The Fugue, the most arduous contrapuntal musical form, has always been a technical challenge for any composer. Ever since its encryption to perfection by the greatest composer of fugues, Johann Sebastian Bach, it has become a particular obsession for many other major composers.
The name of Bach and his works became such an obsession to Robert Schumann. He composed six fugues for organ op. 60, on the subject of a fugue extracted from the initials “B.A.C.H.”.
Bach, with his “Well-Tempered Clavier” (a collection of 48 preludes and fugues), has also been the inspiring example for 24 preludes and fugues by the Russian composer Dmitri Schostakovich who proves great mastery in converting Bach's rules to his personal aesthetics.
Astor Piazzolla, on the other hand, faces this challenge by elevating themes, which are profoundly characterized by the Argentinian Tango, and involving them in a fugue. In doing so, he reinvents and enhances the form of the fugue by liberating it of it`s rules and rending it incredibly expressive.
Drawing their inspiration from 18th century masters such as Albinoni and Vivaldi, the contemporary composers Sardelli and Queipo de Llano recreate in their fugues the marvelous venetian colors of sound.
The young Florentine composer Giovanni Biswas expresses an even more varied concept of the fugue, in which the timbric plasticity emphasizes the compositional technique.


Ensemble Fisarchi 

Daniele Del Lungo, violino
Andrea Vassalle, violino
Laura Gorkoff, violino
Daniel Stratznig, accordeon
Annamaria Vassalle, soprano


Arrangements, compositional elaboration, instrumentation, Daniele Del Lungo 

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Michelangelo Buonarroti, a 16th century Florentine artist of world wide renown: sculpturer, painter, architect and poet. In fact, Michelangelo's poems shape the basis for this program. In 2009, the Ensemble Fisarchi has asked young Florentine composers to create music by using the lyrics of Michelangelo's sonnets. The project and the subsequent recording of the CD “Michelangelo, rime” were financed by the provincial administration of Florence in cooperation with the foundation “Genio Fiorentino”.
These extraordinary compositional creations, which are as precious as the gems decorating the marble in the Medici Chapel (a place in Florence that was designed by Michelangelo for the tombs of the Medici family), are set next to further contemporary compositions.
Thanks to its specific formation, the Fisarchi Ensemble is distinguished for incorporating into its repertory the works of young composers, including the Maltese composer Mariella Cassar whose piece titled “Gaudos” had been part of the Ensemble's debut concert in Austria in 2008.


Ensemble Fisarchi 

Daniele Del Lungo, violino
Andrea Vassalle, violino
Laura Gorkoff, violino
Daniel Stratznig, accordeon
Annamaria Vassalle, soprano


Arrangements, compositional elaboration, instrumentation, Daniele Del Lungo 

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Love and Clarinet is the title of a concert series that has first been presented in England in February of 2011. The program has been conceived and performed in collaboration with the clarinettist Emma Alexander. The main theme incorporates the idea of love reflected in music. (Parting) from the intense love discribed by Mozart to the ideal love of the Victorian era expressed by Elgar through to love that continues beyond death, as discribed in the poetry of Vittoria Colonna “Vivo su questo scoglio”. A further aspect is the love depicted in the verses of “Bel giorno d'ebbrezza”, Egyptian poem from the Pharaonic Period. Not to forget about the passion of the sensuous love, full of suffering and sacrifice which is found in the compositions of Astor Piazzolla, as well as the music about conjugal love that is, for centuries, part of any Jewisch wedding. All of these aspects conclude in one of the most famous love melodies in cinema history. 

Ensemble Fisarchi 

Daniele Del Lungo, violino
Andrea Vassalle, violino
Laura Gorkoff, violino
Daniel Stratznig, accordeon
Annamaria Vassalle, soprano


Arrangements, compositional elaboration, instrumentation, Daniele Del Lungo 

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"My music? 10 percent tango, 90 percent modern classic."

This is an entire program dedicated to the most important Argentinian musician of the 20th century. Here, the Argentinian tango was used as an opportunity to compose music with reference to the great classical European tradition, utilizing the fugue and the sonata, while refining it with a touch of Jazz: all this is owed to the adventurous biography of Astor Piazzolla. Born in Argentina, he was named by his father Vincente Nonino in remembrance of his famous friend Astor Bolognini who played the first cello in the Sinfonic Orchestra of Chicago. While still young, Piazolla's family moved to New York. There, his father had sent him to a pianist who himself had been a student of Rachmaninoff, to study the Bandoneon (the characteristic Argentine accordion).
In New York, young Astor had spent his childhood and youth amidst the vast variety of the ethnic sounds which had then animated the cross-cultural neighborhood. Little Italy's home-made Neapolitan music and the diverse sounds coming from Hispanic and Hebraic communities mingled in the neighborhood of Williamsburg. In Little Odessa, a mostly Russian neighborhood, as well as in Chinatown and in Astoria, accommodating a strong Greek community, immigrants have achieved to keep alive their cultural and musical identity.
The vital musical life of New York in those days had to leave inspiring marks on the future works of Astor Piazzolla. This is reflected in the fact that, apart from his love for the compositions of Bach, he has also developed a strong passion for Jazz and Blues.
In New York Piazzolla also got to meet Carlos Gardel who is considered as one of the fathers of Tango. In fact, he had asked the fourteen-year-old Astor to contribute to his film “El dia que me quieras” by composing various themes. At a later date, Piazzolla returned to Argentina to play the Bandoneon in the Tango orchestra of Anibal Troilo. However, his true passion has always been composing to which he dedicated himself more and more, studying with Alberto Ginastera and in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. It is also in the capital of France that he got to meet Igor Stravinsky and Arthur Rubenstein.

His life could best be summarized in his own words: "I have to say the most utterly truth. I could tell a story about angels, but it would not be a true story. My story is a story of devils, mixed with angels and some meanness: you need a little bit of everything to go on in life". 

Ensemble Fisarchi 

Daniele Del Lungo, violino
Andrea Vassalle, violino
Laura Gorkoff, violino
Daniel Stratznig, accordeon
Annamaria Vassalle, soprano


Arrangements, compositional elaboration, instrumentation, Daniele Del Lungo  

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