catalogue: TEN STRINGS THEORY
Andrea Cortesi
Soloist, chamber muscian, artistic director, he studied with Béla Csanyi, Corrado Romano and Massimo Quarta.
Andrea Cortesi, stands out for his multifaceted musical personality and for his wide and sometimes unconventional repertoire, as well as for his committed curiosity and propensity towards the works of the most interesting composers of the last generations of which he has made numerous national and world premieres.
He is strongly interested in musical collaborations and in promoting projects moving in many different musical directions, he founded the Orchestra da Camera Millennium, the Quartetto Mosaico,Ensemble Mosaico and Collegium Tiberinum, string groups with a repertoire from Bach to nowadays.
His work put him in contact or in collaboration with many contemporary composers such as Leo Brower, Graham Fitkin, Philip Glass, Dave Heath, Ennio Morricone, Michael Nyman, Giovanni Sollima, Georgs Pelecis, Erkki-Sven Tuur, Luis Bacalov, Giya Kancheli.
He has performed in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Malta, Georgia, Holland, USA, Japan.
Andrea Cortesi performs various composers and periods, moving among different musical identities with the aim to fill the gap between the necessities of the formal language, the technical challenges of each composition, and the final reason of every performance: convey the true spirit of each work.
He moves with ease between Bach, Schnittke, Schubert, Piazzolla, Vivaldi, Silvestrov, Schumann, Part and many more, trying to mark affinities and contrasts, even exploring new music and discovering the rarities of the present time.
He plays with pianist Marco Venturi, forming a duo with him and giving life to a challenging musical journey. They recorded the project entitled ‘LONTANISSIMO’, for the label Max Research, with pieces by Arvo Pärt, Valentin Silvestrov and Astor Piazzolla.
Again for Max Research, the second recording project in duo with Marco Venturi is entitled ‘LA MACCHINA DEL TEMPO’ (‘The Time Machine’), an album that brings toghether Alfred Schnittke and Ludwig Van Beethoven, and that has been defined by Gidon Kremer, one of the greatest violinists alive, as ‘an impressive project’
The first two CDs with Marco Venturi duo have also pioneered the international debut album with the Dutch label BRILLIANT CLASSICS, with a CD containing works by Philip Glass, Giya Kancheli,Erkki-Sven Tüür.
In 2014 he recorded the second cd for Brilliant Classics in duo with Marco Venturi, with the complete Sonatas for Violin and Piano by Robert Schumann (first italian recording of Schumann Third Sonata)
The recordings of the compositions by Tüür, Silvestrov, Kancheli and Glass appearing in the albums published by the duo Cortesi – Venturi occupy a prominent place in the world discography.
He collaborated with many groups or orchestras, often as principal first violin, and in the context of these collaborations he played with international soloists and conductors as Ennio Morricone, Yo-Yo Ma, Riccardo Muti, Julian Rachlin, Julian Kovatchev, Patrick Furnellier, Janos Furst, Salvatotre Accardo, Massimo Quarta, Alirio Diaz, Dulce Pontes, Sonig Tchakerian, Katia Ricciarelli, Steven Mercurio, Roberto Molinelli, Fratelli Mancuso, Alessandro Carbonare, Gilda Buttà, Edoardo Catemario, Raphael Wallfisch, Roberto Fabbriciani, Bruno Canino, Yuri Zhislin, Natalia Lomeiko, Enrico Bronzi, Mika Vayrynen, Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio, Maurizio Baglini, Luigi Piovano, Federico Mondelci, Emanuele Segre, Ramin Bahrami, Eva Bindere, GliarchiEnsemble, Elizabeth Wallfisch, Giorgi Zagareli, Sergey Smbatyan.
Andrea Cortesi is a versatile musician, crossing the borders into all genres, for concerts, tours, Tv shows, and recordings for both classical and contemporary music, collaborating with jazz, pop and Rock artists such as Fabrizio Bosso, Dianne Reeves, Caetano Veloso, Lionel Richie, Joe Cocker, Dionne Warwick, Liza Minnelli, Laura Pausini, Renzo Arbore, Cristina Zavalloni, Mario Biondi, Andrea Bocelli, Nile Rodgers and the Chic, Giorgio Moroder.
He collaborated with Sting, as first solo violinist, during two italian dates of his Symphonicity Tour.
In 2012 he made ’Violons Vibrez!’ for the publishing house SONZOGNO, a version for two solo violins and strings taken from the original for two cellos ‘Violoncelles, Vibrez!’ by Giovanni Sollima, a version he played as world premiere for Amici della Musica di Palermo in 2016 with latvian violinist Eva Bindere and GliarchiEnsemble.
He ran an intense artistic collaboration with great Georgian composer Giya Kancheli, whose Andrea Cortesi is considered one of the major interpreter in the world.
The connection Kancheli-Cortesi started in 2014 with the recording of the piece ‘Time…and Again’ for violin and piano, then, in 2016, through the Brilliant Classics album presenting the world premiere recording of the MINIATURES for violin and piano. In 2017, invited in Tbilisi by the composer, he made the world premiere of the cycle for violin and strings called LETTERS TO FRIENDS. He recently made also the Malta national premiere his work CHIAROSCURO for violin and orchestra, with conductor Sergey Smbatian and Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, who had public success and enthusisastic reviews.
In 2019 will be issued a CD with the world premiere recording of all the cycle ‘Letters to Friends’, which took place in Tbilisi, with Andrea Cortesi and Georgian Strings.
In 2018 he started as artistic director a new successful concert season in Todi (Umbria, Italy) called PRIMAVERA MUSICALE DI TODI, with the idea to put italian musicians in connection with musicians from all over the world, sharing tradition masterpieces and music of present time.
Francesco Teopini
Highly commended throughout the years by classical guitar personalities such as David Russell and Angelo Gilardino, Francesco Teopini is a guitarist, musicologist, music educator and music examiner currently based in Hong Kong. As a concert artist, Francesco has performed in international venues and music festivals for over two decades. His performances and recordings have been broadcast by RAI, TVB, RTHK, Radio France, NPO, and RBB; he has recently debuted as a soloist with the Hong Kong Philharmonic under baton of Lorenzo Iosco. His enthusiasm for contemporary music has led him to collaborate with the Manson Ensemble, the Danilo Dolci Ensemble, and the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, under the baton of Diego Masson, Tonino Battista, and Manuel Nawri, and to collaborate with Italian composer Giovanni Santini as part of the ensemble of his Virtual Reality opera, Essere.
Francesco’s first international release with Brilliant Classics, J. S. Bach: Sonatas and Partitas BWV 1001–1006 (2016), has been receiving enthusiastic praises from audiences and critics alike as “[an] intense and felt interpretation…[with a sound] endowed with warmth and attack but also power” (Diapason, France) and “a recording that achieves a beautiful sound and a dignified interpretation” (Melόmano Digital, Spain). In July 2022, Francesco’s latest recording titled Mozart on Guitar: Transcriptions and Adaptations was released for the Da Vinci Classics label, which in March 2023 received two Silver Medals at the Global Music Awards for the categories “New Release” and “Creativity/Originality”.
Francesco obtained his Diploma in Classical Guitar from the “G. B. Martini” Conservatory in Bologna (Italy) under the guidance of Michele Corbu, and the Postgraduate Diploma in Guitar Performance with Distinction from the Royal Academy of Music (London), where he studied with Timothy Walker, Michael Lewin and John Mills. During his two years at RAM, he won the Blyth Watson Award and the Foundation Award, as well as the second prize title at the 2007 Julian Bream Prize. As a recipient of the prestigious Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme, recently Francesco has been awarded a PhD in musicology from the Hong Kong Baptist University. During his PhD years, Francesco’s academic research explored Mauro Giuliani’s guitar potpourris called Le Rossiniane using an interdisciplinary approach based on the theory of Transtextuality by French literary theorist Gérard Genette. Francesco’s publication list includes articles in Malaysian Journal of Music and for The International Association for Word and Music Studies.