By Marialuisa Veneziano
Jesi, 17 January 2026
There is a strange magic that inhabits certain theatres: it is not only in the velvets of the armchairs or in the chandeliers that seem small domestic constellations, but in the air itself, that retains the memory of the sounds as an ancient breath. The Pergolesi Spontini Theatre of Jesi, this evening, seemed to vibrate before the first gesture was traced in the air. A subtle, electrical vibration, as if time had decided to listen.
The protagonist of the evening was Alessio Allegrini, the first horn of the Orchestra of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, here in the dual role – always fascinating and risky – of soloist and conductor of the FORM, Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana. A double identity that is not simple sum of roles, but a real exercise of musical thought: breathing as an instrument and, at the same time, breathing as a collective organism. It is a form of inner polyphony. Allegrini the practice with natural lightness, as if the directory gesture and the mouth were two dialects of the same mother tongue.
The program opened with an absolute first performance: the Symphony by Andrea Strappa, composed in 2025 on commission of the FORM, Orchestra Filarmonica Marchigiana. Strappa – Italian composer of the new generation, attentive to the timbre research and the dramaturgy of sound, but far from every sterile vanguard – works on a writing that does not fear the memory of tradition, while deforming it, ironing it, questioning it as a living matter. His Symphony is not a static monument, but an organism that grows, twists, reconfigures.
The formal system suggests a continuous tension between density and rarefaction: orchestral masses that thicken as clouds charged with electricity and sudden openings where the sound becomes fragile, almost transparent. The orchestration is very fine: the wood doughs dialogue with a percussiveness never shouted, while the arches, often called to work on micro-dynamics and on internal tensions to the stamp, build a nervous, restless, deeply contemporary plot. It is not about "effects", but of a poetic detail: the sound as a physical event, as a phenomenon born, vibrates, is consumed. The FORM is confirmed once again not as a simple executive body, but as an authentic community of musical thought. The compactness of the arches, the timbre ductility of the winds, the breathed precision of the dynamics tell an ensemble capable of listening from the inside, to react as a unique and sensitive body. In an evening that crossed languages and centuries, FORM demonstrated a rare interpretative elasticity: contemporary without rigidity, romantic without rhetoric, rigorous without coldness. It is in this quality of mutual listening that the maturity of an orchestra is measured: not in the volume of sound, but in the depth of shared musical consciousness.
The execution of the FORM, led by Allegrini with an essential but very lucid gesture, clearly returned this mobile architecture. It struck the precision of the transitions, the ability to hold together the fractures of the speech without flattening them, letting the music breathe in its own contradictions. In this sense, the direction did not impose an interpretation, but created the conditions for the score to be revealed. An act of trust in music, which is always an act of courage.
The emotional heart of the evening lit with Concerto No. 1 for horn and orchestra by Richard Strauss. Here Allegrini has fully worn the voice of the soloist, and his horn has become tale, landscape, memory. Strauss writes this very young concert, and yet there is already that luminous nostalgia that will be the figure of all its poetics: a nostalgia that does not look back with regret, but with wonder.
The interpretation of Allegrini was a small miracle of control and poetry. The sound, chiseled in harmonics with almost vocal purity, has spread in very planes capable of suspending time. The horn did not impose its presence: whispered, suggested, caressed the acoustic space as a bright light at sunset. In those subtle planes, breath became music and music became breath. The phrasing, elegant and natural, avoided any virtuosity to favour an internal, intimate singing, which spoke directly to the sensitivity of the listener. It was the dream that takes form of sound, without the need for words.
The conclusion entrusted to the Symphony no. 3 "Scozzese" by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy brought the audience back in a romantic horizon made of interior landscapes and natural visions. Mendelssohn does not describe Scotland: he evokes it. The moults, the ruins, the wind that passes through the promontory become moods, motions of the soul translated into musical energy. The symphony is a continuous journey, without real cracks, as a long walk in which the landscape changes slowly but incessantly.
Allegrini chose a fluid, never oleographic reading, able to maintain narrative tension even in the most liric moments. The bows sang with controlled softness, the breaths drew atmospheric colors, and the set returned that typically mendelssohnian blend of formal clarity and poetic imagination. There was no rhetoric, but movement; no emphasis, but light.
This evening left a rare feeling: that of having witnessed not a simple concert, but a deep dialogue between thought, gesture and sound. Alessio Allegrini emerges as a complete musician, able to live music from within, with analytical intelligence and with an almost artisanal sensibility for the timbre detail. Directing and playing are not for him two separate functions, but two modes of a single cognitive act: understanding the sound while creating it, listening to the world while organizing it.
Music, when authentic, reminds us that we are temporal creatures, made of vibrations, expectations, resonances. Tonight, in Jesi, time had a kind face. And the sound, for a few moments, has been able to tell us something essential about what we are: listeners on the way, pilgrims of a beauty that you never possess, but that every now and then – like a falling star – it crosses and illuminates us.
Marialuisa Veneziano
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