Padua looking so regal and resplendent in the blazing sunshine today after the downfall yesterday in Padua and Venice – water water everywhere !!!!!

Today not only ablaze with ravishing noble beauty but resounding to the sound of music at the Sala dei Giganti this morning, and the Palazzo Zacco Armeni this afternoon.

Carlo Solinas for the Amici della Musica and Sherri Lun for the Keyboard Trust -Agimus

A Sunday Craft Market outside the hall this morning could have created problems with its street music blaring away at full blast. But inside this historic hall, on Richter’s favourite Steinway piano, there was a pianist of such professional calibre that it would have taken much more than that to disturb his superb music making. Myra Hess springs to mind, with her famous lunchtime concerts in a London under siege from the German bombs overhead, nothing could stop her from sharing her much needed music with others suffering such barbaric onslaughts!

Perfecting his studies with that great trainer of pianists Leonid Magarius ,Carlo Solinas has also been trained in the class of Roberto Cappello and Francesca Costa. All contributing at the age of 25 to a pianist of great stature, a multi prize winner just ready to start a career that will take his music far and wide.

Today the eclectic choice of a real thinking musician . A rarely heard prélude by Lili Boulanger with its delicate kaleidoscope of sounds which were welded together with the XIV contrapunctus from Bach’s Art of Fugue.

An extraordinary fluidity and sense of colour, where every part of this knotty twine was given a voice of its own with a masterly control of sound and aristocratic sense of architectural line.

A change of programme from Mozart’s A minor Sonata to Beethoven’s last sonata that was played with fearless abandon and intelligence. A scrupulous attention to Beethoven’s very meticulous indications but allied to a dynamic energy and fearless drive that brought to mind Perlemuter telling me that it should be like water boiling over at 100 degrees.

It was Perlemuter in 1985 who I brought to this hall, in his 83rd year, to play all the works of Ravel on the this very instrument. Small world!

Filippo Juvarra had dedicated to him and his lifelong companion Joan Flockhart Booth the anniversary concert, last month,of the complete Ravel piano works ,with Jean – Efflam Bavouzet.

Carlo played the opening of op.111 with imperious authority and trills that sparkled like diamonds as the music moved inevitably forward in massive blocks to the final arrival home to C.

It was here that the ‘Allegro con brio’ was tinged with something of the monumental as the blistering drive was conducted with burning intensity and aristocratic authority. Oases of yearning beauty as Beethoven left his energy momentarily spent recuperating his force for the next onslaught of irascible temperament. Carlo played with exactly the fearless recklessness of the final great struggle of a universal genius.

No rallentando at the end as this was an orchestrally conceived arrival where the whole orchestra, completely spent, waited for the glorious final vision of the paradise that Beethoven could see on the horizon . The depth of sound of this piano played its part with a richness in the middle register that just illuminated all that Carlo did with glowing beauty and fluidity .Floating the ‘Arietta’ on this final wave of sounds Carlo played with ravishing beauty and refined delicacy this one of the most beautiful melodies that were to flow from Beethoven’s pen in the last period of his turbulent life.

It is in the late quartets that Beethoven’s soul is laid bare with an inner intensity that is one of the glories of all music.

Carlo conceived this ‘Arietta’ more as song and accompaniment whereas I feel that every note of each chord has a vital and equal importance that can add even more poignancy to this opening. The variations flowed beautifully and it was here that Carlo allowed every note to sing with deeply felt intensity and heartrending authority . The explosive third variations was again played with fearless mastery as it too gradually lay spent. Whispered gasps over a bass that in Carlos masterly hands sounded like the undefined mist that Beethoven obviously intended .A masterly control of pedal and superb technical command allowed this passage to move forward with deathly searing intensity. Leading with gradual insistence to the glorious outpouring of a master who could rejoice in finding his goal.

The magic streams of sound wrapped up in trills that was so much part of this last lost world of Beethoven were played with a mastery as the ‘Arietta’ now appeared on this mystic cloud much as Scriabin a century later was to describe the star that could shine so brightly taking him to a place that only music could describe.

Carlo walked off stage after op. 111 and I was reminded for a moment of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli who playing a benefit concert in the Vatican ( that he did not consider Italy where he vowed never to return after being hounded by the press for presumed and as it turned out false accusation’s of tax evasion ). A rather cold Sala Nervi beautified with greenery in which were hidden crickets who enjoyed rather too much the masters magnificent performance of Beethoven. In the interval the piano was wheeled off stage and we thought, like Carlo today, that music making with such acoustical interference was just not possible. Fabbrini had another piano in the wings for the masters’ ‘Gaspard de La Nuit’ and like Carlo today we were treated to a magnificent second half !

Carlo reappeared and with great sonorous sounds declared battle with the ‘Philistines’ just the other side of the great glass windows that had been taken away to be restored and that allowed such an acoustical intrusion on to the battle field of Giants!

Soon dissolving into the charm and delicacy of Schubert’s ‘ländler’ that Liszt embellishes with a jeux perlé of ravishing seduction and tittivating charm .

Carlo, via his mentor Magarius, is a master of this ‘old style’ pianism of the giants of the Golden age of piano playing of Rosenthal ,Godowsky and of course Horowitz and Cherkassky.

The performances just flowed from Carlo’s well oiled fingers with a mastery that allowed one of Chopin’s greatest masterpieces, the fourth ballade, to continually move forward without any fear that Carlo’s youthful passion and heartrending sentiments could ever meet their match . On occasion Carlo’s passionate intensity and mastery could lead him into hasty moments where maturity will allow the aristocratic control that Rubinstein was to bring in his Indian summer that allowed youthful passion to be tempered with reasoned maturity.

Scriabin’s 5th sonata entered on a whirlwind of demonic sounds immediately diffused by the glowing fragments that were wafted over a cauldron of ever present burning intensity. Fragments that Carlo gradually brought together with masterly musicianship and sense of architectural shape until Scriabin’s star filled this magnificent piano and the ‘Giant’s ‘ hearts with the sounds that only he could possess and the street musicians were left like the poor morsels they obviously were behind the missing glass panes.A hall of such beauty and with perfect acoustic that has seen some of the greatest musicians of our time in the glorious activity directed by Filippo Juvarra and the Amici della Musica, with passion and the discerning taste of a real musicians.

Carlo was now in vein to offer the beautiful Clara Wieck variations that her future husband penned in his Sonata ‘sans orchestre’ op 14

It has long been a specialty of Horowitz and Carlo played it with the same Brahmsian intensity that was part of this trio of Clara ,Robert and Brahms ,musicians united in their love and passion not only for music !

Coming full circle like the great thinking musician that was revealed to us today, Carlo played Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in F minor book one ,with the same same kaleidoscope of colours and intense musicianship with which this voyage of discovery had been shared with a large audience on this Sunday morning in a truly radiant and resplendent Padua .