Quirinale, the first concert with the “instruments of the sea” performed with violins built with the wood of migrant boats

ROME – The concert originates from Metamorphosis Project of the House of the Spirit and the Arts which involved a group of prisoners in the activities of the Violin Making and Carpentry Laboratory of the Milan-Opera prison house, the largest of the 208 Italian prisons, which houses about 1,400 prisoners, of which 1,300 with definitive sentences, and has transformed the wood from the boats on which migrant people traveled into musical instruments. The first stage of the project was the construction of a “Violin of the Sea” that Carlo Maria Parazzoli, first violin of the Orchestra of the National Academy of S. Cecilia, played on February 4, 2022 in the Vatican, in the presence of Pope Francis.

Music with “the violins of the sea”. Under the guidance of the master luthier Enrico Allorto, the project subsequently developed into that of a string quartet and has in view the formation of a wider “sea ​​orchestra” as other tools are developed. The initiative, conceived by Arnoldo Mosca Mondadori, is precisely the one that transforms wood itself from a vehicle of tragic situations to an instrument of hope. The music performed with these instruments becomes, in turn, the bearer of the testimony of the wood, to which it gives voice through sound and beauty. The Metamorphosis Projectwas awarded the Medal of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, on the occasion of the 79th Venice Film Festival, during which a short film was screened that tells its story.

Mozart’s Suite in Six Pieces. The “sea” instruments thus created are played together for the first time and become a string quartet thanks to the Henao Quartetwhich on the occasion of the concert at the Quirinale has chosen a great classic, such as the Quartet KV 387 by Mozart, Sonnets et rondeaux by Giovanni Sollima, a suite in six short movements that combine Mediterranean and Middle Eastern roots with Nordic music modalities, especially Celtic , and Da Pacem Domine, a prayer by the Estonian composer Arvo Part written for the victims of the attack on the Atocha train station in Madrid, in 2004, and conceived for four solo voices, but like other music by Part also intended for other ensembles, in this case first of all the string quartet.

Some news about the Henao Quartet. Born in 2014 within the Orchestra of the National Academy of S. Cecilia, it is made up of musicians from different backgrounds, they met in that orchestra and decided to take the opportunity to form a stable quartet formation that has since has received great acclaim from the public and critics. The experience gained together in the orchestra, with the possibility of playing alongside the world’s most important conductors and soloists, is undoubtedly the lever that has allowed them to quickly establish themselves. Together with that experience, however, also the bond of friendship which in their case was cemented concert after concert, in orchestra and in quartet. Their repertoire ranges from classical to romantic and contemporary, with a particular focus on 20th-century Italian literature for string quartet.