The Italian Embassy in Amman organized two concerts for the Quartetto di Cremona, an Italian group of four founded in the year 2000 and composed of Cristiano Gualco (violin), Paolo Andreoli (violin), Simone Gramaglia (viola), and Giovanni Scaglione (cello). The first concert was on the 18th in Zara Expo while the second was held on the 19th in Mount Nebo.

While I only managed to be present at the first concert, on the 18th, I am positive that the setting at Mount Nebo was spectacular as well. The music performed by the Quartetto di Cremona on the 18th included pieces by Mozart, Verdi, Vacchi, Boccherini and Puccini. Now you may enjoy listening to classical music off records or CDs, but being in the presence of this intense of an emotional and artistic state is truly unmatched.

The performance of the Quartetto di Cremona left nobody in doubt of the group’s exquisite talent. I have personally been brought to tears and then elevated to a surreal realm of pleasure during the concert, and I enjoyed every second beyond description. I cannot but thank the Italian Embassy for organizing the two concerts and for inviting me, and I thank the Quartetto di Cremona for sharing their talent and their spell-binding music with a Jordanian audience.

I truly hope that the Italian Embassy would bring more Italian musicians to town, and I hope more and more functions are organized to promote the Italian language and culture. However, I am not entirely sure of the type of audience in the first concert. The people present seemed to be embassy officials, but one can never be too sure of that, now can one?

During the concert, I met an old friend of mine whose name you ought to remember quite well. Ilyas Dorzi is a gifted pianist and composer that will soon organize a concert of his own. I will be announcing the concert once the date is official, but this is one person that will have people fighting over his autograph in no time, watch out, Amman!

Now feast your eyes on images taken from the concerto on the 18th:

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 at 6:35 pm and is filed under Italiano, Picturesque. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.