Gloria Campaner, piano
Venetian born pianist Gloria Campaner is regarded by critics and public alike as one of the most interesting young pianists of the Italian new generation. Since her debut on stage at the age of twelve with the Venetian Symphony Orchestra, Gloria has been the first-prize recipient in more than twenty national and international piano competitions. Her rapidly advancing career as a soloist and chamber musician has led her to be a guest of some of the most prestigious festivals all over the world and the press have praised her ‘extremely deep musicality, remarkable fluidity, nuancing and sense of style which put her in the ranks of pianists with exceptional qualities’ (Walter Arlen, Los Angeles Times). Gloria is also becoming increasingly known for her versatility and interest in innovative performance and has collaborated with renowned jazz and contemporary musicians  as well as ballet and modern dancers.

Gloria is a laureate of many competitions including the Paderewski International Piano Competition (Silver Medal, Los Angeles, 2010), in which she also received  special awards for the best Paderewski and Chopin performances. She is also the 1st prize-winner and ‘Prokofiev Special Award’ recipient in the 2009 Ibla Grand Prize after which she made her U.S. and Carnegie Hall débuts in 2010.  In the year of Liszt’s anniversary she was awarded the ‘Prix de Jury, Franz Liszt’ at the XI Concours International de Musique du Maroc, in Casablanca and was recipient of the ‘European Prize for Culture’ by the Cultural Foundation Pro Europa (Freiburg,2011).

In addition, Gloria has received scholarships from the Brahms Foundation in Baden-Baden (2009) and a Fellowship of the  Borletti-Buitoni Trust in 2014.
Gloria earned her Master’s Degree with Bruno Mezzena at the Music Academy in Pescara and has performed in masterclasses with such distinguished musicians as Jerome Rose, Sergio Perticaroli, Pavel Gililov, Lilya Zilberstein, Dmitri Bashkirov, and Boris Petrushansky. Laterally, she focussed her studies on the Russian school under the guidance of Konstantin Bogino, while completing her studies at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe with Prof. Fanny Solter.

Her concerts have often been broadcast by international television and radio stations, such as RAI, Radio Ljubljana, SKY Classica, RTSI and CNN.

Her debut CD of solo piano works by Schumann and Rachmaninov was released by EMI in 2013.  An orchestral debut CD will be released in 2015.

Gloria is a devoted chamber musician and has played with many distinguished names, such as Ivry Gitlis, Ana Chumachenco, Michael Kugel, and Sergei Krylov, Johannes Moser among others and with Quartetto di Cremona,  soloists of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, La Scala Philharmonic and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. In addition, since high school when she was in a rock band, Gloria has sought new horizons resulting in working with exciting collaborative artists from other fields. These have included innovative cross-genre performances with world-renowned jazz pianists Franco D’Andrea, Stefano Bollani and Leszek Możdżer. Furthermore, her affinity for dance performance recently led her to working with Dutch choreographer Joost Vrauenraets and Gotra Ballet in a world première for the new Renzo Piano Auditorium in L’Aquila, Italy.

A video directed by Luca Scarzella and realized with BBTrust support  has been made for this event.

Gloria and Luca Scarzella  collaborated both  on  a video inspired by Debussy compositions  and  the documentary “The Heart of Stone”.

Recent highlights include a second Chinese tour, with performances in the NCPA of Beijing Oriental Arts Centre, Shanghai, recitals in Brazil, chamber music with members of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, a debut with the RSI Orchestra in Lugano and National Symphony RAI Orchestra to be broadcast live on RAI radio and television, and further collaborations with Quartetto di Cremona and Johannes Moser.

She opened the season in Perugia performing Schumann Piano Concerto with National Symphony RAI Orchestra and M° Axelrod conducting; she debuted for Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia chamber season in Rome and performed for La Società dei Concerti in Milan, among the others.

Gloria made her debut with English Chamber Orchestra and M° Muranaka in London; she toured Brazil in recital and with Orchestra as well as  Mexico. Her new dance/music project with Gotra Ballet premiered in Rome at Teatro Olimpico. She toured Japan in recital in December 2015 and with orchestra in 2016; during the same season she toured  China, South Africa, Armenia, Lebanon, Latin America; she has been invited to perform the opening concert at the first music school on Easter Island.

In 2017 she has been invited to Marlboro Festival by Mitsouko Uchida.

New cd project with orchestra for  Warner Classics is  scheduled for Spring 2017.

Gloria also looks forward to new projects in the in the fields of classical/electronic fusion, and in contemporary music where new works are often dedicated to her. Recent premières include new works by Márton Illés and Vittorio Montalti in Paris  and Giovanni Sollima(2016) .

In September 2014, she has been the first classical music DJ for  web caster Casa Bertallot in Milan – playing recordings of great classical music for millions of followers who will be hearing this music for the first time.

In October 2009, Gloria was named 2010-2011 ‘European Ambassador for Culture’ as part of the cultural programme ‘Piano, Reflet de la Culture  Europèenne’.  In 2013 she was offered an artistic residency in Paris at the Italian Embassy and Institute of Culture for whom she was invited to play in the opening concert of the season at the Salle Cortot.

She has performed in the majority of the Steinway Halls around the world, including New York, London and Hamburg.

Gloria Campaner is associated with many of Italy’s most prestigious fashion houses and has gowns provided for her by Giorgio Armani, Antonio Grimaldi, and Roberto Cavalli.

2nd appearance at the Al Bustan Festival

Beatrice Venezi, conductor
Conductor, pianist and composer born in 1990.
Chief conductor of the Orchestra Scarlatti Young, Napoli.

She graduated in Piano in 2010 at the Conservatory of Siena and attended masterclasses of Pianistic Interpretation under M° Swann, M° Libetta, M° Balzani, M° De Maria and M° Lucchesini. She was prizewinner of the 1st Prize in Concorso Nazionale di Interpretazione Pianistica “R. Zucchi” in 2005 and prizewinner in the 4th Concorso Nazionale per Giovani Musicisti “L. Zanuccoli” in 2006.
She studied Composition under M° Gaetano Giani Luporini.

She graduated in Orchestra Conducting under M°Vittorio Parisi at the Conservatory “Giuseppe Verdi” in Milan in 2015 achieving the score of 110/110 cum laude. She went further in her studies under M°Piero Bellugi in Florence, M° Gianluigi Gelmetti at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena and M°John Axelrod, of whom she’s been assistant in 2015 for the production “Candide” by Leonard Bernstein at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

Beatrice started her career as a répétiteur and vocal coach. She made her symphonic début in 2012.
Up to now, she has led the Orchestra I Pomeriggi Musicali di Milano, the Nuova Orchestra Scarlatti, the Orchestra della Magna Grecia, the Dèdalo Ensemble, the Orchestra da Camera Fiorentina, the Orchestra Filarmonica di Lucca, the Orchestra Filarmonica Campana, the Orchestra Sinfonica Alma, the Orchestra Filarmonica di Benevento, the Orchestra Foundation Bulgaria Classic, the Orchestra and Choir of the Theatre Bolshoij of Minsk, the State Youth Orchestra of Armenia.

She collaborated with important festivals such as the New European Festival in Stuttgart, the Festival di Bellagio e del Lago di Como, the Festival Pontino, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. In July 2016 she will make her debut at the Festival Puccini Torre del Lago with “Turandot” by Ferruccio Busoni.

She has a keen interest into contemporary music and is therefore author of the essay “Gaetano Giani Luporini: La Necessità interiore dell’ Arte” (“Gaetano Giani Luporini: The inner Necessity of Art”) published on Rivista Codice 602 in 2009 and author of chapters of the book “Fare musica oggi: difficoltà e gioie” (“Making music nowadays: troubles and joys”) by the musicologist Renzo Cresti, published by Marco Del Bucchia Editore in 2010.
Also as a performer, she specialized into contemporary music and performed several premières of Italian Composers, both as a pianist and as a conductor.

As a composer she’s author of the soundtrack of the short movie – documentary “L’ Arte del Campanellaro” by Daniele Michelini and of a cycle of “Haikus” for voices with texts written by Japanese Masters and by herself.
In 2015 Beatrice has been awarded with the prestigious prize “Premio Donna 8 Marzo – La Musica per la Vita” by ASSAMI – Amici del Conservatorio di Milano.

Since 2015 Beatrice has been chosen for the Audi Innovative Thinking program developed by Audi.

The Al Bustan Festival Orchestra
For the biography of The Al Bustan Festival Orchestra, please refer to the concert of Wednesday, February 15

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 –1827)
Leonore Overture No. 3 Op. 72
Of the four overtures Beethoven wrote for his opera Leonore—later renamed Fidelio—only the one called Leonore no. 3 has gained favor both in the concert hall, where it is much loved, and in the opera house, where it is often played, appropriately, just before the finale. That it is an intruder in the opera house, where it can too easily overshadow all but the greatest performances of Fidelio, is something Beethoven himself could easily have told us. The Leonore Overture no. 3 is as dramatic as any music Beethoven wrote, and that is part of the problem.
Placed before the curtain rises, it overshadows much of what follows. Playing it just before the final scene—a convention never sanctioned by Beethoven, but one loved by many conductors, including Mahler and Toscanini—is problematic because it first delays and then gives away the ending. Despite its number, Leonore no. 3 is Beethoven’s second version of the overture. Although it is more concise and less symphonic than his first effort (the work we call Leonore no. 2), it does not avoid the dilemma of telling us everything about the opera, in music of unforgettable substance and power, before the curtain goes up.
Beethoven ultimately understood the situation well and wrote his fourth and final overture to Fidelio—less powerful music, but better stagecraft. (Leonore no. 1 was written for a production in Prague that never took place; the score was discovered after Beethoven’s death, mistaken for his earliest effort, and assigned no. 1.) In the concert hall, where it has ultimately retired, the Leonore Overture no. 3 is a miracle
of dramatic music, as compelling as any symphonic poem in the literature. The overture tells, or at least distills, the essence of the story.
Beethoven begins in the darkness of the prison cell where Florestan has been sent, unjustly. Florestan remembers brighter days, and the music, ignited by his hope, is filled with fire and action. The distant trumpet call of the tower guard, announcing Florestan’s reprieve, brings silence and then guarded optimism, but the trumpet sounds again, and freedom seems certain. At the news, the flute cannot contain its rapture.
Beethoven then treats us to a full-scale, symphonic, utterly heroic recapitulation.

Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor Op. 37
Despite the attenuated composition process, the Piano Concerto No. 3 displays a strikingly unified vocabulary and taut structure. One might argue that it is the first of his five piano concertos really to sound like the mature Beethoven. The work also reflects an important advance relating to technology. In the final decades of the eighteenth century, manufacturers were beginning to stretch the piano’s range by
incorporating keys beyond the instrument’s standard five-octave range.
Beethoven was not always among the first to make use of these extra notes; doing so, after all, would have limited the practicality of his music for musicians whose pianos were not so equipped. But in his C minor Piano Concerto, he made full use of the new technology, and he asks his soloist to play all the way up to high G. This concerto, in fact, is thought to be the first piano piece ever to call for that particular note, and Beethoven leads his pianist there right at the outset of the solo part, when the first movement’s main theme is announced in double octaves.
By the time he got around to writing out the piano part for his student Ferdinand Ries, in 1804, he was emboldened to push the range further, all the way up to the C that sits above the fifth ledger line above the treble staff. His C minor Concerto therefore stands not only as a great work in its own right, but also as a document relating to the adolescent growing pains of the instrument itself.
Symphony No 3 E flat major “Eroica”
The “Eroica” Symphony represents a turning point not only in Beethoven’s career, but also in the history of music, a stature shared by few other works, such as Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Wagner’s
Tristan and Isolde, and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. The “Eroica” raises fascinating issues: the personal circumstances of its genesis at a crucial juncture in Beethoven’s life; its relationship to the political
events of the day, specifically to Napoleon; and the ways in which audiences of his time first received what many found to be a “horribly long” and “most difficult” piece of music.
It is striking that early listeners and critics, those writing during the initial 10 years or so of the work’s existence, did not talk about the issues most discussed today: the Symphony’s relation to Beethoven’s
life or to Napoleon. They viewed the “Eroica” more as a bizarre but original composition, more sublime than beautiful. Its unprecedented length, technical challenges, and uncompromising aesthetic stance
seemed to aim beyond entertainment; forcing Beethoven’s contemporaries to rethink what a symphony should be and do.