Leonardo Ramadori & Simone Frondini, Franco Buitoni Award recipients 2025
We come from Umbria, a wonderful place of beautiful landscapes, historic towns and monuments, and a rich cultural heritage, but with a small residential population of about 800,000 inhabitants, like that of a large city. At the beginning of our musical careers as instrumentalists we toured internationally as well as throughout Italy – and we realized that our wonderful region was rather devoid of institutional musical activities (symphony orchestras, opera houses etc), with the exception of the prestigious ‘Amici della Musica di Perugia’ and the great summer festivals that are still hosted in the beautiful cities of Umbria (‘Sagra Musicale Umbra’, ‘Festival dei Due Mondi’, ‘Festival delle Nazioni’). When we first met, we discovered that we both see music from the same perspective and that we both wanted to help as many people as possible to experience the great masterpieces of music by breaking down the barriers that have grown up over the years between art music and the general public.
In our view, these important events have always been reserved for a cultural elite, for the few enlightened families who, in educating their children, have opened their eyes and ears to music in addition to the traditional subjects taught in school. In fact, in Italian schools and with a few exceptions, music has no place among the curricular subjects taught; so the majority of students have no opportunity to discover the masterpieces of classical music or even contemporary cultured music. We also feel that the ’invasion’ of consumer music that saturates every moment of contemporary life is another obstacle to potential new listeners learning to appreciate classical music.
The Wizard of Oz with Musica per Crescere
This combination of factors has driven us, since 1994, to think of ways to reveal the hidden treasures of the music we love to audiences beyond those we meet in a few concert halls. We began with a small series of concerts by kids for kids. It was called The Joy of Music like the title of the hugely popular series made by Leonard Bernstein in the last century. Our mission was to inspire and surprise members of the public who were unfamiliar with classical music and, as a result, begin the process of popularising classical music.
Our idea was to always present simple programmes with a clear idea of the type of audience we were addressing. The classical music environment often takes on a lofty, somewhat self-referential tone; that may well demonstrate the great knowledge that one has of the subject, but doesn’t take into account the distance that exists nowadays between the majority of the audience and classical music itself. Over the years we have been amazed at how people who had never attended a chamber music concert left the concert hall expressing a sincere and contagious enthusiasm.
Musica per Crescere
In 2002, encouraged by this first experience and bringing on board other acquaintances in the world of classical music, we turned to the largest institution here in Umbria, “Amici della Musica di Perugia” which within a few months would merge with the “Sagra Musicale Umbra” to form the “Fondazione Perugia Musica Classica onlus” which has since become our home. We introduced ourselves to the President, Franco Buitoni and the Artistic Director, Andrew Strarling with proposals for informative concerts aimed at school audiences. We proposed a form of “musical literacy” to be offered initially to schools of all levels in the city of Perugia. It was a mini-season of concerts entitled Who’s afraid of Classical Music?! In four meetings of about an hour each, the main instrumental families of the symphony orchestra were presented: string quartet, wind quintet, brass quintet, percussion quartet.
Each of these groups focused on introducing one of the centuries of the history of music from 1600 to the present day. This first small season allowed participants to meet, albeit in an extremely synthetic way, the main exponents of art music from all centuries (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky and many others). And in this way, they also heard almost all the instruments of the symphony orchestra with the special characteristics that most suited them to the music of each century. The topics were discussed by the musicians themselves between the playing of each piece, but what we believe was fundamental for the success of the shows was the point of view from which we explained the topics: we always placed ourselves on the side of the audience, we identified with an 8-year-old child who was brought to the theatre who had no idea what a violin or an oboe was. Thinking about how to address them, we developed over time a language that could break down the barrier between the “easy” music that is heard on the radio every day and the important music that we proposed. We noticed right from the start that the kids who arrived bored at the theatre at the beginning of the concert left with happy and amused faces, perhaps taking the brochure for the next concerts.
Musica per Crescere with batons!
Since then, the same spirit as at the outset, we have created over 40 productions dedicated to schools. In parallel with those activities, we have carried out concert and workshop projects with many different social groups of varying ages: children, teenagers, adults, the elderly, the disabled, the sick, the imprisoned. In each of these activities, the principles that have moved us have always been the same: dissemination, sharing, harmony, valorization of each individual talent, mutual listening. In our uncertain times, a society that knows how to listen, that learns to know and enjoy the great treasures of the past and present, that knows how to distinguish between quality music and consumer music, that knows how to relate to each other with patience and willingness helps us improve our daily lives in the name of beauty and goodness.