Raphael Fusco: Press

The Catalan Poetic Machine Whose Music Resounds in NY (translated from original Spanish)

Creative Affinities cross the ocean and the verses of a Catalan poet nourish the sonorous passages of a young emerging composer from New York. Raphael Fusco converts into a musical work the collection "Musica Maquina" of Lluis Julia.

Raised between the new and old worlds, from the Mannes College of Music to the Konservatorium of Vienna the italian american Raphael Fusco has accumulated an impressive number of international awards that, at only 25 years old, distinguishes him as one of the most outstanding of emerging composers. He has presented Tres Poemas de Lluis Julia in NY, Boston, and Philadelphia. "I find it a shame that the work has never been performed in Catalunya for a public whose mother language is Catalan," he confessed. "But we may be able to change that soon," says Julia "with concerts in Sant Cugat del Valles and in the Castle of Gelida."

Who Needs Carnegie Hall? Early Music in a Greenwich Village Club

By JAMES R. OESTREICH
Published: October 2, 2009

What is early music? Literally, it is a repertory, comprising music from — take your pick — the 18th century and before? The 19th and before? By extension, the early-music movement came to include a philosophy of performance that flourished in the 20th century as musicians increasingly tried to replicate the sounds and styles of particular eras.

Now, at least in New York, early music has also become a scene. The two-year-old Gotham Early Music Scene lived up to its name this week with the GEMS Project, a series of three programs at Le Poisson Rouge, the trendy Greenwich Village club that is taking the classical music world by storm....

Uncommon Temperament, a group of young Baroque performers, opened with works of Handel: a trio sonata and a soprano version of the cantata “Mi Palpita il Cor,” sung by Ariadne Greif.

The performances were accomplished and winning, and Ms. Greif made a game attempt to turn the cantata, a young man’s expression of coronary twitter in the face of budding love, into something dramatic.

May 9, 2005

The program's novelty was the premiere performance of a work by Raphael Fusco. A student at New York's Mannes College of Music, where Nemhauser teaches, Fusco tackled Walt Whitman's text "Proud Music of the Storm" from "Leaves of Grass." Sly dissonances entered into the music's unabashed tonality... it sustained a high level of energy and lyricism.

Copyright 2005, Hartford Courant

Si avverte qualcosa che sembra rinnovare gli spartiti originari arricchendoli di cromatiche movenze. Al pianoforte Raphael Fusco assume trasognate movenze comunicando con tutto il corpo la sua partecipazione divertita e giocosa. Il violoncellista David Himmelheber ha un’aria seriosa e al contempo incantata, Danilo Bonina veicola una tormentata adunanza convogliando nel susseguirsi delle note le sue smorfie di godimento amoreggiando con il violino. Il pubblico è mansuetamente cullato dalla coinvolgente danza del trio. Il finale trionfale dell’Ensemble Duriusculus acuisce attraverso un Haydn dispettoso la dischiusa volontà dei musicisti di marciare con morbido e ondoso suono su atmosfere festose e virili di boschi incantati.
Vincenza Di Vita