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orchestra la filharmonie dante700
Photo © lafilharmonie
Photo © lafilharmonie

Dante 700 - Final concert and award ceremony

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Music

International competition of symphonic composition

1October 2021 - Final concert and award ceremony of Dante 700
Teatro Politeama Pratese - Prato
Camerata strumentale Città di Prato
La Filharmonie
Nima Keshavarzi conductor

In Dante’s year and on occasion of the 700th anniversary of the poet’s death, the Camerata Strumentale Città di Prato and the Florence Philharmonic Orchestra - la Filharmonie had announced an international competition of symphonic composition.

A prestigious international jury will follow the phases of evaluation, selection and award ceremony of the compositions. 
The three finalist scores will be listened to by the jury in a public performance to declare the winner on 1st October 2021 at Teatro Politeama Pratese, Prato, Tuscany.

The project, open to composers of any nationality and without age limit, aims to encourage and promote creative energies in the field of orchestral composition, focusing on the figure Dante Alighieri and on The Divine Comedy.

The winner of the competition will be awarded a 5000 € prize, and the composition will be published in the Stilnovo series promoted by Edizioni Musicali Curci Milano and CIDIM, Italian National Music Committee.  

CIDIM will also manage the production and international distribution among the network of Italian Cultural Institutions of MAECI of the video recording of the concert in which Camerata Strumentale and La Filharmonie - Florence Philharmonic Orchestra will perform the finalists' compositions.  

"The word «sinfonia» - symphony – entered the Italian language thanks to Dante’s Commedia. It appears in the third Cantica with the verse «the dulcet symphony of Paradise».  
Coming from the whirling linguistic forge of him who “was of the mother tongue a better smith”, that word undertook a glorious path in the history of music, until today. It is this what in the first place moved two orchestras from Tuscany, Camerata Strumentale Città di Prato and La Filharmonie, to connect in an act of gratitude towards Dante, on the 700th anniversary of his death.  
Guiding musicians to draw inspiration from the Divina Commedia with an international Competition of symphonic composition seemed an appropriate idea to the two institutions. They are willing to celebrate the «great poet», thanking him for shaping the word in which the reason of their service to music and to the community was, prophetically, embedded.  
Dante’s Commedia is also a music poem, a wonderful score of sounds, of polyphonies, of counterpoints. Confronting that poetry and facing the challenge of translating it into other sounds, into other imaginations born from the culture of the present can do no other thing than «make my veins and pulses tremble».  
And yet, art loves big challenges, and the dialogue with «mighty spirits» has always been a multiplier for beauty, depth, and invention." Alberto Batisti