https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/02/15/giovanni-bertolazzi-in-london/
https://youtu.be/tLUZKoNb0eY.
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2020/02/22/giovanni-bertolazzi-a-giant-amongst-the-giants/
https://youtu.be/5_vBHlBN56c. https://youtu.be/dc6fXV48Qaw
https://youtu.be/p9bWezr2foY
A triumph at the National Liberal Club for the Robert Turnbull piano foundation and the Keyboard Trust under the guidance of Yisha Xue but above all for Giovanni Bertolazzi who proved to us all why he is considered the finest pianist of his generation
It was exactly this struggle and the sudden contrasts that were so much part of Giovanni’s performance.Electric shocks of sudden eruptions that took us all by surprise.A kaleidoscope of sounds that allowed Giovanni to change in an instant from fortissimo to pianissimo but without ever loosing the driving undercurrent of visceral energy and above all the sense of architectural line.
Already from the first page with it’s seemingly innocent pastoral opening there was a sudden eruption of ‘fortissimo’ -a full orchestra- to be answered by the beseeching innocent reply of the woodwinds that turned into the bucolic playful entrance of the serenely chorale like second subject.
One of those Beethovenian moments when the sun appears on the horizon with such strength and beauty.
In Giovanni’s hands the piano was an orchestra with all the colours and heroic sounds of the Eroica Symphony that was to come just six years later.
His attention to the bass chords in the Largo,con gran espressione made of the opening a profound declaration of emotional weight.The refined beauty of the melodic line over a pizzicato bass showed a transcendental control of sound but above all a reaching into the very soul of this deeply moving Beethovenian outpouring of aristocratic emotion.Noble chords answered on high by barely audible bird like sounds were quite remarkable and although I have heard this Sonata many times,today it was as though for the first time.Such was the clarity and searing intensity of this young man’s vision of the composers emotional turmoil at the moment of creation.
There was simplicity and innocence in the Scherzo and of course an undercurrent of turmoil in the Trio with it’s sudden ‘fortissimi /piano’ interruptions.
Giovanni brought sublime Schubertian beauty to the Rondo.Beethoven indicates ‘grazioso’and Giovanni played with a sense of balance that allowed the simple melody to sing with iridescent fluidity.Soon to erupt into a tumultuous central episode of dynamic drive and insistence.The gentle return of the Rondo melody Giovanni played each time with ever more tenderness and sense of surprise .The Coda was played with beauty and nostalgia as the two conflicting sides to Beethoven’s character were momentarily conciled in a pastoral beauty worthy of the sublime heights that he was to find later in his sixth symphony.
Amazingly Giovanni told us that this was the first time he had played this work in public and that he too had been astonished by the extraordinary contrasts that were of course the hallmark of the Genius of Beethoven.
Giovanni has played many times in the beautiful Teatro Bellini in the Sicilian city of Catania, and it was this beauty and sense of ravishing colour that gave such an oasis and vision of simple beauty in between the ‘showman’ Liszt of ‘Totentanz’ and the ‘12th Hungarian Rhapsody’.
Both full of funabulistic gymnastics outdoing anything that Paganini had attempted on the violin!
I had later heard Rubinstein play it many times in his wonderful Indian Summer that was to last almost twenty years.
I was reminded of that today listening to this young man who so evidently loves the piano as much as Rubinstein.
It was the sumptuous sounds,never hard or ungrateful,that were produced by a sense of balance and of subtle shading and colouring.A holding back and then of rebuilding the sound that all led to the one great climax at the end.
An ecstatic outpouring of heroism – the conquering hero!
But not before there had been a scintillating display of jeux perlé of breathtaking brilliance and drive combined with the most voluptuous melodic outpouring deep on the G string of a Gypsy violin.Washes of colour thrown off with the ease and a style of the Golden era when a true virtuoso was a magician of sound not only of velocity.
What better encore than a transcription by Cziffra in his hundredth anniversary year.Cziffra who many thought the reincarnation of Liszt when he was discovered playing in a bar in Hungary and became a star overnight.
‘Valse Triste’ by Ferenc Vecsey was full of the nostalgia of Hungary as Cziffra’s transcription wrapped this beautiful melody in a cape of scintillating jewels that sparkled and ravished with astonishingly refined bravura and passion.
A second encore brought us the Ritual Fire Dance by De Falla that Rubinstein regularly used to thrill us with at the end of his recitals.
And thrill it certainly did in Giovanni’s own arrangement inspired above all by Alicia De Larrocha whose 100th anniversary is also this year.
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/10/19/milda-daunoraite-youthful-purity-and-musicianship-triumph-in-florence/
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/02/12/hhh-concerts-and-the-keyboard-trust-a-winning-combination-of-youthful-dedication-to-art/
Ludwig van Beethoven
Sonata no. 4 in E-flat major, Op. 7
I. Allegro molto e con brio
II. Largo, con gran espressione
III. Allegro
IV. Rondo: Poco allegretto e grazioso
Ferenc Liszt
Totentanz: Paraphrase on Dies Irae, S. 525
Recueillement. Vincenzo Bellini in memoriam, S. 204
Hungarian Rhapsody no. 12 in C-sharp minor, S: 244/12
Sonata no. 4 in E flat major, opus 7: Beethoven himself named this pianoforte sonata Grande Sonate because it was published by itself in 1797 – unusual for the time. It remains his second-longest sonata, behind the Hammerklavier Sonata op 106. Beethoven’s pupil (and Liszt’s teacher) Carl Czerny wrote: “The epithet appassionata would fit much better to the Sonata in E flat op. 7, which he wrote in a very impassioned mood”. It may be that the reason behind such passionate music was the composer’s attraction for his dedicatee, the then 16-year-old pupil Anna Luise Barbara Countess von Keglevich, and it is possible be that her father had commissioned Beethoven to write the work for her.
Totentanz (Dance of the Dead): Paraphrase on the ‘Dies irae’, S126 for pianoforte and orchestra is notable for being based on the Gregorian hymn Dies irae as well as for its many stylistic innovations. The piece was completed and published in 1849, and later revised twice (1853-9 and early 1880s. All these versions were also prepared for two pianos). In the late 1860s, Liszt published a version for pianoforte solo, S525. Some of the titles of Liszt’s pieces, such as Totentanz, Funérailles, La lugubre gondola and Pensée des morts show the composer’s obsession with mortality, as well as his profound Christian faith, these things being apparent from Liszt as a teenager right up until his last days – more than 50 years later.
In the last movement of the Symphonie fantastique by Berlioz the medieval (Gregorian) Dies Irae is quoted in a shockingly modernistic manner. In 1830 Liszt attended the first performance of the symphony and was struck by its powerful originality. Liszt’s Totentanz presents a series of variations on the Dies irae – a theme that his will have known since 1830 at the latest from Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. As an early biographer noted, “Every variation discloses some new character―the earnest man, the flighty youth, the scornful doubter, the prayerful monk, the daring soldier, the tender maiden, the playful child.” A second theme, beginning at variation 6 – taken from the Prose des morts in the Catholic breviary – is itself varied before the first theme returns at the end of the work.
Recueillement (Recollection), S204 (1877) was a gift to the Italian composer Lauro Rossi. It weaves arpeggios around a rising scale before settling into very simple, chordal writing. Written in memoriam Vincenzo Bellini (of whom Liszt had made famous paraphrases of his opera Norma, La sonnambula and I puritani, as well as the variations Hexaméron, on another theme from I puritani). Simplicity and sensitivity before a final salute from the older Liszt, dispelling any image of earlier keyboard wizardry, but revealing nonetheless the author of some of the most naturally grateful and percipient pianoforte music of all time.
The twelfth of the nineteen Rapsodies hongroises, S244/12 (c1847) is dedicated to Josef Joachim (who was Liszt’s principal violinst in the Wemar court orchestra, and with whom he later made a version of the piece for violin and pianoforte) is one of the most often played in recital and was a work that Anton Rubinstein and other great virtuosi would often include in their programmes. Liszt draws on five different folk themes to produce one of his most ingenious Hungarian Rhapsodies. It offers a unique mix of melancholy, glittering keyboard acrobatics and stormy, rousing dance. It became so popular that the original version was later arranged for orchestra, and for pianoforte four hands. Liszt collected Hungarian folk-songs and Zigeunermusik over many years – without particularly distinguishing between folk-song and gypsy band ‘standards’, and he was strongly influenced by this music that he had heard from his earliest days, with its unique gypsy scale, rhythmic spontaneity and direct, seductive expression. He went on major song collecting expeditions in 1840 and 1846, and he knew many composers of gypsy tunes, who often transpired to be members of the Hungarian upper middle class. The large scale structure of each was influenced by the verbunkos, a Hungarian dance form in several parts, each with a different tempo. Within this structure, Liszt preserved the two main structural elements of typical Gypsy improvisation―the lassan (“slow”) and the friska (“fast”).
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/01/17/giovanni-bertolazzi-in-rome-liszt-is-alive-and-well-at-teatro-di-villa-torlonia/
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2020/10/25/giovanni-bertolazzi-a-star-shining-brightly-at-the-presidents-palace-rome/
Complimenti a Caterina Isaia e Giovanni Bertolazzi che questa sera al Museo Teatrale Alla Scala di Milano, come ieri al Teatro La Fenice di Venezia, hanno emozionato il pubblico in una Sala Esedra sold out!
Il Salotto Musicale, realizzato in collaborazione con il Museo Teatrale alla Scala, torna a settembre…grazie a tutti e al prossimo appuntamento con l grande musica dei migliori giovani talenti italiani!
Complimenti a Caterina Isaia e Giovanni Bertolazzi che questa sera al Museo Teatrale Alla Scala di Milano, come ieri al Teatro La Fenice di Venezia, hanno emozionato il pubblico in una Sala Esedra sold out!
Il Salotto Musicale, realizzato in collaborazione con il Museo Teatrale alla Scala, torna a settembre…grazie a tutti e al prossimo appuntamento con l grande musica dei migliori giovani talenti italiani!
Giovanni Bertolazzi triumphs on the Keyboard Trust tour of USA October 2023 Virginia-Washington-Philadelphia- Delaware – New York
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 
5 risposte a "Giovanni Bertolazzi Liberal Club ‘En Blanc et Noir’ 5th June 2023 ‘A star is born!’"