Pärt, Ravel
Murray, Stella

Tai Murray, violin

Alessandro Stella, piano

Arvo Pärt (1935)

Fratres

Spiegel im Spiegel

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)

Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2 in G major

40’ | Admission with museum ticket

Tai Murray and Alessandro Stella bring to the stage an artistic dialogue founded on a deep musical understanding, capable of combining the joyful vitality and impeccable precision of the American violinist with the originality and refined interpretative style of the Italian pianist.

Together, they explore a program that moves between contemplative ecstasy and virtuosic brilliance, finding a natural resonance among the allegories of the arts and sciences decorating the Galleris degli Specchi, a seventeenth-century space conceived to celebrate beauty and intellect.

The opening is entrusted to the minimalism of Arvo Pärt. In Fratres and Spiegel im Spiegel, the Estonian composer employs the tintinnabuli technique: a search for essentiality in which the repetition of melodic and harmonic cells creates a spiritual and meditative dimension, almost suspended in time, seemingly reflected endlessly along the gilded walls of the hall.

The atmosphere shifts dramatically with Ravel’s Sonata. The work is built upon the deliberate “incompatibility” between violin and piano: the opening Allegretto contrasts distinct timbral worlds in a play of pastoral references, followed by a Blues movement introducing jazz-inspired syncopations and glissandi. The finale, a Perpetuum mobile in G major, reworks fragments of previous themes into an uninterrupted flow of notes — a virtuosic race that brings the concert to a close with tremendous momentum and energy.

Text by Desirée Blundi