Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra to Present WE THE PEOPLE: A Journey in Dreams of Times & Places

Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra will present the tenth installment of their popular “We the People” Immigrant Stories in Music series. The program entitled A Journey in Dreams of Times & Places welcomes acclaimed guest conductor Damiano Tognetti leading a program including works by Respighi and Ferreri, as well as Brahms' masterful Violin Concerto, Op. 77 featuring Virtuosi Artistic Director and award-winning violinist Adrian Sylveen.

The concert will be held on Sunday, February 2 at 3pm at The Bushnell at the First Presbyterian of Hartford (136 Capitol Avenue, Hartford, CT), and be repeated on Friday, February 7 at 8pm at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City and on Sunday, February 9 at 3pm at New Britain Museum of American Art (56 Lexington St., New Britain, CT). 

About A Journey in Dreams of Times & Places

This intriguing program features an Italian guest conductor at the baton with works by one of Italy's most renowned composers and a contemporary work by an Italian American composer. Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) was a noted musicologist who adapted Renaissance and Baroque pieces for the lute into a gorgeous series of pieces of Chamber orchestra entitled "Antiche danze et aries per liuto ("Ancient Dances and Airs for the Lute"). Maestro Tognetti leads the Virtuosi in a performance of Suite No. 3 from this series, a richly melodic tour of Renaissance Italian music. Contemporary composer Ernesto Ferreri, a North Carolina-based music educator, appears on the program with an encore of his Octet for Chamber Orchestra, op. 32, a work that received its world premiere by the Virtuosi as part of the very first We The People concert program in 2022. A Journey in Dreams of Times & Places climaxes with Tognetti and violin soloist Adrian Sylveen bringing Brahms' magnificent and dramatic Violin Concerto, Op. 77. to the stage. Composed in 1878, this stately work is considered one of the four great violin concerti in the classical music repertory.

About The Conductor

Italian Conductor and violinist Damiano Tognetti began musical studies at the age of seven with Maestro A.Fornai and graduated in 2001 from the “Boccherini” Musical Institute in Lucca under the guidance of Maestro A.Bologni. He was first violin and soloist of the institute’s orchestra. Having perfected his skills at the Fiesole Music School, he was the winner of several national competitions. Already a member of the Cherubini Orchestra of Piacenza directed by Riccardo Multi, he collaborates with various orchestras including Orchestra del Teatro Massimo di Palermo, Orchestra da Camera Fiorentina, Orchestra Regionale of the Emilia Romagna Tuscan Foundation, Orchestra of Padua and Veneto, Venetian Regional Orchestra.

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