Roma tre orchestra season streamed live from Teatro Palladium in Rome
Hard to know where to look as the hands and arms of Adriano Leonardo Scapicchi and Francesco Bravi twisted and turned as they entwined in their unrelenting rhythmic journey in Stravinsky’s original four hand version of The Rite of Spring.
A formidable knotty twine of great precision and rhythmic pulse in which Stravinsky’s demonic vision of insinuated melodies and savage naked rhythms vied with each other in a tour de force that I have not witnessed since a young almost unknown Vladimir Ashkenazy fought it out with Daniel Barenboim in the first Summer Festival on the Southbank in London fifty years ago.
The same festival where that other unknown couple Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire also took the world by storm but on two pianos!
Ravel’s Rhapsodie espagnole usually played on two pianos was played today on one and showed such evocative sounds with their extraordinary control of the pedals ensuring that here is formidable duo who think and play as one …….no mean feat indeed.
A wonderful sounding Schimmel piano that sounded even more like a Bosendorfer makes me think that that magician Mauro Buccitti has waved his magic wand over the proceedings yet again.
Stravinsky in conversation at the piano with Robert Craft:
https://fb.watch/2zuUpyLrqM/
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 