Restani. While our collaboration with the ORT flourished to the extent that they became fixed guests at  Badia, we also  established new ties with the Premio Gui, one of the most prestigious international competitions for young musicians. Always eager to help those starting their career, we also reached out to the German association, Jugendmusiziert, with a number of concerts for the winners of the German national awards.  In 1999 we were helped with our most ambitious project by the Nippon Music Foundation, by the  Amici della Musica and by the Amici del Quartetto of Florence after our fortunate encounter with Sadao Harada, the cellist and founder of the Tokyo Quartet. Working in collaboration with Harald Schoneweg, the Progetto Beethoven was launched, welcoming young but already recognised quartets of various nationalities to the abbey at Badia. For the most part these quartets were prize winners and were chosen by a commission to attend a course on the Beethoven quartets. At the end of the course teachers and students offered concerts at Badia a Passignano and in the Pieve of San Donato. In September 1999, at the end of the course, the Aviv Quartet, the Quartetto di Roma, the Ullmann Quartet and the Quartetto F.A.E., performed music by Shostakovich, Ullmann, Brahms, and Webern, in addition to three Beethoven quartets from op. 59  and op. 74. In  2000 it was the turn of the monumental series of late Beethoven quartets,  performed together with pieces by Bach,  Haydn, Mozart and Schubert, by the Peking String Quartet, the Quartetto Casals, the Quartetto Bernini, the Quatuor Psophos and by the Quartetto F.A.E . To commemorate this extraordinary period we produced a  CD combining Tchaikovsky’s  Souvenir de Florence with those who had played such a vital role in the Beethoven project: the Foné Quartet, Sadao Harada and Harald Schoneweg. At the beginning of the season our programme was extensive, and included not only the Festival of Pentecost but also plans for the the spring and for a summer symphonic series in collaboration with musicians from the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Orchestra of the Tuscan Region, the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole and the  Conservatorio Cherubini. It was also decided to set up regular masterclasses with great soloists and international ensembles to bolster our tradition  of encouraging the best possible performances of chamber music in the new Autumn Festival. Twenty concerts were planned and the creation of an annual CD to record each year’s accomplishments.

At the height of our success the death of  Don Biagio Della Vecchia,the prior   at Badia di Passignano was a terrific blow. From our first encounter he had been in favour of opening the monastery to a wider public in collaboration with our Association. He contributed personally to the  publication commemorating our first ten years with a chapter on the history of the monastery. After his death, even when his immediate successors attempted to follow his path, the relationship with the religious community did not recover for a number of years. From 2001 when the restoration work began at Badia, we also faced the difficulty of finding suitable alternative venues. We migrated from one site to another in the hope of finding a stable solution to replace our exile form Badia. We decided to compensate for the loss of our beautiful setting at Badia by concentrating on a superb programme and, despite evident difficulties we succeeded in producing a second CD with music by  Rota, Shostakovich, Britten and Piazzolla, performed by the violinist Fabrizio Merlini and pianist Tiziano Mealli in th the Pieve di San Piero in Bosso. Still in search a a satisfactory temporary home, we first sought refuge in the  Auditorium of the Banca del Chianti Fiorentino in San Casciano, then at the Teatro Regina Margherita in Marcialla. As it proved difficult to attract the same public who had favoured us at Badia, we came to an agreement with the monks so that we could make a symbolic return to the monastery by organising two concerts in the small church of San Biagio. These proved memorable occasions with the participation of Pavel Vernikov, Tiziano Mealli and  Alberto Miodini, with a warm response from a public necessarily limited by the size of the church. Unfortunately this concert did not lead to others there and it was only through the intervention of the Comune that in 2004 we were able to return to organising events in our original location, the church of San Pietro in Bossolo. And so roughly thirty years after our  beginning, we found ourselves, more or less,having to start all over again. In those years however the quality was never in question and we were delighted to welcome the Quartetto Tartini, the Nuovo Quartetto Italiano, the Trio di Parma, and soloists such as Giovanni Riccucci, Riccardo Crucilla, Ivan Rabaglia and Paolo Chiavacci. Every year too we staged concerts dedicated to the winners of the  Premio Gui: these were  the Tchemazov-Nuzova Duo,the MartignéSteinbach Duo, the Trio con Brio, the Quartetto Navarra, and the Arp- Frantz Duo. In the meantime thanks to the generous hospitality of the Zanzotto, we could again plan a summer symphonic series at the Castello di Santa Maria Novella, in collaboration with  the ORT, the Musici Mundi, and with the  Orchestra of the Conservatorio Cherubini. The conductors welcomed were Ottavio Dantone, Marzio Conti, Daniele Giorgi, Michele Carulli, Alpaslan Ertungealp, and among the soloists Andrea Tacchi, Carlo Failli, Claudio Quintavalla, Paolo Chiavacci and Lazlo Petru Horvath. Despite our problems we managed to publish a second book marking thirty rich years of music, and telling an extraordinary story of success and survival unusual for an enterprise as small as our own. This was also an opportunity to thank all those who had contributed so generously to this “small Tuscan miracle”. From 2009 to 2013, while the abbey at  Badia a Passignano was no longer available, we continued to hold the Pentecost Festival at the Pieve di San Pietro in Bossolo. In the meantime, Tiziano Mealli succeeded Harald Schoneweg as Artistic Director of the Festival di Pentecoste and of the Concerts at Badia.

In those years we welcomed celebrated performers such as Andrea Lucchesini, Maureen Jones, the Gion-Haruka duet, the Navarra Quartet, the Foné Quartet, the Quartetto Fauves while continuing our collaboration  with the ORT – the Orchestra della Toscana, although circumstances forced us to reduce the scale of the summer events.

In 2012 however, spurred on by the local Cultural and Education assessor, Marina Baretta, we founded the Accademia Malaspina in the newly restored Palazzo Malaspina in San Donato in Poggio.

The return to Badia a Passignano followed in 2014 when the  Vallombrosan Community reopened the doors of the abbey and we began to plan a return to the glorious concerts of the past, first in the church of San Biagio where Esther and Lea Birringer, Andrea Nannoni, Giovanna Prestia, Bruno Canino, Antonio Ballista, David Bellugi and Ivano Battiston all performed and then, from 2016, in the restored refectory. At this point while the return to our natural Festival platform  allowed us to plan more ambitious concerts, our founder and president, Giuseppe Garro, for more than forty years the backbone of the Association, was obliged to step down while remaining close to his beloved foundation as President Emeritus. We were then faced with the delicate problem of finding his successor, at a particularly difficult time. Our councillors proved their worth in keeping the Festival di Pentecoste alive led  by Sebastiano Renna, who took on the role of  President. Little did we realise what problems lay ahead! The new programming included the Quartetto di Torino with Christophe Giovaninetti, Antonello Farulli, Andrea Nannoni and,the Quartetto Lyskamm, Bruno Canino, Pier Narciso Masi, Jin Ju, the Quartetto Adorno, the Quartetto di Fiesole, the Trio di Parma, the Quartetto di Venezia, and Alessandro Carbonare, Francesca Dego, Laura Polverelli and Matteo Fossi. Then in 2020 the terrible Covid-19 pandemic threatened the end of all live performances. Despite the logistical difficulties (masks, temperature readings, social distancing, only open air performances) we are proud to have staged at least the Festival di Pentecoste (although it was moved to July and to the cloister). Seats for the concerts had to be booked but were free, offering hope for the future, and their success exceeded every expectation, demonstrating just how important it was to gather together. For the committee, who only came together in April in a teleconference, confined as we all were to our own homes, the planning of the four concerts proved quite an endeavour. We had to thank, yet again the ORT, the Regional Orchestra of Tuscany but also the  Conservatorio Cherubini and Francesca Dego and Daniele Rustioni who offered us a particularly moving concert, playing in the open in a cloister at the mercy of a summer storm which broke a couple of hours before the concert was due to start. The following season also presented challenges despite the participation of performers such as Simone Bernardini, Danilo Rossi, the Quartetto di Venezia and the soloists of the ORT. After the trials of the covid years, on the one hand, we were proud to have succeeded in continuing the concerts and in attracting a new public, and on the other, we had to  face up to the problems posed by a sort of ground zero: it cannot be denied there were moments of discouragement. At this point the intervention and support of the Comune in the newly united comunes of  Barberino and Tavarnelle were crucial. We drew up a three-year  agreement of collaboration enabling us to relaunch our activities with renewed confidence. The new series of programmes, to be consulted in the Archive section, aimed to return to the greatest moments of the previous Festivals of Pentecost and the Badia concerts and to give a memorable launch to the Accademia Malaspina and the Accademia concerts. Two new dates have also been added to the calendar in the hope that they too will become traditional: the New Year Concert and the  Concert of the Festa della Toscana, so that our activities stretch to cover the entire year. Furthermore, we have begun to work in collaboration with other musical organisations in the area, in the conviction that only musical education based on the community can ensure the survival of projects such as ours. The adoption of a new symbol and the design of this site bear further witness to our desire to give new impetus to our activities.  There can be no better way of closing this account than of remembering the evening of the 24 September 2023, when the Comune of Barberino-Tavarnelle, established in 2019, decided to confer the first  Sigillum Comunis on Zubin Mehta, on the fortieth  anniversary of our presenting him with the  Toscanini Prize, in recognition of the constant encouragement he had provided since that distant concert in 1981. He has offered lasting and valuable support to the Association and its far-reaching activities, and is still the President of our Honorary Committee. The photographs of this ceremony capture perfectly the symbolic closure of the circle of what was described as “ a Tuscan miracle” and at the same time represent the hope that the future might reap ever more abundant rewards from our past endeavors. We close with heartfelt thanks to all those who have given so generously and enthusiastically until now, in the hope that their example may inspire music lovers of the future.

Images of the evening of September 24, 2023. Mayor Davide Baroncelli delivers the first Sigillum Comunis of the municipality of Barberino Tavarnelle to Maestro Zubin Mehta, on the fortieth anniversary of the awarding of the Toscanini Prize to the Maestro.