Cremona a city where passions are ignited and shared and dreams become a global reality ….2023 Day 1 – 2 and 3

ChristopherAxworthyMusicCommentary

Another amazing edition of Cremona Musica with three days dedicated to all forms of music .Creating a link without barriers between people who have a passion for a means of communication where words are superfluous.Music is indeed the food of love and unity between man and in Cremona it is playing on with a gentle insistence that is being noted by a world hungry for quality and not just quantity.

Cremona Musica ….2023 Day 2 Angelo Fabbrini the crowned Prince of Cremona

Cremona Musica ……2023 Day 3 The day of reckoning

The success of Cremona Musica 2023:

the Italian way between tradition and innovation

The numbers of the 2023 edition of Cremona Musica International Exhibitions and Festival, which took place in the international capital of lutherie from September 22nd to 24th, witness the success of the Italian kermess: 360 exhibitors, over half of which from 35 foreign countries, 180 events in 3 days, over one thousand professionals involved in concerts, masterclasses andpresentations and 70 international buyers from 23 countries. Cremona Musica confirms itself as a unique and extraordinary experience for every music lover.

«The synergies with the local institutions have been crucial for the success of Cremona Musica» for the President of Cremonafiere Roberto Biloni; «we are already working on the 2024 edition, which will take place from the 27th to the 29th of September: we are deeply convinced that there are still wide margins of growth».

Among the hundreds of musicians who joined the kermess, some internationally renowned artists and enterprises received the prestigious Cremona Musica Awards: cellist Steven Isserlis were awarded for the Performance category, Reycled Orchestra of Cateura (Paraguay) for the Project, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger for Communication, Amalia Ramirez for Guitar lutherie, and Fisarmoniche Paolo Soprani for Accordion Manufacturing.

Italian piano tuner and repairer Angelo Fabbrini received the special prize A Life for Piano during the Saturday night concert Io suono italiano, an event which paid homage to Italian culture from Dante to Stradivari: the premiere of the video project Istante Dante was intertwined with the performance of renowned artists, such as Indian musician and scholar Singh Bai Baldeep and Italian pianist Roberto Prosseda, artistic director of Cremona Musica.

Once again Cremona shows the pivotal role of Italian culture in connecting the international world of music professionals and lovers, thanks to a unique mix of high quality exhibitors and engagingevents: a three-days immersion in an exciting atmosphere that feeds the eyes, the ears and the soul of every participant.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Gyorgy Ligeti Han Chen has recorded the complete studies for piano .A recording that has won many awards for the precision and clarity that he brings to these notorious,transcendentally difficult studies.But there was also drama and passion albeit contained within a rhythmic discipline that was astonishing in its driving forward movement.What drama he brought to ‘Automne à Varsovie’ and I wonder if the ‘Devil’s Staircase’ has ever been approached so fearlessly.The chiselled sounds of great purity of ‘Pour Irina ‘were a contrast to the slow contemplation of ‘White on White’.
A tour de force of intellect and mastery

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/03/10/inna-faliks-love-of-life-the-extraordinary-story-of-a-great-artist-told-with-masteryintelligence-and-beauty/
What a wonder Inna invariably is. Whatever she plays it is with such weight and authority even when she dives into the piano to extract the dead sounds of the Oud as in Fazil Say’s very evocative ‘Black Earth’ .Or even recites in Russian where she says the meaning is not of such fundamental importance as the sound the words make with the music her hands are carving on the keyboard.Even a full choir was taking part in the very moving ‘Sirota’ by Ljova Zhurbin.It was an important part of a fascinating performance with ‘Weight in her fingertips’ that allowed her to also play so beautifully the Lullaby from Richard Danielpour’s recent opera.
Chopin’s Maiden’s Wish and of course the Polonaise Fantasie which figures so prominently in her life, showed the versatility of this great pianist living life to the full and sharing her musical discoveries with the generosity and intelligence of the showgirl she is at heart.
Avventurosa e appassionata” (The New Yorker), la pianista americana di origini ucraine Inna Faliks si è imposta sulla scena internazionale grazie alle sue notevoli esecuzioni del repertorio pianistico più diffuso, ma anche per innovativi progetti interdisciplinari e collaborazioni con compositori contemporanei. Dopo aver debuttato da giovanissima al Gilmore Festival e con la Chicago Symphony Orchestra, si è esibita in alcuni dei palcoscenici più prestigiosi al mondo e con importanti orchestre, guidata da direttori come Leonard Sslatkin e Keith Lockhart. Tra le performance più recenti, quelle al Ravinia Festival di Chicago, alla National Gallery di Washington, all’Accademia Chigiana di Siena, da solista con orchestre americane e in numerosi tour in Cina.


Inna Faliks collabora con alcuni tra i più significativi compositori d’oggi, come Billy Childs, Richard Danielpour, Timo Andres e Clarice Assad. Nel 2008 ha ideato la premiata serie Music/Words, con decine di performance a New York, Chicago e Los Angeles, sia dal vivo che in radio. Porta regolarmente in tour il suo recital-monologo Polonaise-Fantasie, the Story of a Pianist, racconto della sua emigrazione da Odessa agli Stati Uniti con musiche Bach, Chopin, Gershwin e Carter.


Docente di Pianoforte presso la UCLA (University of California-Los Angeles), le sue masterclass sono richieste in tutto il mondo. Ha scritto articoli e saggi per il Los Angeles Times e il The Washington Post, mentre la sua autobiografia musicale, Weight in the Fingertips, sarà pubblicata nel 2023 da Globe Pequot. Inna Faliks è un’artista Yamaha.






Inna Faliks’s 2023-24 concert season is marked by the long-awaited release of her memoir, Weight in the Fingertips – a Musical Odyssey from Soviet Ukraine to the World Stage. , on bookshelves October 15th. In March 2024, she will release the album Manuscripts Don’t Burn, a very personal album that is a combination of music written for her and music of Schubert-Liszt and Fanny Mendelssohn. Today’s program is a deeply personal celebration of both the book and the CD.


Faliks has asked the composers Maya Miro Johnson and Veronika Krausas to compose works for her that respond to one of her favorite novels, Ukrainian-born Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. A modern day retelling of Faust, it is also powerful commentary on the life of an artist during a totalitarian regime. Faliks carried the book out of Odessa when her family immigrated – and it has been a long-term companion through her artistic life, and is frequently mentioned in her own book.


Maya Miro Johnson imagines the character of Margarita. right before she meets Mephistopheles, in the book. Manuscripts Don’t Burn is the most famous phrase from the novel – the devil speaks it as he recreates a lost manuscript of the Master, the lover of Margarita. This young composer uses extended techniques and many sound effects to create the mysterious dark landscape of the novel


Veronika Krausas creates an elegant dance suite that responds to a variety of quotes from the novel, chosen by Faliks. Minimalist and elegant, the music takes a more humorous, reserved approach to the novel.


Juxtaposing Black Earth and Sirota in this program allows Faliks to travel to the Black Sea. As her home city of Odessa is under attack, she conjurs it through the sounds of Sirota, which uses a 1907 recording of the “Jewish Caruso”, the legendary Odessa cantor Gershon Sirota. Black Earth is a reimagining of a tragic Turkish Ballad, complete with sounds of the Saz, a Turkish Lute.


Danielpour’s mournful Lullaby is from his piano suite “Joys and Sorrows”, written for Faliks to premiere in 2023.


It is followed by Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantasie – the center piece of Faliks’s one woman show Polonaise-Fantasie the Story of a Pianist, on which her book is based.
Inna Faliks with Paolo Fazioli
Wonderful to see how Leonardo in the space of just a few years has become a great artist who thinks more of the music than himself.Mentored by William Naboré over these past two years I have seen a very fine pianist turn into an artist where music just pours from his fingers with the the same purity and simplicity as Rubinstein in his Indian summer.
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/09/26/william-grant-nabore-thoughts-and-afterthoughts-of-a-great-teacher/
A different repertoire from the great master but the musical communication is the same.I have never heard ‘Les Jeux d’Eau’ played with such purity of sound and sense of colour as the fountains were allowed to sparkle and shine whilst beneath a sumptuous melody of Philadelphian richness was being played out in the tenor register.
A remarkable sense of control and what a marvellous idea to link ‘Les Jeux d’Eau’ with the murky waters of the ‘Ballade’ of Hero and Leander.It was interesting too,and showed what a thinking musician he is,as he chose to play the original finale of Liszt rather than the published one.
Scarlatti and Clementi were played with a rhythmic drive and simplicity.The Scarlatti K.213 of disarming beauty.
It was refreshing to see a Bechstein on stage signed by Angelo Fabbrini and I hope this might signal the return to the concert hall of the preferred piano for many of the greatest artists between the wars.
The young Polish pianist,winner of the Paderewski International Piano Competition presented three of the best known works by Chopin together with two studies and the Fantasia op 14 by Szymanowski.
I was sorry to miss the Szymanowski but such are the amount of concerts programmed in the these three days it is sometimes impossible to enjoy a complete programme.
The Chopin First Ballade showed his very solid musicianship and superbly trained fingers.There was an architectural control that allowed this well known work to unfold without any rhetoric or with passages tainted by tradition.A clarity and purity that could now be added a simplicity but this is a young musician with fire in his fingers and the same love for his homeland as Chopin had in his heart.A tour de force of cavalry advancing in the ‘Polonaise Héroique’ never allowed him to sacrifice the musical line or his sumptuous sense of balance.
Presided over by the President of the Chopin institute and their Press Spokesman Aleksander Laskowski who is seen here presenting a portrait of Jed Distler who covered the last Chopin competition for the Gramophone Magazine
Some beautifully measured playing from a student of Robert Prosedda from the Rovigo Conservatory.The students are studying Clementi Sonatas under his guidance and making recordings of the complete 110 Sonatas unjustly neglected in the concert hall .Carlo Alberto has dedicated himself to learning and recording the Sonatas op 1
https://www.youtube.com/live/pAoDYqnb8q4?feature=shared
Concerto di Carlo Alberto Bacchi, pianoforte, con presentazione del CD Piano Classics “Clementi Piano Sonatas op. 1”


https://www.piano-classics.com/articles/c/clementi-sonatas-op1-op1a/




Muzio Clementi (1752-1832):
Sonata op. 1 n. 1
Sonata op. 1 n. 5
Sonata op. 1a n. 2
Sonata op. 1a n. 5


Carlo Alberto Bacchi, nato il 24 marzo 2001, intraprende lo studio del pianoforte all’età di 9 anni con Sara Bertani. Dal 2018 studia con Roberto Prosseda, di cui è attualmente allievo presso il Conservatorio “Francesco Venezze” di Rovigo. Ha partecipato a varie masterclass con maestri quali Carlo Guaitoli, George Vatchnadze, Boris Berman, Bruno Monsaingeon, Roland Poentinen. Ha parallelamente seguito seminari di composizione con Mauro Montalbetti, Elvira Muratore, Richard Danielpour. Sta inoltre frequentando il corso di direzione d’orchestra con Donato Renzetti presso l’Accademia di Alto Perfezionamento di Saluzzo, seguendo anche master classes di direzione con Gyorgy Rath.
È attivo come pianista concertista, sia da solista (in recital e con orchestra), sia in formazioni da camera. Ha suonato per numerosi enti, tra cui il Teatro Comunale di Carpi, Cremona Musica e l’Associazione Venezze di Rovigo. Nel gennaio 2020 è stato protagonista della lezione-concerto “in Itinere” assieme a Roberto Prosseda presso il Teatro Verdi di Pordenone, più volte trasmessa dalla Radio Televisione Italiana.
Il suo primo CD, dedicato alle Sonate op. 1 di Clementi, esce nell’ottobre 2023 per l’etichetta Piano Classics.
Alberto Nosè got his first international recognition at the age of eleven, winning the First Prize at the Jugend für Mozart Music Competition in Salzburg, thanks to which he made his first tour in Italy, Austria and France. Winner of the Piano Masters in Monte Carlo in 2015, Concert Artists Auditions in New York in 2012, Top of the World in Tromsø in 2011 and Paloma O’Shea in Santander in 2005, Maj Lind in Helsinki in 2002, Vendôme Prize in Paris in 2000, Premio Venezia in 1998, other than being laureate at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 2000, he performs in major concert halls all over the world: Carnegie Hall and Kaufman Music Center in New York, Southbank Center and Wigmore Hall in London, Konzerthaus in Berlin, Théâtre du Châtelet and Salle Pleyel in Paris, Mozarteum in Salzburg, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Parco della Musica in Rome. He is regularly invited to important concert seasons in France, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Spain, USA, Mexico, South America, China, Japan and Hong Kong and in the juries of the most prestigious international piano competitions such as the F. Chopin in Warsaw.
I was only able to hear the two transcriptions of songs by Charles Trenet by Alexis Weissenberg, but it was enough to be seduced by ravishing sounds and a sense of style that was ‘old style’ virtuosity. I have heard a lot about Alberto Nosé from his colleagues and am glad to see that they were not exaggerating.Playing of scintillating colour where notes become simply streams of gold and silver sounds of another age.
A fascinating encounter with Andrej Gavrilov,one of the legendary pianist of our time.Presenting his book about his friendship with Sviatoslav Richter he needed no encouraging to tell us about his other passion,that for Bach.He was even persuaded to played some extracts from his well worn ‘Wohltemperierte Klavier’. A pianist who at 18 won the Tchaikowsky Competition which he was ‘persuaded’ to enter by the Minister of Culture,Madame Furtsova,and then his isolation by Leonid Breznev and finally his friendship with Richter.A fascinating story and his infectious passion for Bach ‘almost’ convinced
Andrej Gavrilov with Valentina Lo Surdo (right) and colleague
The indomitable Roberto Prosseda with Angelo Fabbrini and Constantine Sgourdas.
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2021/01/13/roberto-prosseda-pays-tribute-to-the-genius-of-chopin-and-the-inspirational-figure-of-fou-tsong/

Cremona the city of dreams – a global network where dreams become reality

The rebirth of a global network in Cremona -If music be the food of love please please play on

Danieli Longo Benedetti with CA

FESTIVALES DE PIANO, en Cremona Música

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