SILVIA COLASANTI (b.1985): Music for String Quartet - Due destini, Aria, Di tumulti e d’ombre “Studio per Faust”, Tre notti.

Description: Of her 2019 opera Proserpine, “Classical Music Daily” said “The score is like elegant lace, with very skillful orchestration and well-balanced vocal writing. It is not an experimental score but a good piece of music where the main themes are intertwined and can be easily played by the orchestra as well as recognized by the listeners.” These qualities may also be appreciated in Colasanti’s work for string quartet. The expressive markings for Due destini, starting Agitato and Immobile, reveal the work’s destination of travel towards two quite different places, creating an expressive tension which the string quartet is uniquely well placed to sustain. Aria does not imitate vocal writing but rather draws on the Italian meaning of the word, ‘airs’, with music that breathes and shudders and vanishes on the wind. Di tumulti e onde is subtitled Studio per Faust, and its predominance of darkness over light and tumult over calm is a characteristic feature of Colasanti’s language. Finally there is a trio of pieces that develops the themes of a piece she wrote for string quartet and percussion to accompany a text written by Patrizia Cavalli. The theme is that of a woman waking and dreaming, not unlike the lonely figure in Schoenberg’s Erwartung, and now transformed by Tre Notti into music of sudden fears and restless hopes. Quartetto Noûs.