Shunta Morimoto- Pitti Piano Festival Florence – The inspired recreation of a great artist

ChristopherAxworthyMusicCommentary
William Grant Naboré mentor of Shunta in Rome/Lake Como Academy in rehearsal

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/09/26/william-grant-nabore-thoughts-and-afterthoughts-of-a-great-teacher/

Wonderful to realise that our ‘little’ Shunta has grown into a mature artist.Discovered at the Van Cliburn as a child prodigy,when his performances went viral on the net,he has now,at the ripe old age of eighteen,joined the ranks as one of the most astonishingly profound interpreters of his generation.
His superb performances of Beethoven 4 and Liszt 1,recently,with the RPO as winner of the Hastings International Competition gave some idea of his maturity added to an already extraordinary technical command. https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/05/06/shunta-morimotos-all-or-nothing-performance-of-liszt-with-aristocratic-nobility-and-brilliance/

Palazzo Pitti Florence


But no one could have imagined the refined aristocratic performances that we were privileged to hear yesterday in the great Sala Bianca of Palazzo Pitti in Florence.
From the opening Bach Chromatic Fantasy of such monumental authority.There were moments of breathtaking beauty but always with an overwhelmingly inevitable drive that drew us on to this tidal wave of magnificence.I have not heard the like since Agosti would intone his teacher Busoni’s refined edition in his studio in the Chigiana in Siena.

In rehearsal as in performance there are no half measures when you are possessed by music


A Polonaise Fantasy of nobility and poetry.An amazing freedom that made us aware of the improvised inspiration that Chopin was to reach at the end of his short life.
The A minor mazurka was added because Shunta felt that this was just the right transition to Rameau.This usually bitter sweet mazurka was given a nobility and strength that made of it a moving tone poem gliding in and out on a murmured wave of undulating sounds.
The opening of the Rameau was of the grandeur and nobility of its age.Fearlessly ornamented because Shunta has studied deeply the performance practices of the period.A nobility that was a barely whispered memory on its repeat.The clarity of the dance that followed where from a mere whisper Shunta added voice after voice until the joy and exhilaration of the entire population was hypnotic and quite overwhelming.
Liszt’s Dante Sonata was a true Symphonic Poem in this teenager’s demonic fingers .But it was more than in his fingers it was in his soul as his whole body was involved in a recreation that all those present will never forget.

The Sala Bianca in Palazzo Pitti


A standing ovation and cries for more but as Shunta said I already played the encore of the Mazurka and that was enough.
A feast fit for a King …noblesse oblige ….as we cheer the arrival of one of the greatest interpreters of his age …….

Shunta Morimoto takes London by storm ‘I have a dream’ a poet speaks through music

The Bach Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue was in the Busoni edition usually so frowned on in these days of ‘authenticity’ ( His wife was often introduced as Mrs Bach-Busoni!) .Busoni was not trying to emanate the Organ here as in many of his Bach transcriptions but happy to clarify the overall architectural shape of this monumental work.
There was great drama from the very opening – a stroke of lightening with it’s call to arms-and the start of an epic journey of astonishing invention and emotional impact.
So often played as an ‘opener’ with rather respectfully formal inevitability but today revealed as a revolutionary outpouring of improvised fantasy allied to Bach’s contrapuntal genius.Moments of astonishing tenderness alternating with imperious declarations.All with a dynamic drive and energy of Beethovenian proportions – no half measures but astonishing shifts of mood.
The subtle entry of the Fugue ( Beethoven op 110 springs to mind).Rather fast was an instinctive first reaction but then as it built in power and drive it was ever more convincing as the ‘knotty’ twine just miraculously unfolded like a great unstoppable wave.A monumental inevitability as it built to the final great climax that was several bars before the final cadence which was just the simple closing of the book of truth and not the more usual throwing it into the ring with a bang!What a revelation – what artistry! What a universal masterpiece!

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The Chopin Polonaise Fantasie op 61 opened with gentle nobility and an improvised freedom to the radiance that Chopin spreads with such delicacy over the entire keyboard.What beauty in the physical movement – like Volodos- where the shape of the music is the same shape as the body that creates it.A left hand that hovered over the right like a bird in flight in a great arch ready to land so naturally on the final note.So rare these days of verticality.It was Chopin who realised that natural movements of the body are those that can create beauty horizontally.His aristocratic pupils would not struggle with scales in C major but more in D flat that was the real shape of a hand that belonged to the keys.
There was a stretching of time in Shunta’s performance like pulling something open of rubber with the fleeting changes of character.From a pastoral simplicity and playfulness to a mellifluous nobility where the bel canto ornamentation was part of the overall conversation and not just pretty asides.
A true nobility as Rubinstein used to remind us where the sentiment is in the note not on top of it.
Shunta instinctively delved into the very soul of each note where any technical difficulties are of such irrelevance as Cortot too has shown us!!It is the poetic content that reveals the true genius of Chopin,nowhere more than in the long drawn out central section.It’s quietly shifting harmonies and the bewitching beseeching melodic line more like a string quartet texture than soloist and accompaniment.
Of course Shunta brought all his youthful ecstatic excitement to the ‘star’ that Chopin allowed to shine so brightly at the end before exhaustedly disappearing into the distance with just a final ray of light left over for the last word.
What a revelation was Rameau’s ‘Les Niais de Sologne!’.An imperious opening of another age with an elaborate ornamentation of a Crown Imperial.Grandeur and Nobility went hand in hand with truly visionary changes of register .Ornaments that unwound like springs and that glistened as Shunta allowed his gaze to look on in such wonderment.
The seemingly simple dance gradually building up with layer upon layer of sound as Shunta opened up door after door until there was no more room in the ark that led inexorably to the final exhilarating explosion of glory and joy.
An extraordinary control of sound that never allowed the tension to sag but moved relentlessly forward.
Onwards and upwards with hypnotic conviction.
What to say of his demonic performance of Liszt’s Dante Sonata with its commitment and total self identification with a world where a story was unfolded with amazing vision and impact.
Here is a short video of the final few bars that speak much louder than any words I might be able to use.

Shunta confided afterwards that this was his first public performance which was even more astonishing!
But then nothing surprises me anymore with Shunta’s maturity opening windows on a world that most do not know exists!Genius is never predictable but a continuous voyage of discovery.

https://www.facebook.com/christopher.axworthy/videos/1642831572858226/
A magnificent new home for a magnificent new piano.
The Yamaha team led by Giovanni Iannantuoni

Shunta Morimoto – A colossus bestrides Villa Aldobrandini as it had when Liszt was in residence – complete review with Tokyo link to Schumann op 13

The magnificent CFX Yamaha from the studio of Giovanni Iannantuoni now acquired by the Uffizi in Florence
Sorry to miss André,a remarkable musician and now also Vice Director of the Piano Academy in Imola.
The founder/director Franco Scala was a fellow student of Carlo Zecchi who shared ‘digs’ with William Naboré in their student days in Rome.Bill went on to found that other great school ‘The International Piano Academy Lake Como’.Presided over by Martha Argerich and where Shunta is it’s youngest disciple ever.
Here we are in a podcast for the Keyboard Trust discussing the secrets of André’s seemingly simple mastery of the piano

https://youtu.be/1TTxiaFESH0
Caught on a candid camera.Bill and I have known each other since my student days with Agosti in Rome in 1972.He had been a star student of Carlo Zecchi and I still remember his magnificent performance of the ‘Diabelli Variations’ in the ‘Gonfalone Oratorio’ of Via Giulia.
Sir David Scholey with William Naboré

2 risposte a "Shunta Morimoto- Pitti Piano Festival Florence – The inspired recreation of a great artist"

  1. Pingback: Massimo Urban- The prodigious intelligence and refined sense of colour of a born pianist – ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary
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