Daniele Di Virgilio - Anatomia del disastro for saxophone, clarinet, cello and piano (2025)
performed by Barcelona Modern Ensemble (live recording)
Carlos Segura, saxophone
Xavier Castillo, clarinet
Irma Bau Rubinat, cello
Francisco Marti, piano
Xavier Pagès-Corella, conductor

The future, as it has been conceived in the last two and a half centuries - the expectation and horizon of change and progress – seems to no longer exist, replaced by a series of circumstances that culminate with a catastrophe, in which the natural event (earthquake, tornado, storm, etc.) is now overtaken by the artificial one made by humans themselves (nuclear accident, climate change, etc.). The flow of present time is determined by the onset of catastrophic occurrences; we move from accident to accident, so much so that the future itself appears to us in this form, which we fear but which together, more or less consciously, we wish for. If every day the news and the web do not provide us with images of tragic events, it seems to us that nothing has happened, that time has passed in vain: we live immersed in the tale of the disaster. 
The piece investigates the ambiguity and (ab)normality of this phenomenon, building a dramaturgy that emphasizes the paradoxical co-presence of two psychological states: the obsessive and suffocating wait for an imminent catastrophe and the surreal climate of impotence and emotional detachment that announces its arrival.


Anatomia del disastro for saxophone, clarinet, cello and piano (2025)

Daniele Di Virgilio is an Italian Berlin-based composer and perpetual researcher. Conceiving composition as a multi-disciplinary and social-oriented expression, his music is inspired by a theatrical imagination and by the interest in psychoanalysis.