FS and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia come together for Tempo Binario - a musical journey from Palermo to Salerno aboard the FS Foundation’s historic trains
From 15 to 17 July, performances by the Orchestra professors of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia shall be held in the stations of Palermo, Taormina, Reggio Calabria Lido, Lamezia Terme and Salerno
Rome, 13 July 2022
Five soloists along three journeys on two historic convoys. These are the numbers of Tempo Binario, the project by Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia that, starting tomorrow on Friday 15 July and running until Sunday 17 July, will bring classical music to stations in southern Italy, from Palermo to Salerno.
The wind quintet, composed of the first parts of the Orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome (with Adriana Ferreira on flute, Francesco Di Rosa on oboe, Guglielmo Pellarin on horn, Alessandro Carbonare on clarinet and Francesco Bossone on bassoon) will present brief performances lasting approximately 15 minutes in the stations of Palermo, Taormina, Lamezia Terme and Salerno, along with institutional concerts of approximately 45 minutes in Messina, aboard the Ship Iginia and, in Reggio Calabria, on the Falcomatà seafront at the Lido station.
The five musicians will perform music by Franz Joseph Haydn (Divertimento Hob. II:46), the Trois Pièces Brèves by French composer Jacques Ibert of great melodic elegance and transparency, the Potpourri Fantastico by Giulio Briccialdi on the most celebrated themes from the Barber of Seville by Rossini and the suite for wind instruments from the opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin. Friday, 15 July also marks the opening leg of the tour of the Accademia’s Orchestra conducted by Myung-Whun Chung, set to perform at the Teatro Greco in Taormina, at the Sferisterio in Macerata on 21 July and at Villa Rufolo in Ravello on 23 July.
The initiative, organised by the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane Group, a founding partner of the Accademia, involves the musicians travelling aboard two historic FS Foundation trains – in Sicily on a convoy comprised of newly-restored Grand Comfort coaches and in Calabria and Campania on the Arlecchino, the legendary and elegant electric train from the 1960s that will make its début on the tracks south of Naples.
The entire event, the journey of the historical trains and the performances of the orchestra professors in some Sicilian, Calabrian and Campania stations is sure to have a strong symbolic meaning. Conceived by Ferrovie dello Stato, together with the FS Foundation that has restored and returned to the rails some glorious trains of the past, the initiative reaches the three southern regions in which some of the most significant investments effectuated by the FS Group companies are concentrated, as part of the PNRR (Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan) and the 2022–2031 Business Plan.
Tempo Binario is thus also an opportunity to talk about current and future projects carried out in southern Italy by the FS Group, through the Infrastructure Hub, with the objective of reducing the current gap with other regions and improving Italy’s social and territorial cohesion. What’s more, it confirms the Group’s commitment to maintaining a constant rapport and dialogue with locals, both by keeping everyone up-to-date on current activities and by creating new opportunities for discussion, as in this case, in a musical setting of high cultural value.
With the launch of the 2022–2031 Business Plan, the FS Group is setting itself up as the protagonist of a new era of revitalisation of the country’s mobility infrastructure, with a view to integrating various modes of transport under the banner of sustainability. In order to make the network ever greener and more efficient, Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane has planned more than 190 billion euro in investments over the next ten years, 60% of which will be in Central and Southern Italy.
