Ensemble

Impronta – leaving a trace – giving music an imprint – creating an identity through music – a fingerprint for social and cultural exchange 

Impronta is a 2012-founded german-italian ensemble based in Mannheim, that has already established itself as a leading group devoted to the promotion of contemporary music. Impronta has as its main purpose the establishment of a dialogue between the music of our time with that of other musical eras, tracking in that way that red line which links together musical expressions from different eras, a connection that was believed lost due to the progressive marginalization of the music of our time.

Great importance is also given to premieres, especially of those composers who through their works showed their peculiar expressive originality.

In this way the ensemble is always open to exploring new forms of musical language and the expansion of its repertoire.

Impronta has already participated in renowned festivals such as “oggimusica”, the most important festival for contemporary music in the Italian part of Switzerland or the most important Hungarian festival for contemporary music “CaFe Budapest”, as well as in renowned venues such as the LAC, the new auditorium in Lugano, the BMC (Budapest Music Center) or the Yamaha Concert Hall in Vienna.

In order to provide the musicians of the ensemble, who always come together specifically for the concert projects, with continually new perspectives on the works performed, Impronta also works at regular intervals with guest conductors (including Eddi de Nadai and Rémi Durupt).

Andreas Luca Beraldo – artistic director and conductor

Jeanne Lefèvre – artistic director and violin

Alessio Elia – member of the artistic direction

Andreas Luca Beraldo

artistic director and conductor

“Andreas Luca Beraldo’s great knowledge of the repertoire and musical culture gives him a natural authority that always makes his work with orchestras effective.”  (Arturo Tamayo)

Andreas Luca Beraldo studied orchestral conducting with Arturo Tamayo, Marc Kissóczy and Klaus Arp, choral conducting with Frieder Bernius, Georg Grün, Harald Jers and Christoph Siebert and school music with Robert Göstl and Andreas Winnen in Lugano, Mannheim and Cologne.
He also received important impulses in masterclasses with Michael Luig, Hans-Christoph Rademann, Kaspars Putnins, Adriano Martinolli, Kurt Suttner, Jean-Philippe Wurtz and Peter Eötvös.

He has conducted at important festivals for contemporary music such as CAFe Budapest, oggimusica in the Italian Switzerland, Forum Neue Musik in Mannheim and the Festival Risonanze Armoniche in Italy. He has worked in renowned venues such as the BMC Budapest Music Center in Hungary, the LAC / Lugano Arte e Cultura in Switzerland or the YAMAHA Concert Hall in Vienna.

Beraldo has been on the podium of numerous orchestras such as the Orchestra of Italian Switzerland (OSI – orchestra della svizzera italiana), the Baden-Baden Philharmonic Orchestra, the Plovdiv Philharmonic Orchestra, the Karlovy Vary Symphony Orchestra, the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and the Kurpfalz Chamber Orchestra. He has also conducted the “900 presente” ensemble of the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiania on several occasions.
Among the choirs Beraldo has conducted are the University and Chamber Choir of the Musikhochschule Mannheim, the Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart, the Junges Ensemble der Liedertafel Mannheim, the Ensemble Vocapella Limburg and the Beethovenchor Ludwigshafen.

Beraldo has a great interest in promoting contemporary music, which is reflected not only in his conducting activities and the premieres of numerous works but also in founding an ensemble and a publishing house highly devoted to contemporary music. Since 2012 he has been chairman and conductor of the ensemble “Impronta – Ensemble für neue Musik e.V.” and since 2014 managing director of the music publishing house “Impronta – Edition UG”. Both the ensemble and the publishing house were founded by him together with violinist Jeanne Vogt.
He also studied arranging and orchestration with Andreas N. Tarkmann. Many of his works have been published by “Impronta”. His orchestration of Claude Debussy’s “Six Épigraphes Antiques” is distributed by Alkor / Bärenreiter.
In 2014, in cooperation with ARTE and ZDF, he conducted for the recordings of Charley Bowers’ soundtracks for four silent films.

In 2018 he was invited as a jury member to the international competition for conducting in contemporary repertoire “Giancarlo Facchinetti” in Brescia. Also in 2018 he won the 1st prize in the Valentin Eduard Becker composition competition with his work “Ukuthula – a wish for peace” for women’s choir and piano.

He currently lives and works in Mannheim.

Jeanne Vogt

artistic director and violin

Jeanne Vogt grew up in a family of musicians in Paris and began playing the violin and piano at the age of five. Already as a school student she studied analysis, harmony, composition, ear training and chamber music and won the third prize at the UFAM violin competition in Paris in 2007. From 2009, she conducted several musical projects with disabled people and worked as a chamber music teacher and orchestra leader at the Garches Music School in Paris. In 2009-2010 she received her “Diplôme de fin d’études” in violin, harmony and analysis and “Certificat de fin d’études musicales” in piano.

In 2012 she moved to Germany, where she studied choral and orchestral conducting at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Mannheim with Georg Grün, Frieder Bernius, Christoph Siebert, Harald Jers and Klaus Arp. At the same time she improved her playing skills – also at the Musikhochschule Mannheim – by studying violin under Professor Dora Bratchkova. In 2013-2014 she worked as a musical assistant at the Mannheim Opera School. Supplementary master classes have taken her to the Arditti Quartet, the Ensemble Modern Summer Academy and the Ensemble Linea Academy. Since 2014 she has also been studying accompaniment at the Henfenfeld Opera Academy with Denette Whitter.

As a violinist she is mainly engaged in contemporary music . Various solo violin compositions were dedicated to her and she premiered them, including the works “Sayings of the Seers” by Alessio Elia, “Azalée” and “Azalée II” by Christian Dachez and “Gestures” by David Holleber. She conducted the Philharmonic Orchestra of Plovdiv in Bulgaria, the Baden-Baden Philharmonic, the Stuttgart Philharmonic and the ensemble for contemporary music of the Mannheim Musikhochschule. Since 2012 she has been concertmaster of the “Impronta” ensemble and co-founder of the “Impronta” music publishing house, as well as composer of many educational works. In 2015 she led the projects “Beyond the Limit II” and “Talente der Region VI”, which were initiated by the Emmerich-Smola Music School and the Music Academy of the City of Kaiserslautern.

She is currently conducting various children’s choirs and choirs in the district of Nürnberger Land, as well as the “Orchestergemeinschaft Hersbruck”.

Alessio Elia

member of the artistic direction

Described as an unicum in the compositional landscape of our times (Il Corriere Musicale) Alessio Elia is today considered among the most original composers of the new generation (la Repubblica, Universal Music Publishing, Muzsika, Radio Vaticana, Die Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung). Elia received commissions most importantly from I Solisti del Teatro alla Scala di Milano (Octet), piece released in CD by Warner Classics in 2018, conducted by Andrea Vitello and published by Universal Music Publishing – EMB; Radio Bartók (orchestral piece Trasparenze) for the ArTRIUM series of the National Hungarian Radio Orchestra; Alter Ego ensemble (Altered memories) for a project including commissions to Peter Eötvös, Toshio Hosokawa, Peter Ablinger, Lukas Ligeti, László Sáry and Howard Skempton; Impronta ensemble (Traces from Nowhere) for the Oggimusica Festival in Lugano; UMZE – the historical ensemble founded by Bartók (Ekpyrotic Suicide); Wiener Collage, with members of the Wiener Philharmoniker (Outskirts of matter); Antal Dorati Conducting Competition (Distimement for large orchestra) as a complusory piece for the final round of the conducting contest; Nuova Consonanza (Il Canto segreto, in memoriam Giovanni Piazza), Stuttgart Kammerchor conducted by Frieder Bernius (Incantesimi di Merseburg) and Celestial keys for the Ligeti 100 Festival, as a piece to be performed together with “Clocks and Clouds” with which it shares the same choral and instrumental forces.
Trained internationally he studied composition in Italy, Hungary and Germany, graduating at the S. Cecilia Academy of Music in Rome under the guidance of Giovanni Piazza. He completed postgraduate courses in Italy at the National Academy of Music S. Cecilia in Rome and at the Chigiana Academy of Music in Siena, and abroad at the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt with Brian Ferneyhough, Toshio Hosokawa, and Georg Friedrich Haas, as well as at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest with Zoltán Jeney. Consultations with Norwegian composer Lasse Thoresen also had a significant role in the process of his professional development. He obtained the post-master’s degree in Composition at the Hochschule für Musik Mannheim, studying with Sidney Corbett, a former student of György Ligeti. Elia earned his PhD cum laude at the University of Rome Tor Vergata with a dissertation about the Hamburgisches Konzert by Ligeti (first comprehensive monograph on this topic). Guest composer and researcher at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, the State University of Debrecen, the Zoltán Kodály Institute in Kecskemét, the Sacher Foundation in Basel, and the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, he was also lecturer in composition in 2010 at the latter.
His music has been performed in significant concert halls and festivals worldwide (Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome; Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy in Budapest; Menuhin Festival in Oslo; Festival Erkel-Mahler in Budapest; Accademia Filarmonica Romana; BMC – Budapest Music Center; Bartók Hall of Palace of Arts – The National Auditorium in Budapest; Levinsalen and Lindemansalen in Oslo; Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna; Kongresshaus Stadthalle Heidelberg; Mannheimer Kunstverein; LAC – Lugano Arte e Cultura Auditorium; National Hungarian Radio Studios; Forum Neue Musik – Palais Prinz Carl in Heidelberg; Auditorium del Parco by Renzo Piano in L’Aquila; Oggimusica Festival in Lugano; Contemporary Arts Festival Budapest; Yamaha Concert Hall Wien, Festival Nuova Consonanza in Rome, Kulturpalast Dresden, etc.).
Elia’s works were broadcast by state radios and TV channels, such as: Radio Bartók (Hungary); Saarländischer Rundfunk (Germany); RAI Radio 3 (Italy); Hungarian Catholic Radio; Magyar Televízió and Duna TV (Hungarian State TV); Radio Vaticana.
He has released interviews about his music for: Cité de la musique in Paris, Magyar Televízió and Duna TV, Bartók Radio, Radio Vaticana, Dal+Szerző – Magazine of the Hungarian Bureau for the Protection of Authors’ Rights, Muzsika – the most important Hungarian journal for classical music, Musica +, Budapest Music Centre, RAI Radio 3 Suite, RAI Cultura, and the Peter Eötvös Foundation.
His activity as a composer and researcher has taken him on a tour of conferences around Europe (Norway, Hungary, Germany, Denmark, Italy etc.), among them the most important were at:
Cité de la musique in Paris; Internationales Musikinstitute Darmstadt; Accademia Filarmonica Romana; Chigiana Academy in Siena; Canal C2 –Université de Strasbourg; The Hungarian Academy of Arts;  Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst Mannheim; Eötvös József University, Baja (Hungary); Norwegian Academy of Music; The University of Performing Arts Prague; Kampnagel Internationale Kulturfabrik in Hamburg during the Symposium “Ligeti und die Mikrotonalität”, presented by Louise Duchesneau, secretary of Ligeti, with the extraordinary contribution of Paul Griffiths, first biographer of Ligeti.
In 2008 he was invited by the Hungarian State TV, for an interview about The Magician’s Death his opera based on the life and artistic activity of the Hungarian writer Géza Csáth.
Ten portrait concerts of his music have been organized in Budapest, Oslo and Rome since 2006 (most significant venues: two times at Sala Verdi of the Italian Institute of Culture in Budapest, the first time within the Festival “Contemporanea”, dedicated to Alessio Elia, Ivan Fedele and Luciano Berio, organized by the Italian Embassy in Budapest, the second concert for celebrating his ten years of musical activity in Hungary; Lindemansalen, Levinsalen in Oslo; Accademia Filarmonica Romana, for the Festival “She Lives” dedicated to Alessio Elia, Péter Eötvös and Zoltán Jeney).
His recent pieces take inspiration from scientific subjects, such as String Theory, M-Theory, and quantum physics. Some works of his compositional output are addressed to the integration of different kinds of tuning systems in a process of developing the sonic material he named “Polysystemism”, discussed in many conferences and lectures, among them the one at “Centre de documentation de la musique contemporaine” of the Cité de la Musique in Paris. The most significant works in this direction are Beyond Perturbative States, Conifold transitions, Traces from Nowhere and the orchestral pieces Dimensioni nascoste (Hidden Dimensions) and Trasparenze.
Articles and essays on Polysystemism have been published by the German publisher von Bockel Verlag, l’Université de Strasbourg, the Hungarian Academy of Arts and the University of Prague, as well as the subject of a master thesis degree at the Academy of Music of the Italian Switzerland in Lugano.
Elia is the recipient of several prizes, among them the Chigiana Merit Award 2005 for the piece Luminescences and the 1st prize for the piece Rejtett dimenziók (Hidden Dimensions) in the orchestral category of UMZF 2013 (Hungarian Forum for New Music) Competition, in the year dedicated to Ligeti, with Péter Eötvös presiding over the jury. In 2016 his orchestral piece Labirynthum continui was awarded a “Leibniz’s Harmonies Prize” in Hannover.
Supported by NKA (Hungarian National Cultural Fund) he wrote the Clarinet Concerto Implicate Inklings for Csaba Klenyán as solo clarinet and Concerto Budapest Orchestra conducted by Zoltán Rácz, performed on 4 May 2019 at the Grand Hall of the Liszt Academy in Budapest.
Born in Rome in 1979, Elia has lived in different cities in Europe (Rome, Budapest, Odense, Oslo, Debrecen and Berlin). Right now he is based in Budapest and Rome.
2018 © Copyright - Ensemble Impronta