The supreme stylist Andrea Lucchesini managed to calm even the wildlife that engulfed him as he enchanted and seduced us with the ravishing sounds of an artist who has delved deep into the soul of the music he plays and can transmit its message directly and simply .He generously shared with us the inner secrets of sublime music making in the magic atmosphere of the Gardens of Ninfa.
It was enough to listen or should I say overhear the three nocturnes op 9 by Chopin that opened his recital.Immediately realising that here was an artist who could shape and project Chopin’s subtle refined ‘bel canto’ with rare delicacy and at the same time aristocratic simplicity.
An almost imperceptible flexibility that drew us in to a magic world where the notes on the page that we know so well took on a new significance .
They were given a new life and importance allowing the music to speak as if there were words on every note .A bel canto that became as eloquent as the sublime lieder of Schubert.We were in the hands of a true musician who is also a poet with a superb technical ‘valise’ at the service of the music he is sharing with us.A gift of communication of directness and simplicity that is the key to all great interpreters.
Rubinstein in his Indian summer demonstrated this so well right up until his final concert at the age of 90 in 1976.Krystian Zimerman and Murray Perahia disciples of Rubinstein and Horowitz have shown us the truth behind:’Je joue,je sens e je transmet’.When music making is allied to humility and honesty digging deep into the scores of masterworks to find the secrets at the moment of creation that are there for the gifted few to behold.A superb technique of course is essential but a technical preparation of an orchestra of ten fingers.Fingers that can conjure up different sounds and give the illusion that a black box full of strings and hammers can indeed sing just as beautifully as a nightingale.With a kaleidoscope of colours it can also give the impression of being every bit as sumptuous as the Philadelphia Orchestra.All this was apparent as Andrea Lucchesini battled with the midges and mosquitos to share with us the very essence of Chopin.
The first nocturne unwound so naturally with a beautiful sense of balance that allowed the melodic line to sing with a luminosity and ravishing sense of colour without any forcing or rhetoric.The beautiful comment of distant bells in the central episode was a revelation to me as I have never been aware of this question and answer until today.The famous E flat Nocturne was played with simple eloquence and a clarity that contrasted so well with the sombre brooding of the first.The cadenza and final bars were played on an etherial cloud but never sentimental or anything other than a ravishing simplicity and sensitivity that in no way altered the rhythmic flow that was so captivating from the first to the last note.He carried us along on a real ‘Wing of Song’.The beguiling innuendo of op 9 n.3 I remember being so captivated with,when I heard Josef Lhevine play it on an old ‘piano roll’ that had been discovered near to my home by Frank Holland.He was an engineer who was in love with the old reproducing systems of the Ampico and Welte Mignon .Pre recording systems that interested him for the mechanics but he had no idea of the treasure trove of piano roles that he had inadvertently acquired from being destroyed as the new recording systems came into commerce.Theatres and cinemas were to suffer the same fate too as the TV sat looking at us in every living room taking the place of the obligatory piano with candelabra!The Nocturne op 9 n. 3 was beautifully played with subtle sounds of understatement in which everything was infact stated.Art that conceals art is hard to define and has to be experimented as tonight revealed.I think even the mosquitos and midges seemed happy too and eventually gave up the chase as they basked in such glorious sounds.
A piano of course prepared by that other magician Mauro Buccitti who had worked tirelessly on finding the voice that Andrea had required.The low resonant ‘D’ of the final prelude is always a problem as the final three notes should ring but with different intensity.
I remember Andrea’s mentor Luciano Berio spending hours with three piano tuners in the Ghione theatre in Rome desperately trying to find the right vibrations for a work that was based solely on that.I remember him saying after the last one had left that he would just have to put up with what the tuners had been able to do!This was before Mauro Buccitti’s time of course!Shura Cherkassky a pianist who gave over ten recitals in Rome for us was invited to Berio’s home after a recital he gave in Empoli.It was there that the prodigy Andrea Lucchesini performed Berio’s ‘Wassermusik’ much to the admiration of one of the leggendary stylists of our time.
The two intermezzi op 9 n. 3 and 4 by Roffredo Caetani were a just reminder of a musician ,today,completely overlooked.The first is a beautifully mellifluous work with a long rhapsodic outpouring similar to much of Fanny Mendelssohn or Clara Schumann and very much of that refined salon style.The second Intermezzo was a much more interesting work with some beautiful doubling of the melodic line and a ravishing duet between the voices becoming ever more passionate – a miniature tone poem indeed.They were played of course by a stylist with love and sensitivity and to quote Joan Chissell on hearing Rubinstein play ‘O prol do Bebé’ by Villa Lobos:’Mr Rubinstein turned baubles in to gems’.Indeed Maestro Lucchesini did just that to great effect bringing these creations back to the land where they were created.Caetani the Godson of Liszt and just a stone’s throw from today’s concert location is the piano the Liszt had donated to Roffredo and is now siting proudly still in Ninfa.
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2020/07/20/50th-anniversary-of-the-pontine-festival-foundation-streamed-live-from-sermoneta-and-ninfa/The ‘Andante Spianato’was played with superb technical control from the very first notes.A wave of sounds played with an evenness and precision with a minimum amount of pedal which lent a delicate but solid base to the magical ‘bel canto ‘ that Andrea floated on top.It was Chopin who likened rubato to a tree with the roots firmly planted in the ground but with the branches that were free to move in the breeze.Embellishments that just unwound so naturally out of the melodic line without any showmanship or simplistic throwing away.They were an integral part of the musical line and a golden web of subtle beauty that was spun with great artistry.The Mazurka episode was played with the same subdued beauty and the shimmering waves of sound that joined these two worlds was a wonder of technical bravura.Agosti would always say ,like his teacher Busoni,that you need fingers like steel but wrists like rubber to be able to have true control of sound.The great pianist is the one who can play quietly and clearly with total control – loud and fast is for entertainers not interpreters!Of course the Polonaise was originally written for orchestral accompaniment but there is a discreet orchestral interlude between the two sections.Andrea played it without exaggeration and with good taste never changing the sound picture that had been so delicately created.In fact the Polonaise unwound with moments of bravura and technical brilliance but it was more the beauty and delicate colour that Andrea brought to the streams of golden sounds that was so beguiling and teasing – a real ‘jeux perlé’but not that of a superficial demonstration of bravura but a seemless stream of sounds that just added to the overall architectural shape of a work that was written as a showpiece for the youthful Chopin.But with Chopin a showpiece not of a circus entertainer but of a poet with a soul.An innovative genius who created a new technical approach and sound world for the keyboard.
The Preludes I last heard in Sermoneta many years ago played by Fou Ts’ong.It was the genius of Ts’ong who inspired generations of young musicians in his masterclasses including in Sermoneta but mostly in the piano Academy in Como .He had surprised the world when he was awarded the ‘Mazurka’Prize at one of the very first Chopin Competitions in Warsaw.How could a Chinese pianist understand the soul of a Pole!?Ts’ong simply said that the soul in Chopin was the same soul that was in ancient Chinese poetry of which his father was an expert.A soul knows no boundaries!It was Ts’ong too who declared Chopin’s 24 Preludes to be 24 problems.More than the 24 studies because each of the preludes has a different technical problem that needs to be mastered with technical precision and artistry.
This was exactly what Andrea Lucchesini did with mastery not only conquering fearlessly the technical difficulties but finding an overall sound that united each prelude into a unified whole.From the improvised opening prelude to the three mighty ‘D’s’ of the final triumphant 24th.A wonderful sense of balance in the brooding second prelude and a left hand of fleeting lightness in the third on which Andrea with seeming simplicity could place the melody.The layers of sound that he found for the twentieth variation was enhanced by the time he took to change manuals.There was ravishing beauty of the thirteenth after the extraordinary stamping of the feet of the twelfth.The earth shattering fourteenth was played with terrifying precision and clarity.
The clouds parted as the radiance of the so called ‘raindrop’ prelude was allowed to unfold with disarming simplicity.The treacherous B flat minor prelude was played with the same mastery that I remember Perlemuter revealing to us at the Royal Academy.A period of strikes with the unmoveable Heath administration meant that the lights failed while the Maestro was demonstrating some preludes to us students.In pitch darkness he fearlessly continued this study to the end and calmly told us afterwards that if you cannot play it with your eyes closed you had better never attempt it in public!What a lesson from a Master as indeed Andrea Lucchesini showed us today.
The octaves of the twenty first were played with the same shape as a symphony orchestra without hardness or empty bravura.The gentle stream of sounds of the twenty third were rudely interrupted by the passion and fire of the final twenty fourth .The deep tolling bell of the seventeenth was played with a simplicity that allowed the melodic line to float on a cloud of nostalgic remembrance like in a dream.The eighteenth ‘cadenza’ prelude that followed was played without the usual vicious accents but with a sense of line and intensity that was a suitable introduction to the transcendental hidden difficulties of the mellifluous nineteenth.
A magnificent performance of one of the most difficult of all Chopin’s works that will resound in these beautiful surrounds for long to come.
A Schubert Impromptu op 90 n.2 offered as an encore just flowed from Andrea’s fingers with the same beguiling simplicity and artistry that had held us so enthralled all evening.Simplicity,artistry and technical mastery what more could one want in such beautiful surrounds.Mosquitos and midges you have been warned!
The Nocturnes, Op. 9 are a set of three written by between 1831 and 1832, published in 1832, and dedicated to Madame Marie Pleyel and were Chopin’s first published set of nocturnes. N.1 is one of the better known nocturnes and has a rhythmic freedom that came to characterise Chopin’s later work.N.2 is his best-known Nocturne written when he was around twenty years old. N.3 The first section is marked Allegretto where the main theme is chromatic, but filled with nostalgic energy. The second contrasting section, Agitato in B minor, is a very dramatic with a combined melody and counter-melody in the right hand and continuous arpeggios in the left.It is full of coloratura ornaments, and ends in a small cadenza similar to Opus 9 no. 2,
The Andante spianato e Grande Polacca brillant was written between 1830 and 1835. The Andante is for solo piano, while the Polacca features orchestral accompaniment.
It was written in two stages, approximately five years apart. Chopin wrote the Grande Polacca between 10 September and 25 October 1830 and it is the most virtuosic of his youthful ones, conceived when he was still in Poland.The initial part, Andante spienato , was instead composed later, in 1835 and was initially thought of as a nocturne due to its lyrical and romantic tone, but then the musician thought he could use it as an introduction to the previously written Polonaise brilliant . The finished composition was performed in public on April 26, 1835 in a charity concert in the Salle de Concert of the Conservatoire National de Musique with Chopin himself at the piano and the direction of Francois-Antoine Habeneck , considered at the time the most important conductor. The work was published the following year under the title Grande Polonaise brillant, précédée d’un Andante spianato.
Chopin’s 24 Preludes, op .28, are a set of short pieces for the piano, one in each of the twenty-four keys , originally published in 1839.
Chopin wrote them between 1835 and 1839, partly at Valldemossa,Mallorca, where he spent the winter of 1838–39 and where he had fled with George Sand and her children to escape the damp Paris weather.In Majorca, Chopin had a copy of Bach’s ‘48’ and as in each of Bach’s two sets of preludes and fugues, his Op. 28 set comprises a complete cycle of the major and minor keys, albeit with a different ordering.Whereas Bach had arranged his collection of 48 preludes and fugues according to keys separated by rising semitones , Chopin’s chosen key sequence is a circle of fifths , with each major key being followed by its relative minor, and so on (i.e. C major, A minor, G major, E minor, etc.). It is thought that Chopin might have conceived the cycle as a single performance entity for continuous recital.An opposing view is that the set was never intended for continuous performance, and that the individual preludes were indeed conceived as possible introductions for other works.Chopin himself never played more than four of the preludes at any single public performance.Nor was this the practice for the 25 years after his death. The first pianist to program the complete set in a recital was probably Anna Yesipova in 1876.Nowadays, the complete set of Op. 28 preludes has become part of the repertoire , and many concert pianists have recorded the entire set, beginning with Busoni in 1915, when making piano rolls for the Duo-Art label. Alfred Cortot was the next pianist to record the complete preludes in 1926.He would also play the 24 Studies op 10 and 25 together with the 24 Preludes op 28 in the same programme.Something that Fou Ts’ong had done at the Festival Hall in London and on my request at the Ghione Theatre in Rome.