Padua today is resounding with music played by young musicians at the start of their careers.
The opening season of the Pomeriggi Musicali series for Agimus at four and the eleven o’clock opening season of the Domenica in Musica Series that the genial Artistic director Filippo Juvarra has envisioned over the past 33 years to give a platform to young winners of major Italian competitions.

https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2022/07/15/two-young-giants-cross-swords-in-verbier-giovanni-bertolazzi-and-nikita-lukinov
Giovanni Bertolazzi had played in Padua last month ( https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/12/13/giovanni-bertolazzi-homage-to-zoltan-kocis-a-giant-returns-to-celebrate-a-genius/) and Nikita Lukinov invited by the Keyboard Trust ( https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2023/11/07/nikita-lukinov-at-the-national-liberal-club-a-supreme-stylist-astonishes-and-seduces/) will play for Agimus in Padua for Elia Modenese later today ( and Monday at the Ritz Abano Terme) he will also play in the Teatro Comunale in Vicenza on Tuesday where Jakob Aumiller had recently been awarded first prize in the 12th edition of the Lamberto Brunelli Competition in the historic Teatro Olimpico of Vicenza.It was as winner of that competition that he was asked to open the season today.A very tall young man trained at the conservatory in Trento and headed he tells me to complete his studies in America.

The distinguished professor of piano at the Padua Conservatory Lorella Ruffin (the mother of Leonora Armellini) was also with us today to applaud this young musician.
An almost full hall in this historic Sala dei Giganti where the true star is a piano the like of which I have never heard before.Kept in trim by that magician Zanta it was the preferred piano of Richter on which he would often prepare his programmes for his recordings in the historic Teatro Bibiena in Mantova where he was obliged to play the Yamaha that was to follow him wherever he went in the last years of his life.

Perlemuter had played here too in 1983 when Filippo rang me up to ask if this great pianist of whom Italy had only read about in books would play in Padua in his season.

Vlado Perlemuter and the inseparable Joan became friends after his debut in the Ghione theatre and then in Padua and Filippo or I would accompany them around Italy to play until his 90th year!
https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2017/12/19/in-praise-of-joan-2/
I was backstage in the Wigmore Hall at the last concert he gave in a long and difficult career .Joan was with me and I was left holding Vlado’s stick as he raced onto the platform (thus allieviating his ‘guillotine syndrome’ from which he had suffered all his long life) to play the Chopin Four Ballades for the last time.

Jakob from the very first notes of Scriabin’s Fifth Sonata revealed his artistry and mastery in a performance of dynamic drive and subtle sense of colour.A fluidity of whispered beauty contrasting with a dynamic almost diabolical rhythmic energy with his fiery temperament allowed full reign.A youthful passion where on occasion his heart took over from his head and we momentarily lost the sense of line that pervades all of Scriabin’s subtly perfumed sound world.The deep bass notes of this magnificent instrument were merely touched by Jakob’s sensitive hands and just opened up the sonorities adding ever more luminosity to this magic world of colour.

Let me just say that Jakob is more a Brahms man than Beethoven and it was the youthful Brahms Scherzo op 4 that gave us today one of the finest performances I have ever heard of a work unjustly neglected in the concert hall (It was the work that preceded the oft over played F minor Sonata op 5!).Jakob gave a performance of style and colour but also of precision and dynamic drive.There was a great sense of character that he brought to each of the contrasting episodes with orchestral colour and an architectural line that gave an orchestral strength to this youthful work.There was a rhythmic drive that did not exclude moments of repose before bursts of dynamic energy.The opening motif was played with a precision and weight that was to be the hallmark of this remarkable performance.

Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata almost justifies Delius’s rather clever dismissal of Beethoven as being all scales and arpeggios! It is of all the middle sonatas the one that requires an unrelenting sense of drive with a rhythmic precision of Swiss manufacture.Jakob gave a fine performance but his sense of style and musicality was added to a performance where weight and Toscanini style precision should have been the sine qua non of this extraordinarily energetic and virtuosistic work.The slow movement – the introduction to the Rondo – was played too delicately and beautifully as was the Rondo theme that is transformed so magically from the last note of the introduction.It was played with a beauty that was on the surface and not deep down in the very roots of these miraculous almost orchestral outpourings of Schubertian mellifluous beauty.The tempestuous episodes were played with the precision and drive that the Rondo theme lacked.The coda was played at a very fast pace but there were moments when the energy sagged as he tried to make Beethoven’s arpeggios too beautiful instead of bursting with energy.The first movement Allegro con brio was played at a speed that he managed to maintain without having to slow down for the second subject but was just too fast for the intricate weaving around the second subject to be anything but atmospheric.

Anyone who had heard Serkin play this work will never forget his burning energy and drive and a coda played at the same breakneck speed of Jakob but without conceding any stylistic smoothing out of Beethoven’s rough edges.Not only Serkin was exhausted after such a performance but we,the audience,were too!
The silences in Beethoven are so important and full of energy as Alim Beisembayev showed us the other day in London with an Appassionata ( the twin of the Waldstein ) in which the silences created the energy for what came immediately afterwards.( https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2024/01/06/alim-beisembayev-at-the-wigmore-hall-bewitched-and-enriched-by-the-man-on-the-high-wire/).
However it was a fine if rather immature performance that with his exciting studies that he said were in view in America will add weight and depth to his already quite considerable talent.
Three Etudes Tableaux op 39 by Rachmaninov closed the programme and showed to the full Jakob’s kaleidoscopic sense of colour and passionate commitment together with a technical mastery that brought these miniature tone poems vividly to life.

The first in E flat minor was played with searing intensity and a dynamic range that was remarkable.Helped by this magnificent instrument the return of the theme in the tenor register with tumultuous accompaniments above and below was breathtaking in it’s youthful passionate commitment.The whispered ending just prepared us for the beauty of the study in C minor where the melodic line was allowed to float with such ravishing beauty on a wave of mellifluous changing harmonies.Even an unexpected tumultuous interruption was incorporated into a picture that Jakob knew how to share with us.The final call to arms of the D major etude showed off the technical mastery and passion that this young man was able to convey as the chimes of the great bell tower nearby began striking the hour.(Filippo always advises the artists to finish just before midday to their peril ).
A mystery encore had us all trying to guess who the composer could be of this beautiful harp like salon piece .Was in Sinding,Grieg,Chaminade or even early Debussy?
The riddle was solved in the Green Room afterwards and it turned out to be an early Prelude from the pieces op 12 by Prokofiev!
It was played with the charm,colour and natural musicianship that had been the hallmark of this very talented young artist.