Sir Antonio Pappano will lead the performances of Francesco Antonioni’s Gli occhi che si fermano with the Orchestra Nazionale dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia on February 8, 2014 in Rome (additional performances on February 10 and 11). The world premiere of the composition took place in 2009 at the Teatro Lirico, the commissioner of the work, in Cagliari, Sardinia.

The piece is inspired by Spanish writer Javier Marías’s novel Tu rostro manaña (Your Face Tomorrow), which delves into the profound ambiguities encountered in life events. In the novel the main character, who moves between different strands of a complex plot, is a kind of investigator whose job it is to observe the behavior of people in order to predict their future actions.

In the composition Antonioni conveys this ambiguity by way of overlapping rhythms, alternating slow and fast sections, and harmonies that move between tonality and atonality. And it is precisely these differences that, when placed alongside each other, furnish the piece with its distinctive tension. (Photo: Gianluca Moro)