Luca Francesconi

Luca Francesconi (born 17 March 1956) is an Italian composer. He studied at the Milan Conservatory, later with Karlheinz Stockhausen and then Luciano Berio.

Early years Luca Francesconi was born in Milan. His father was a painter who edited Il Corriere dei piccoli and conceived Il Corriere dei ragazzi, while his mother was an advertiser. Francesconi spent his early years in QT8, a working-class quarter in Milan. At the age of five he began to learn the piano. Although he was accepted into the junior high school section of the city's conservatory six years later, he pulled out. Instead, Francesconi opted to attend the junior high school in QT8.

Education Francesconi returned to the Conservatory of Milan in 1974, while he was still attending the Berchet Classical Languages High School, and explored the musical landscape, taking an interest in different sounds. He played in jazz and rock groups as well as in classical concerts. Francesconi worked as a session man in recording studios, and composed music for theatre, cinema, advertising, and television.

Francesconi attended the Milan Conservatory and enrolled in the composition course conducted by Azio Corghi. "From him I learnt the trade, the fundamentals, counterpoint and those things, professional seriousness and open-mindedness." In the meantime he continued to explore electronic music and in 1977 took time out to immerse himself in jazz at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

A student of Karlheinz Stockhausen Donnerstag aus Licht went on stage at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1981. Stockhausen is a historical reference point: Francesconi admired him for his organisational consistency and his search for linguistic unity. He was also impressed by this initial opera. He wanted to observe the composer at work, so he enrolled in the intensive course that Stockhausen held in Rome that same year. "From him I learnt rigor, at first imbibing it by osmosis, and then demythologising it."

Meeting and collaboration with Luciano Berio Luciano didn't talk much about the more 'technical' and delicate aspects of his work as a composer. I remember that when he least expected it, I would fire questions at him point-blank, hoping to pick up some tips. His replies were like enigmas. They had something sacral about them and they required divining rituals to decode them.

With Berio, Francesconi studied in the field, acting as his assistant from 1981 to 1984. He worked directly on the score of La vera storia and participated in the production as rehearsal pianist and second conductor/substitute maestro. In 1984 he collaborated with the composer in the rewriting of Monteverdi's Orfeo. He was also present with Berio at Tanglewood where he attended one of his summer courses.

Activities, works, research

In 1984 three of Francesconi's pieces, including Passacaglia, for large orchestra (1982), were selected for the Gaudeamus International Composers Award in Amsterdam. This first important recognition on the international scene created a useful tie with the Dutch music scene and laid the foundation for further commissions. Meanwhile, in Italy, thanks to a commission from the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, Francesconi had the opportunity to seriously put into practice for the first time his idea of a "polyphony of languages": Suite 1984. The polyphony that I have in mind hasn't got anything to do with the "postmodern" or collage, the exotic pastiche, the provincial chinoiserie of our grandparents (but also of Stockhausen and certain pop groups). Instead, it is a free fusion of ideas in a compact and linguistically very solid body that reveals its profound energies in its inner profundity and not in an exterior heterogeneity. Energies that come from the earth, from popular culture, from ancient African and Oriental cultures. "In 1984 the Teatro Lirico in Cagliari presented a quartet made up of the pianist and composer Franco D'Andrea together with the group Africa Djolé led by the master percussionist Fode Youla from Guinea. The idea was then conceived that the music of this group be recreated in symphonic form (Suite 1984) by the 28-year-old Luca Francesconi for a performance by the theatre's orchestra under the direction of Francesconi himself, a recent product of rigorous musical studies, assistant to Luciano Berio and 'jazz student of D'Andrea', as he used to like to define himself. The concert attracted experts anxious to hear novelties and promising syncretisms of various musical civilisations, and it was a triumph." "Orchestra, African percussionists and jazz quintet: the choice of instrumental make-up itself contained in an explicit manner the generative nucleus of one of the principal aesthetic motors of the music of Luca Francesconi: the tendency to place alongside one another, following the rules of contrast and fusion, sounds and languages of highly diverse origins."

1984–1990

Francesconi's first record, an LP recorded in the United States, contained Viaggiatore insonne, on a text by Sandro Penna. "Francesconi's attitude as a composer is in fact similar to that of a tireless traveller, who explores linguistic spaces in search of their ever-shifting confines, and who conducts an etiological study to determine the confines between noise and sound, between instinct and reason." The new piece Vertige, for string orchestra, was performed in Strasbourg. Francesconi composed various works for ensemble which were performed in Cagliari (Onda sonante, for eight instruments, commissioned by the Nieuw Ensemble; conductor: Ed Spanjaard (1985)), Paris (Tracce, for flute (1986)), Città di Castello (Da capo, for nine instruments (1988)), Middelburg (Finta-di-nulla, for soprano and nineteen instruments on a text by Umberto Fiori; Xenakis Ensemble; conductor: Diego Masson; and soprano: Marie Duisit (1991)), and Brussels (Encore/Da capo, for 9 instruments; Ictus Ensemble, conducted by the composer (1995)). In 1984 Casa Ricordi became Francesconi's publisher and since then has published all his works. In 1985 he was invited to the Festival Musica ‘900 in Trent for a series of public conversations with Franco Donatoni. This meeting proved extremely important; talking with the great Verona composer, both in their public conversations and during train trips together, Francesconi felt that he reached a solution for a number of unresolved problems. Plot in fiction, dedicated to Franco Donatoni, was in many ways the happy outcome of this experience.

Plot in Fiction

The difficult thing is to write works with a rich and articulated complex of meanings and events: works, that is, that are capable of assuming a linguistic structure, but whose complexity is transparent. "The point here is to find the "plot" in the "fiction", the narrative line that twists and turns through the complexity and intricacy of a "mass of everyday symbols". What's involved is an architecture that guides the listener within the composition: the search for a compositional transparency (without, however, ever slipping into simplicity; the means employed leave unaltered the quality of the composer's thought), based on pure energy, directly perceptible, without any need to exhibit the mechanisms underlying it.

Mambo, for solo piano, is Francesconi's most jazz-like piece, and it reveals clearly his search for an ever-uneasy equilibrium between sonoric materials, gathered in their primitive state, and the evocative power of history, from which the composer cannot remove himself. In the piece there is an overlap of a rhythmic ostinato in a low register, a series of ascending-descending diatonic lines, and, finally, a sequence of pounding 4-note chords. In this continual 'friction of contraries' resides the aesthetic motor of Francesconi's music as well as the powerful charge of sonoric seduction that his works carry. AGON has for many years been one of the most active centres in Italy for music research and production.

Composed in 1991, for violin and eight instruments, Riti neurali is Francesconi's third study on memory. Like many of his works, it develops the material on multiple levels, pursuing labyrinthine paths. Nonetheless, its clearly delineated textures offer the listener unmistakable points of reference. The soloist establishes a vast array of relations with the small orchestra (guiding it, allowing himself to be guided, contradicting it, ignoring it, etc.), at the same time assuming various positions himself ... The complexity of the counterpoint arises out of the simultaneity of the various positions.

Between 1993 and 1994 Francesconi worked and taught in Paris in the hyper-technological workshop Ircam, where "you model sound with your hands". On commission from Ircam, he carried out computer analysis on sounds and their behaviour right down to their roots, their etymon, to realise "one of the most convincing and at the same time impetuous musical equivalents of the writing of Baudelaire, striving with clarity of mind to achieve a secure control over the insidious relationship between words and music." The piece is based almost entirely on Baudelaire's poem Le Voyage, of which at two points we hear the soprano declaim two key fragments: "Dites, qu'avez-vous vu?" (Speak, what have you seen?). The computer analysis of this question constitutes the DNA that structures the entire piece, from the microstructure to the macroform. A fuoco (1995) is Francesconi's fourth study on memory; Animus, for trombone and computer (1996), was performed in Paris, while the London Sinfonietta took Plot in fiction to Santa Cecilia in Rome (1996).

Wanderer

The effort to formalise creative thought and thought as a whole is extremely important for composers as well, but by the same token the "analogical" and qualitative approach of the artist helps to play down their relationship with technological instruments and above all to reaffirm the impossibility of discretising, quantifying human experience; the impossibility of converting into binary code and sending via fibre optic cable the sum total of existence, the totality of aesthetic experience, of the body, of affection, of the world.

On 17 January 2000 Riccardo Muti conducted Wanderer at the Scala in Milan. "This voyager is man who, after conducting an inventory of the generations that have preceded him, takes with him only the bare essentials to set out on a path towards the immensity of possible spaces. At the dawn of the new millennium Luca Francesconi frees himself from the crushing weight of tradition, especially that generated by serialism and its worshipers. After extensive research into tempo, into tempi, one might say, into sonoric texture, the composer here explores a type of language that favours narration.

Cobalt, Scarlet: Two Colours of Dawn

Music is closer than any other form of expression to that nucleus of "existential energy" that lives deep within us. "With this composition Luca Francesconi reached a turning point in his career, enriching his exploration into the heart of sonoric material with greater sensibility and emotivity. In this way his music acceded to a broader artistic dimension, that of a harmonious encounter of technique and psychology in the broadest sense of the term. contribute to the spatial disorientation. Originally, for the role of the ancient mariner, Francesconi had thought of Sting, with whom he had recorded the first song of the opera Day After Day.

Buffa opera

Who said that music today necessarily has to create angst? It's enough to think that Albanese used to come running onto the stage pursued by a cigarette two and half metres tall.

Commissioned by the Holland Festival, Gesualdo Considered as a Murderer, on a libretto by Vittorio Sermonti, was performed for the first time in Amsterdam in June 2004. It was directed by Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, with Davide Damiani as Gesualdo, Eberhard Franscesco Lorenz as his Iago-like servant, and Alda Caiello as Gesualdo's wife's maid, and was well-received as a mature dramatic piece.

Quartett

In 2011, Francesconi's eighth music theatre work, Quartett, premiered at the Scala in Milan. An adaptation of a text by Heiner Müller drawn in its turn from Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's 1782 novel Les liaisons dangereuses, it was jointly commissioned by Teatro alla Scala, Wiener Festwochen and Ircam. The libretto, by the composer, is in English, a language whose syncretism Francesconi felt aligned with his taste in musical syncretism.

The opera has a single act, thirteen scenes, and lasts a total of an hour and twenty minutes. Only two characters on stage, a small orchestra in the orchestra pit, a large orchestra and choir off-stage (available as a recording effected at the Scala in Milan), and electronics (Studio Ircam, Serge Lemouton: live and pre-recorded sounds). The stage direction at the Scala was entrusted to Alex Olle of La Fura dels Baus, who concentrated the action in a huge box suspended twelve metres above the stage, projecting onto the full breadth of the backdrop videos representing the outside world. Allison Cook, mezzo-soprano, interpreted the Marquise de Merteuil, alternating with Sinead Mulhern; Robin Adams, baritone, was Vicomte de Valmont. The conductor was Susanna Mälkki. This production was revived in 2012 in Vienna (Wiener FestWochen: conductor: Peter Rundel), in 2013 at the Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam (the opening of the Holland Festival; conductor: Susanna Mälkki) and at the Opera di Lille (Ensemble Ictus: conductor: Georges-Elie Octors), and in 2014 in Lisbon (Gulbenkian Foundation: conductor: Susanna Mälkki).

Quartett was performed in concert form at the Cité de la Musique in Paris by Ensemble Intercontemporain (March 2013). A first new production was staged in Porto and Strasburg, once again with Allison Cook and Robin Adams, and with Remix Ensemble under the direction of Brad Lubman. The stage direction, scenery and costumes were by Nuno Carinhas and the lighting by Nuno Meira (Casa da Musica in Porto on 24 September 2013 and Festival Musica in Strasburg on 28 September 2013).

The opera was produced again in London by the Royal Opera House in a coproduction with the Opéra di Rouen and the London Sinfonietta, from 18 to 28 June 2014, with stage direction by John Fulljames. Two casts alternated for the ten performances (Leigh Melrose and Kristin Chávez; and Mark Stone and Angelica Voje) on the metallic structures of a post-atomic bunker realised by Soutra Gilmour, with lighting by Bruno Poet and videos by Ravi Deepres projected onto tattered screens dropped from above in the restrained atmosphere of the Linbury Studio. Under the structures warm and dim lights lit up the London Sinfonietta, conducted by Andrew Gourlay.

In 2015 the Malmö Opera presented a fourth production. It was directed by Stefan Johansson, with scenery by Jan Lundberg. Kirstin Chavez interpreted the Marquise de Merteuil and Christian Miedl Vicomte de Valmont; the conductor was Ralf Kircher.

The La Fura del Baus production was performed again in Buenos Aires, Colón Theater, in June 2015, with Allison Cook and Robin Adams, director Alex Olle, conductor Brad Lubman. "The press wasn't indifferent at all: "La Fura dels Baus strikes in America as well" (El País); "A high voltage opera" (Clarín); "To the limits of the opera" (La Nación); "Portrait of a crippled bourgeoisie" (Página 12). "Quartett: a wonderful and yet very demanding opera" (Ámbito Financiero).

The Venice Biennale From 2008 to 2011 Francesconi was the artistic director of the Venice Music Biennale. His imprint was immediately recognisable in the themes of the four festivals ("Roots/Future", "The body of sound", "Don Giovanni and the man of stone" and "Mutants") and it broadened out further in the conception of the festival as the ideal place "to seek new and different forms of perception and attention." Beyond the confines of concert halls and theatres, listeners freely choose how to approach the music, which was disseminated through the city as though on a stage in movement, accessible and without limits. This was the basic idea behind Exit, the celebratory evening/night that brought each of the four festivals to a close, transforming the Teatro alle Tese into a distended human body (Exit 02), "an experience with variable geometry, a new way of living space, sound and time from sunset to dawn", or inviting the public to take a boat towards the Island of San Michele to pay homage to Stravinsky in the form of three clarinet pieces at his tomb and to then participate in a banquet that evoked the finale of Don Giovanni. Don Giovanni was also at the heart of one of the most famous experiments in this four-year period: "Palazzo Pisani, home of the B. Marcello Conservatory, is the site chosen for the staging of Don Giovanni a Venezia, conceived by Francesconi himself. For this initiative, which has been defined as an opera-labyrinth, the public is asked not just to exercise its sensibility but also its intelligence, so as to try to create a kind of gap between space and time in which music can be inserted. After scrapping the old structure of the concert, Francesconi borrows three key scenes from Mozart's original – the duel between Don Giovanni and the Commendatore, the seduction of Zerlina and the death of Don Giovanni – and puts them on stage cyclically, in three different locations within the ancient Venetian palace, inserting in the loggie, palace rooms and courtyards another eight original pieces commissioned from contemporary composers. The spectator, as if he were to enter into a huge gallery and to decide autonomously how and what to look at, will have before his eyes a plurality of musical, scenic, theatrical and visual events to combine, putting aside the perceptive habits of space and time."

Teaching

Luca Francesconi has taught for twenty-five years in Italy's conservatories and at the University of Ohio, in Rotterdam and in Strasburg. He has held master classes throughout Europe and the world, from Japan to the United States, from China to Canada. Until 2019 he has taught composition at the Malmö Academy of Music (part of Lund University), where he directed the composition department.

Other collaborations

2000 marked two other important experiences. The Piccolo Teatro in Milan commissioned him to write the music for Calderón de la Barca's pièce La vida es sueño, with stage direction by Luca Ronconi, who in that very year took over the direction of the theatre from Giorgio Strehler. He wrote the music for Paolo Rosa's film Il mnemonista, produced by Studio Azzurro.

2014 Two important international symphonic commissions mark the year.

Duende. The Dark Notes A dangerous descent into the infernal depths of the dark notes, to rediscover a primordial force in perhaps the most history-laden instrument of the West.

Written for the extraordinary soloist Leila Josefowicz, this concerto for violin and orchestra was jointly commissioned by SR Swedish Radio and the BBC Proms. Performed in Stockholm in February 2014, in Turin in May 2014 and in June 2015 for the BBC Proms. «It was well worth the wait. As the title suggests, Francesconi's concerto takes the idea of the Duende, the dark, demonic spirit of flamenco, as its starting point, but the music never seems simplistically pictorial or programmatic. Instead, with the violin as protagonist, the five movements (the last two merged seamlessly together) evoke a threatening world of extremes, of heightened emotions and dramatically contrasted colours and registers. The orchestra weaves febrile webs around solo writing whose cracked arpeggios and steep scales manage to be more or less traditionally virtuosic within musical contexts that are anything but conventional, especially in the ferocious cadenza at the heart of the final movement. Josefowicz's playing was immensely committed and astoundingly vivid, and it emerged in even sharper, more subtle focus in the Radio 3 recording, which also resolved many of the textures that had seemed rather blurred in the hall.»

Duende was ranked number 6 in the Guardian's list of the top 10 classical concerts and operas of 2015

Dentro non ha tempo "Curious, that title, 'Dentro non ha tempo'. It can be read in three ways: as the temporal suspension that someone who dies leaves in those that have loved him/her. As a reference to the great musical tradition from which Luciana came, the Abbado family: a homage to the past that has no time. Finally, an allusion to the form of the composition, based on three bars of Mozart's Don Giovanni dilated 29 times. Like the year of Luciana's birth, 1929.

Commissioned by the Teatro alla Scala for the Strauss cycle, Dentro non ha tempo, for large orchestra, is dedicated to Luciana Abbado Pestalozza, Francesconi's deceased friend who, with her sensibility and organisational capacity, played a crucial role in the development of contemporary music in Italy. The piece was performed at the Scala on 14 June 2014 under the direction of Esa-Pekka Salonen.

2015

Vertical Invader

Vertical Invader, concerto grosso for reed quintet and orchestra. On 23 May world premiere in Amsterdam, Concertgebouw, Calefax Reed Quintet: Oliver Boekhoorn (oboe), Ivar Berix (clarinet), Raaf Hekkema (saxophone), Jelte Althuis (bass clarinet) and Alban Wesly (bassoon). Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, conductor Osmo Vänskä. The 'vertical invader' to which the title refers is a metaphor for a connection that is true and profoundly desired – as opposed to the false relationships presented by mass media – a synchronicity that in music is as perennially elusive as it is in the world.

Macchine in echo

On 2 October, the WDR Sinfonieorchester Cologne performed the world premiere of Luca Francesconi's Macchine in Echo at the Philharmonie in Cologne under the direction of Peter Rundel in collaboration with the piano duo GrauSchumacher. The piece was commissioned by the WDR, the Strasbourg MUSICA festival, and Wiener Konzerthaus. (The Strasbourg MUSICA festival presented the French premiere on 3 October at the closing concert of the festival's 33rd edition.)

Bread, water and salt

On 3 October at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, Sir Antonio Pappano together with the soprano Pumeza Matshikiza and the Orchestra and Choir of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, performed the world premiere of Bread, Water and Salt on texts by Nelson Mandela. This piece by Francesconi has been chosen to inaugurate the Orchestra di Santa Cecilia's 2015–16 concert season and will be dedicated by the orchestra to Ludwig van Beethoven.

Works, editions and recordings I Quartetto for strings, 1977 Passacaglia for great orchestra, 1982 Concertante for guitar and ensemble, Tanglewood 1982 Viaggiatore insonne for soprano and 5 instruments (text by Sandro Penna), 1983 Notte for mezzo-soprano and 19 instruments (text by Sandro Penna), 1983–1984 Suite 1984 for orchestra, African percussionists and jazz quintet with the Orchestra of the Ente Lirico di Cagliari, the Franco D'Andrea's band and Africa Djolé from Ivory Coast, directed by the composer, 1984 Finta-di-nulla for soprano and 19 instruments (text by Umberto Fiori), 1985 Onda sonante for 8 instruments, 1985 Vertige for string orchestra, 1985 Da capo for 9 instruments, 1985–1986 Encore/Da capo for 9 instruments, 1985–1995 Impulse II for clarinet, violin and piano, 1985, 1995 Al di là dell'oceano famoso for 8 solo mixed voices, Netherland Radio Chamber Choir, 1985 Secondo quartetto (Mondriaan Quartet) Tracce for flute, 1985–1987 Plot in fiction for bassoon, English horn and 11 instruments, 1986 Respiro for trombone solo, 1987 Trama for saxophone and orchestra, 1987 Mambo, for piano solo, 1987 Attesa for reed quartet, 1988 La voce, folk song for soprano and 13 instruments (text by Umberto Fiori), 1988 Aeuia for baritone and 11 instruments (based on a text by di Jacopone da Todi), 1989 Les barricades mystérieuses for flute and orchestra, 1989 Piccola trama for saxophone and 8 instruments, 1989 Richiami II – 1st study on memory, 1989–1992 Memoria for orchestra, 1990 Secondo Concerto for oboe and chamber orchestra, 1991 Mittel for five moving bands, 1991 Riti neurali, 3rd study on memory for violin and 8 instruments, 1991 Islands concerto for piano and chamber orchestra, 1992 Miniature for 16 instruments, 1992 Voci for soprano, violin and magnetic tape (text by Umberto Fiori), 1992 Aria for wind octet, 1993 Plot II for saxophone and 15 instruments, 1993 Risonanze d'Orfeo, suite for wind orchestra from Orfeo di Claudio Monteverdi, 1993 Trama II for clarinet, orchestra and live electronics, 1993 Terzo quartetto "Mirrors" for strings, Arditti Quartet, De Singel Antwerpen, 1994 Ballata del rovescio del mondo, radio-opera on texts by Umberto Fiori, 1994 Etymo for soprano, chamber orchestra and live electronics, from Charles Baudelaire, commission by IRCAM for soprano, Ensemble InterContemporain, conductor Pascal Rophé, soprano Luisa Castellani, Klangregie by the composer,1994 A fuoco – 4th study on memory for guitar and ensemble, 1995 Animus for trombone and live electronics, 1995–1996 Inquieta limina. Un omaggio a Berio for ensemble with accordion, 1996 Venti Radio-Lied, radiofilms, texts by Umberto Fiori, with Moni Ovadia and Phillis Blanford, 1996–1997 Sirene/Gespenster, Heathen Oratorio for female choir in four cantorie, brasses, percussion and electronics, 1996–1997 Striaz, video-opera for 4 female choirs and electronics, production Mittelfest/Video: Studio Azzurro, 1996 Ballata, opera, 1996–1999, text by Umberto Fiori from The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, commission by Théâtre de la Monnaie di Bruxelles, conductor Kazushi Ono, stage director Achim Freyer, Young Mariner Anders Larsson, Ancient Mariner Marco Beasley, Life in Death Ildiko Komlosi and others Respondit, two madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo transcribed and revised per 5 instruments with an electronic spacing, 1997 Lips, Eyes Bang, for actress/singer, 12 instruments, audio and video in real time, Amsterdam, Nieuw Ensemble, AGON, Studio Azzurro, STEIM, voice Phyllis Blandford, 1998. Memoria II for orchestra, 1998 Wanderer for great orchestra, January 2000 Teatro alla Scala, Milan, conductor Riccardo Muti, Filarmonica della Scala Cobalt, Scarlet. Two Colours of Dawn for large orchestra, 1999–2000 Terre del rimorso, (finished in 2001), commissioned by État francese for soli, coro and orchestra, for the Festival di Strasburgo, 6 October 2001, SWR Symphonie Orchester and Vokalensemble Stuttgart, conductor Péter Eötvös, 2000–2001 Aria Novella, for double quartet, Paris, Ensemble Itinéraire, 2001 Let me Bleed, Requiem for Carlo Giuliani for mixed choir a cappella commissioned by New London Chamber Choir, on texts by Attilio Bertolucci, 2001 New London Chamber Choir, James Wood (World Premiere Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2001-12-02), Swedish Radio Choir, SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart, RSO Stuttgart, Eötvös Buffa opera texts by Stefano Benni, singer and actor Antonio Albanese, 2002 Controcanto, ensemble of 10 to 25 instruments, world premiere in Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Ensemble Ictus, conductor Georges-Elie Octors, 2003 Cello concerto "Rest" Quartetto d'archi di Torino, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, Pierre Boulez, Roberto Abbado Gesualdo Considered as a Murderer, opera, libretto by Vittorio Sermonti, 2004 Quarto Quartetto I voli di Niccolò, string quartet, commission by Paganiniana 2004, Genoa, to Cesare Mazzonis, Arditti Quartet, 2004 Kubrick's Bone, for cimbalom and ensemble, 2005 Accordo reed quintet, Calefax, 2005 Body Electric, for violino, guitar rig and double ensemble, Amsterdam, Muziekgebouw, Orkest de Volharding and Doelen Ensemble, conductor Jussi Jaatinen, soloist Irvine Arditti, 2006 Sea Shell for great chorus, on a text by Alceo (translated by Salvatore Quasimodo). Swedish Radio Choir, Stockholm, 2006 Da capo II, for 8 instruments, Settimane Musicali di Stresa, Ensemble Bit20, conductor J. Stockhammer, 2007 Animus II, for viola and live electronics, Paris, Ircam Espace de projection, Festival Agora, soloist Garth Knox, commission by Françoise and Jean-Philippe, 2007 Strade parallele, for 6 instruments, electronics and video on a text by Norberto Bobbio, Rome, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Ensemble Alter Ego, 2007 Hard Pace; for trumpet and orchestra, Rome, Auditorium, Orchestra of Santa Cecilia Academy, soloist Håkan Hardenberger, conductor Antonio Pappano, 2007 Fresco, for five moving bands, 2007 Unexpected End of Formula, for cello, ensemble and electronics, Köln, WDR FunkHaus, musikFabrik conductor Christian Eggen, soloist Dirk Wietheger, ZKM live-elektronik, 2008 Animus III, for tuba and live electronics, Köln, WDR FunkHaus, soloist Melvyn Poore, ZKM Live-Elektronik, 2008 Sirènes, for mixed choir in five groups, orchestra and electronics, commissioned by Ircam-Centre Pompidou, 2009 Time, Real and Imaginary, Commande d'État francese for mezzo-soprano and four instruments on a text by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 2009 Attraverso, for soprano and ensemble, Monteverdi celebrations, commissioned by Music Across Festival of Lombardy and the Teatro Ponchielli of Cremona, 2009 Jeu de Musica, for ensemble, Strasbourg, Festival Musica, 2010 Quartett, opera, libretto written in English by the composer, from the pièce by Heiner Müller, commission by Teatro alla Scala, stage direction by La Fura dels Baus, conductor Susanna Mälkki, 2011 Terra, opera-oratorio, libretto by Valeria Parrella, opening of the celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the Italian Republic, Naples, Teatro San Carlo, stage director Jean Kalman, conductor Jonathan Webb, 2011 Herzstück, based on a text by Heiner Müller, commission by Neue Vocalsolisten for the Eclat Festival, 2012 Atopia, oratorio based on a text by Piero della Francesca and Calderón della Barca, Madrid, 2012 Piano Concerto, for pianoforte and orchestra, with Nic Hodges, Oporto 2013 Duende, The Dark Notes, with Leila Josefowicz, coproduction of Swedish Radio, RAI, BBC Proms, 2014 Dentro non ha tempo, for large orchestra, in memoriam Luciana Pestalozza, commission by Teatro alla Scala, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, 2014 Vertical Invader, concerto grosso for reed quintet and orchestra, Calefax Reed Quintet, Radio Filharmonisch Orkest and Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Radio Filharmonisch Orkest conducted by Osmo Vänskä, 2015. Bread, Water and Salt, Orchestra and Chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, conductor Antonio Pappano, soprano Pumeza Matshikiza Corpo Elettrico, for violin and orchestra, Porto, 2021