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Sculpting Time: Ivan Fedele’s Second Piano Concerto Premiered in Bari

Aug. 24, 2025

On May 28, Ivan Fedele’s Secondo Concerto per Pianoforte e Orchestra was premiered by Filippo Gorini and the Orchestra Sinfonica del Teatro Petruzzelli di Bari (Italy) under the baton of Pierre-André Valade. This new concerto, commissioned by Teatro Petruzzelli, represents the composer’s most recent contribution to a long-standing engagement with his instrument of choice.

With this Second Concerto, Fedele refines and extends an approach that is both formal and philosophical in nature, what he describes as his way of “sculpting time.”

Deeply attuned to how music is perceived, Fedele shapes musical time into clearly defined trajectories that remain perceptible even within highly diverse and imaginative contexts. This is achieved through a “generative” compositional grammar that emphasises how sound material is experienced as it unfolds. His aesthetic sensibility is grounded in a meticulous exploration of timbre, informed by more than three decades of working with live electronics.

The work is structured in four continuous movements, each flowing naturally into the next without any formal pauses. A contrast in character is established between them: the first and third movements lean towards introspection and lyricism, while the second and fourth stand out for their brilliance and dynamic energy.

In the first and third movements, the piano writing centers on melodic lines built from just three intervallic types. This deliberate constraint not only defines the harmonic landscape but also influences the timbral quality of the music, giving rise to a sound world that feels suspended, almost spellbound.

By contrast, the second and fourth movements are grounded in a different aspect of Fedele’s compositional language – his use of a restricted vocabulary of instrumental gestures, such as chords, scales, arpeggios, and repeated figures. From this limited palette, a wide variety of musical forms and processes emerge, much in the way that diverse biological structures stem from a shared genetic code.

Rather than adhering to the traditional dialectical model, where soloist and orchestra are cast in a relationship of contrast or opposition, the concerto reimagines their interaction.

Here, the orchestra serves as a resonant environment, responding to the piano by amplifying its textures, echoing its harmonies, or refracting its material in unexpected ways.

This dialogue avoids mere imitation: only the “chordal” material of the piano occasionally reappears in the orchestral fabric, and even then, more as a delayed resonance or passing allusion than as a mirrored statement.

Ivan Fedele’s catalogue is published by SZ Sugar, which also recently released the album Con figura, featuring Fedele's works for piano and electronics.

Listen to Ivan Fedele's Due Notturni con Figura (2007) for piano and live electronics:


Due Notturni con Figura/Ivan Fedele/Maria Grazia Bellocchio, piano

To learn more about Ivan Fedele, visit szsugar.it.

Ivan Fedele
Secondo concerto per pianoforte (2025)
for piano and orchestra
30'

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