There is corporate culture, and there is culture tout court. There are the rhythms and sounds of the factory, and there are those of great musical compositions. The noisy progressions of machines and the sophisticated harmony of instruments. Apparently distant worlds that can sometimes meet and overlap, exalting and attributing new meaning to one to the other.
Bringing Music into spaces dedicated to work and industry is a true challenge, but Pirelli has already succeeded in doing so twice in recent years, so why not try again?
The set will again be that of the MITO SettembreMusica Festival, a historic concert series that unites two of the most symbolic cities of the great industrial boom that began in the early Twentieth century and continues into the present. In fact, the programme will include an evening dedicated to Beethoven and Schumann hosted at the Pirelli Auditorium at the company's Bicocca Headquarters in Milan. Suggestively titled "Beethoven's Children", the performance will take place on the evening of September 18, starring the Altus Trio. Composed of violinist Klaidi Sahatchi, cellist Sandro Laffranchini and pianist Andrea Rebaudengo, this trio of exceptional musicians joined forces six years ago in search of new expressive paths between Ravel and Shostakovich, Bernstein and Copland, Gershwin and Stravinsky, not forgetting the classic-romantic tradition.
In the concert for MITO, they will interpret the Trio in E flat major op.70 No.2 by Ludwig van Beethoven and the Trio in F major op.80 by Robert Schumann. Compositions in which the three instruments play out an uninhibited dialogue, redefining their roles and surpassing the stringent rules of the Baroque school that preceded Beethoven (this explains the title). It is as if they can talk, rewriting and updating unquestioned beliefs in the worlds of art and business. Founded in 2009, The Pirelli Foundation provides a channel through which this dialogue can continue and grow; however, the collaboration between Pirelli and MITO goes back even further to 2007.
Indeed, the concert of September 18 renews an existing partnership that became a reality with three concerts set in the post-industrial scenario of its industrial park at the Nuovo Polo Industriale Pirelli during 2010, 2011 and 2014. Now, with a concert at the Bicocca, the music of the great nineteenth-century tradition resonates both at the heart of history and of the world of Pirelli in what could almost be seen as a sort of homecoming. Making art in the place of work is not simply a play on words, but encompasses the very meaning of Pirelli's commitment to culture and once again, promoting a common ground between the world of productivity and the world of art through the music of Beethoven and Schumann. A violin, a cello and a piano are the tools and factory machines: instruments of the inexhaustible creativity of man.
