Nuovo Quintetto
Boccherini

The origins

The Nuovo Quintetto Boccherini takes its inspiration from the work of the Quintetto Boccherini, the Italian ensemble conceived by Pina Carmirelli in 1949.

The great composer from Lucca, Luigi Boccherini, entered Pina Carmirelli’s life almost by chance.

In 1947, called upon for a long tour of France to replace the first violin of an ensemble that included a harp, Pina Carmirelli (whose idea was to present only Italian music) came across Boccherini’s Quintet with Guitar, containing the celebrated Fandango, which was entirely unknown at the time. The tour, with the piece she had adapted from guitar to harp, was an extraordinary success precisely because of the freshness and originality of the new work she presented.

Thus, at the end of the tour, while browsing old volumes with her husband Arturo Bonucci in an antiquarian bookshop on Place de la Madeleine in Paris, Carmirelli came upon the Collection des Quintetti de Boccherini pour deux violons, alto et deux violoncelles.

This was an edition in separate parts of 62 quintets with two cellos, published by the Parisian house Janet & Cotelle. This chance discovery led to the extraordinary rediscovery of a chamber genre that may be regarded as experimental for the late eighteenth century: Boccherini explored it in more than 150 quintets composed at the court of the Infante Luis de Borbón in Arenas de San Pedro (Ávila), about a hundred kilometres from Madrid.

These works would very probably still be shrouded in oblivion had it not been for the interest of these great musicians!

With the help of the Italian Embassy, Carmirelli managed to bring this precious material to Italy. There followed what she described as “…the best days of my life”: immersed in feverish readings of the newly discovered “jewels” with her husband Bonucci. To hear the effect of the missing parts, they used a tape recorder, spending unforgettable nights in this way. The celebrated violinist soon realised the artistic value of these rediscovered treasures and began her work of studying and sharing Luigi Boccherini’s distinctive chamber music for quintet with two cellos.

The founding of the Quintetto Boccherini, originally made up of Pina Carmirelli, Dino Asciolla, Renzo Sabatini, Arturo Bonucci and Nerio Brunelli, opened a fruitful era of rediscovery and presentation to Italian and international audiences of the particular musical value of this ensemble as Boccherini imagined it. Here, the texture does not reveal generic five-part writing, with four parts rudimentarily subordinate to the principal one, but invents a conversation that gives each instrument its own expressive individuality, harmoniously coordinated within the whole.

“An elegant conversation, full of courtesy, grace, tenderness and eighteenth-century humanitas” (M. Mangani), with no counterpart among the composers of the time. Over the years, Montserrat Cervera, Guido Mozzato, Arrigo Pelliccia, Claudio Buccarella, Marco Scano, Pietro Stella, Luigi Sagrati and Marco Fiorini succeeded the original members. It is in continuity with the last formation that Marco Fiorini, Pietro Bosna, Biancamaria Rapaccini, Elisa Ardinghi and Alessandra Montani have taken on the pleasant task of continuing the monumental work of dissemination begun by the Quintetto Boccherini.