I stumbled purely by chance on the Fidelio Café some years ago. I had heard about this café opposite the Italian Church in Camberwell and ventured in to meet the founder and guiding light of a place where culture reigns. Pages from scores adorned the walls. The Hammerklavier adorning the walls of the rest room as great pianists of the past and original programmes filled the spaces on the walls to the most sumptuous green room I have ever seen. I offered to move in immediately ! I have since heard miracles from Fillipo Gorini, hardly known in the UK but revered like Richard Goode elsewhere. Jonathan Ferrucci launching his masterly Bach CD’s and his mentor Angela Hewitt playing Brahms with the café’s resident orchestra. Imogen Cooper is regularly seen as is Steven Isserlis both also heard in this shrine of culture that is a true oasis of the senses. Refined menus adorn the programmes that include Beethoven Diabelli, Schubert Impromptus, Bach Goldbergs etc etc ……….For this is a place where quality counts more than quantity and is a rarity indeed where the box office reigns supreme over any other consideration. Raffaello has left his career with Morgan Chase and with a PhD in Mathematics he has hung up this hat and follows his passion.He is indeed a Renaissance Man. ‘Chapeau’
Culminating last night in a fearless performance of Mahler’s 6th not only rehearsing but also minutes before the actual performance conducting a conversation with two renowned experts about the order of the movements and that great hammer that Mahler uses in the last movement and much of the deep significance of Mahler. A conversation entitled : ‘ Dealing with the Tragic in life : Mahler,Judaism and beyond ‘ with Edward Seckerson ,Anthony Freud and Raffaello himself – conducting the conversation as he did his performance without the score, the ninety minutes of this monumental work that is locked deep in his soul.
A work that for me that has a great significance as it was the music chosen by the director Edmo Fenoglio for our production of O’Neil’s ‘Mourning becomes Electra’ with my wife Ileana Ghione who some years later was to be struck down on the stage of her own theatre in Rome whilst playing Euripides’s Electra.
No idea where Raffaello’s burning passion will lead him next but I will follow blindly knowing that it is a very rare wind that is blowing through London at the moment.
