The highlight of the Cremona Musica Experience was the award to Bruno Canino for a life dedicated to music with the same humility, simplicity and burning passion that Angelo Fabbrini also still has. Both in their 90’s with a voyage of discovery that continues unabated to this day.
Angelo spoke of his friend Bruno Canino who he has heard in the greatest theatres in the world, large and small, always playing with a passion for everyone where music reaches the heart.
Not just in the great centres but also in the smallest towns where music is rarely heard. A social service taking music to places that have never known music, playing with the same love and passion for everyone, with humility and simplicity.
This is what we call Art and true love for Art .
This was spoken with the passion and conviction of a great man who has never sought fame or fortune but has worked steadily to give the possibility to artists to excel, eliminating the barrier between the instrument and the public. On wings of song indeed, celebrated in the city where great artisans have made Cremona what it is today. Sharing his love and passion with his lifelong colleague and friend Bruno Canino with simplicity, humility and burning conviction!
A lesson for us all in this world where quantity takes precedence of quality.
The day had started for me with the recital by Massimo Urban ‘Onde di Passione’. A programme that included Schumann Sonata op 11, ‘Une Barque sur l’Océan’ from Ravel’s Miroirs and the Liszt Second Rhapsody with Urban’s own cadenza. An encore brought another composition by this genial artist with a movement from his own piano suite.
I only caught the final bars of the Schumann but heard enough to realise what passion and conviction this young man now brings to his music making. An enormous technical baggage that he has acquired from that master trainer of the keyboard Vincenzo Balzani, silver is now being turned into gold. Some very eloquent introductions in no way prepared us for such mastery. Ravel, that for me was a little too agitated, but this was masterly playing of burning conviction that won me over with the final ravishing notes. Liszt was a ‘tour de force’, not only of masterly playing but also of the style and fearless abandon that illuminated this well worn war horse. Even his cadenza was refreshingly full of colour and fantasy before linking up to Liszt’s final blast of octaves with a scintillating brilliant ending of dynamic flourishes.
I had heard Massimo Urban play in Florence two years ago and it is wonderful to see how his artistry and musical curiosity is maturing as the world awaits all that such an eclectic master musician has to offer.
What a choice I had to make or ‘Timeless Chopin’ with Luigi Carroccia playing op 11 or a homage to that very private and unassuming master, Sergio Cafaro, by two of his past students, Roberto Prosseda and Francisco Libetta?
As it turned out I was able to enjoy both!
I had heard Luigi recently play the Chopin concertos in the amphitheatre of Minturno in this same chamber formation. I had also heard him play them with full orchestra in the beautiful Sala Accademica in Rome , conducted by that genial musician Luigi Piovano in the presence of Luigi’s mentor Louis Lortie.
Chopin’s Bel Canto is in someway enhanced by this chamber ensemble especially when they are not playing in the open air, as in Luigi’s Festival in Minturno, but creating an intimate atmosphere of sublime beauty around this magnificent Fazioli Concert piano. Luigi playing with masterly weight and subtle style where his long fingers seemed to draw the sounds out of the keys with bird like beauty. Hovering above the keys with the hand gently swooping in on the keys with the beautiful natural movements of a master painter and the strokes of the brush on his canvas.
Each of the players were masters in their own right and I only realised afterwards that they were being formed, or do I mean transformed, at the magnificent Stauffer Academy, where I had been with Midori the evening before. I have never seen players looking at each other with such burning intensity and anticipation, waiting to see which way they would turn on their voyage of discovery together. Salvatore Emanuel Borelli’s viola later substituting the horn call with ravishing beauty ( in n. 2) and even the second violin of Samuele Di Gioia playing with unusual intensity that matched his partner Ilaria Taioli’s masterly playing. Double bass and ‘cello side by side ,Caterina Vannoni and Edoardo Dolci ,how beautiful to see ,especially in Cremona, the wonderful autumnal colours of such instruments and to see with what artistry they were being allowed to sing.
Luigi sharing the platform with Francesca Antonucci who would play the second concerto in the afternoon.
At the end of the first concerto there was such an overwhelming ovation in a hall I have rarely seen so full , that Luigi played the opening of the Larghetto of the second concerto as an encore.
The second concerto op 21 is shorter than the more brilliant first op 11 and although actually written one before the other, the concerto op 21 is, like Chopin’s late Barcarolle op 60, an outpouring of Bel Canto, from the first to the last notes. It was this element of song and youthful delicacy that Francesca Antonucci was able to bring to her performance in a hall even more full this afternoon.
Word had obviously spread of the wonders that were unfolding in the Fazioli Hall or could it have been that some even wanted to celebrate Francesca’s 21st birthday! A remarkable performance of a pianist only a few years older than Chopin would have been as he astonished his Parisian public with Schumann pronouncing on his arrival from Poland: ‘Hats off,Gentlemen, a Genius’. Playing of delicacy and beauty as the Bel Canto was allowed to unfold with the same love and care with which it had been penned.
Now a rush to hear Roberto himself at the helm with Francesco Libetta.I was just in time to catch the duet that Cafaro had written and which they had played in the Teatro Ghione nearly thirty years ago to celebrate Sergio Cafaro’s 80th birthday .
A fantasy on Bizet’s Carmen of genial invention and Victor Borge enticement. Francesco had given a talk and recital :’ Sergio Cafaro and the Piano in Rome in the second Half of the Twentieth Century’ with music by Porena,Cafaro,d’Avalos,Marinuzzi,Battiato and Capograsso.
I was glad to see such a distinguished audience and arrived just in time to see two ex students of the Cafaro’s together at the keyboard. Reminding all of us, who had been in Rome in that period ,what selfless musicians we had as our friends and mentors.
Cafaro and Mimi lived just behind the theatre and Sergio would often pop in to discuss programmes he would like to play for us, in between collecting insects and painting quite beautiful watercolours.Sergio gave me one of his watercolours, ‘La Cathedral Engloutie’. I had no idea that there was a paining on the back too until Mimi told me Sergio would often do that, when I encountered Mimi after Sergio’s death at student concerts of the Prize winners of the competition in Sergio’s memory that she had organised annually in Rome.
At one of the finalist concerts in the Sala Accademica of S. Cecilia in Rome ,there was a magnificent Steinway on stage but to my surprise Paolo Fazioli was in the front row. When I asked Mimi about this anomaly she explained that Paolo,who came from a cabinet maker family, had been her student whilst studying engineering at Rome University. Not destined for a concert career she advised him to go away and make pianos instead of breaking them !!!!! Ing Paolo denies all knowledge of this remark but then anyone who knew the Cafaro’s would know that their innocent indiscretions could be very revealing !
The penultimate recital was a breathtaking event of monumental playing by an artist I had heard a year ago in London .
Tamta Magradze from ‘Liszt to Liszt’ with a programme that would have scared the life out of most pianists, but not this young lady who attacked the piano like the Lioness she truly is. Completely in a world of her own as she played with wondrous beauty and mastery:Liszt ‘Sarabande and Chaconne aus Singspiel Amida’ and the ‘Grosses Konzertsolo.’ As a filler a wondrously beautiful and etherial Franck /Bauer ‘Prelude, Fugue and Variation’, two demonic Rachmaninov ‘Études Tableaux’ op 39 n. 1 and 2 and an astonishing performance of Ravel’s own transcription of ‘La Valse’. I had intended to listen to part of this recital before slipping off to hear the genial pianist Vincenzo Maltempo with ‘The Strange Case of Charles Valentin Alkan – Life and Works of a Forgotten Genius’. Programmed at the same time, but on listening to the opening of the Franck from Tamta ,like the Pied Piper I was attracted ever closer to this powerful instrument to be near the origin of such wonders.
Sorry to have missed Alkan who will have to stay in oblivion for me for a bit longer but this hypnotic playing was too good to miss.
Actually Mark Viner is recording all the works of Alkan and is already at his 8th CD . https://christopheraxworthymusiccommentary.com/2020/11/15/mark-viner-at-st-marys-faustian-struggles-and-promethean-prophesis/
I am an assiduous follower of his and have been curious about Alkan ever since I was in London when Raymond Lewenthal brought the world of Alkan and Liszt to the Wigmore Hall in what are now considered landmark, legendary performances.
Just one more event to go, and what a discovery to find Carlo Grante seated at the practice piano as he prepared to perform Prokofiev 7th Sonata on the Disklavier, and to hear his performance played back in ghostly form with Carlo himself seated not at the piano but in the audience!
Carlo Grante who as a student would come to the Ghione theatre and offer us not one but a series of concerts that were so interesting and played with such mastery that we could never resist. He recorded all 550 Scarlatti Sonatas and I gave one of the CD’s to Peter Frankl who immediately wrote to Carlo to express his admiration for his playing and scholarship.
One of the most remarkable musicians I know, he even penned a short description of what my wife and I were trying to do at the Ghione theatre in the 80’s and 90’s when it became the cultural centre of Rome.
We had invited him to came back home with us on New Years to celebrate with the fireworks that we could see from our house on top of Monte Parioli. This was after a performance in the theatre of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Importance of being Ernest’, that we had produced and toured for twenty one years all over Italy. My wife, Ileana Ghione, I had persuaded, on the wave of Peter Hall’s persuasion with Judy Dench at the National, to play the character part of Lady Bracknell.
I managed to hear Carlo play with his usual undiminished mastery but I could not stay for the play back as I could not miss Canino and Fabbrini even for Carlo!
Now to let my hair down for a surprise dinner engagement with Pasquale Evangelista e Eleonora Crivelli two musicians transferred to Cremona from Latina. I had met Pasquale at Angel Hewitt’s masterclass a few years ago when she was so pleased that someone had presented the Ballade by Fauré that she had even recorded three times but is still rare to see on concert programmes.Eleonora’s father is the well known composer and actor Carlo Crivelli
Pasquale a student of François-Joël Thiollier in Paris now, and Eleonora in her final year reading Musicology at University . The surprise they had in store for me was a visit to that jewel, in the land of Verdi. that is Busseto, and dinner at the salumeria which Verdi himself used to frequent .
A poster of Bergonzi reminded me that Carlo Bergonzi had made his final appearance aged 75 at the Ghione Theatre when even he was surprised at the voice that he could still produce. A programme for ‘La Barcaccia’ on the radio.I had a video camera on too as he sang ‘Non ti scordà di me’ with Vincenzo Scalera at the piano. I had arranged flowers to shower down for this last time from the gallery and cover this legendary figure with the blooms he truly deserved. He had no idea the voice would open up for this last time and my video was proudly shown at Madison Square Garden for the celebration of his 40th anniversary at the Met. Small world, but what a joy to he who surrenders his life to the wonders that music can reveal.
Canino and Fabbrini are of course in our hearts and minds today at the end of these wondrous three days in a City where dreams really do become reality .
ChristopherAxworthy-MusicCommentary 