The Discipline of Lightness

Casa Afternoons invite our neighbors and their families
to enjoy the arts in a relaxed atmosphere

Concert
The Discipline of Lightness
(Berio · Castelnuovo-Tedesco · Schulhoff · Casella · Vaughan Williams)

Ginevra Petrucci, flute
Peter Arfsten, flute
Vlad Hontila, violin
Greg Luce, viola
Oliver Weston, cello
Milad Daniari, double bass
Matthieu Cognet, piano
Oliver Xu, percussion

The Discipline of Lightness asks how music, like language, can become weightless without losing meaning. Inspired by Italo Calvino’s reflections on “lightness” as an art of refinement rather than escape, the program traces a backward journey through the twentieth century, from fragility to form, from impermanence to continuity. Marking the centenary of Luciano Berio (1925–2003), the program opens with his Musica Leggera (1974), a rare moment of lucid stillness that departs from his quintessential avant-garde language. In place of the dense modernism for which he is known, this piece sounds almost archaic in its simplicity. Between the wars, both Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Erwin Schulhoff navigated the complexities of being Jewish composers in a divided Europe. Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Divertimento for Two Flutes (1920) reflects the neoclassical clarity and wit of interwar Italy; he would later flee Fascism and settle in Hollywood, where he became one of cinema’s great musical storytellers. Schulhoff’s Concertino (1925) captures the energy and irony of the Weimar years, fusing jazz rhythm with folkloric lyricism—music of exuberance and defiance by a composer who would perish in a concentration camp. Alfredo Casella’s Barcarola et Scherzo (1903) glows with youthful vitality and French-inflected elegance, revealing the early influence of Debussy and the emerging voice of Italian modernism. Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Quintet in C minor (1903) closes the program with expansive lyricism and moral depth, poised between Brahmsian warmth and the English pastoral language that would soon define him. Written before the Great War, it evokes a world still whole—a landscape of innocence and conviction soon to be fractured by history. In its serene counterpoint and luminous harmonies, the work restores the sense of gravity that Berio’s ethereal opening seems to let go, completing the program’s meditation on how beauty endures through transformation. Moving in reverse through time, The Discipline of Lightness reveals a century’s search for equilibrium—the art of finding gravity within grace, and grace within gravity.

Program:

Luciano Berio (1925-2003)
Musica Leggera (1974)
for flute, viola, cello, and tambourine

Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco (1895-1968)
Divertimento (1943)
for two flutes

Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942)
Concertino (1925)
for flute, viola, and bass

Alfredo Casella (1883-1847)
Barcarola et Scherzo Op.4 (1903)
for flute and piano

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)
Quintet in C minor (1903)
for violin, viola, cello, double bass, and piano