By Giorgio Di Marzo and Luisa Terzulli
There is an embarrassingly wide choice for the classical music lovers in London! The offer is large and diversified, and also in this field Italy can hold its head high thanks to names such as the Accademia Bizantina, Ivan Fedele, the Trio di Parma, Roberto Abbado and Roberto Plano.
Let’s start with the Barbican Centre, extending on a structure of seven floors in which art and culture in all their expressions live and quiver. The Barbican Centre’s season dedicated to the Great Performers hosted – on 24th November – the Accademia Bizantina from Ravenna directed by Ottavio Dantone, with the counter-tenor Andreas Scholl. The event was sold out, and seeing the hall so crowded is a pleasure for the audience, not only for the artist. Eclectic Ottavio Dantone gives great proof of himself by sitting at the organ while conducting his musicians at the same time; and among the notes by Handel and the cantatas by Bach interpreted by acclaimed Andreas Scholl, the audience seem to hold their breaths not to damage even in the very least the perfection of the performance. “We have lost the oboe”, this way Dantone explains to the audience the temporary departure of the first violin, gone out to call his colleague for the encore. And so I think it is the first time – and in all probability the last one – that I hear an orchestra conductor speaking during a concert.
The Barbican itself would have proved me wrong a few days later, when the BBC Orchestra twisted the mute image of the conductor built in the years. The programme of the orchestra conducted by David Robertson compares two Italian composers: the great Rossini and our contemporary – also present in the hall for the occasion – Ivan Fedele. And it is exactly when introducing Scena, the work by Fedele, that Robertson is prodigal of explanations – like the atypical positioning of the instruments: piano and harp at the centre, percussions disposed in a stereophonic way at the back – using the orchestra to illustrate his presentation, as in front of a crowd of pupils during a music class rather than an audience. With the same enthusiasm and accentuated physicalness conducts the orchestra and the interpreters of the Stabat Mater by Rossini: the delightful voices of Patricia Bardon (mezzo-soprano) and Majella Miles (soprano), and the intense timbres of Colin Lee (tenor) and Alastair Miles (bass).
On stage at the Wigmore Hall, instead, was the Trio di Parma, with whom we have also had the pleasure to have a chat (the interview will be published on our website). With the Trio (Ivan Rabaglia at the violin, Enrico Bronzi at the cello and Alberto Miodini at the pianoforte) we have talked about art, music, and about the satisfaction of having the chance to play in a place like the Wigmore Hall. Immersed in the beauty of that same hall, on 28th November the Trio di Parma gave life again to the trio for pianoforte by Beethoven and, in the second part of the concerto, by Tchaikovsky. In the performance of the great composers the art of the great interpreters takes shape, and that is how these three young and established musicians did not perform but lived Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, even more intense exactly because less imposing than an orchestra.
There is Italian atmosphere at the Queen Elizabeth Hall too, where 7th December was the day of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. The Orchestra presented themselves to the second appointment of the 2006 Silver Jubilee Season at the Queen Elizabeth Hall under the conduction of Roberto Abbado. Under his guidance the evening glided away on the notes of two Italian composers, attached to their background even in the way of composing – what would have been later defined as Italian symphony – untied from the canons imposed by the Viennese classics: we are talking about Luigi Cherubini and Goffredo Detrassi. In the second half was Beethoven instead, with his 7th Symphony, to be entrusted to the masterly instruments of the great Orchestra, to conclude a music appointment of a very high-level quality.
Again at the Wigmore Hall, on 14th December, we had the pleasure to listen to the virtuous pianist Roberto Plano, at his first performance ever in London, who delighted the audience with Schubert and Liszt. Gifted with absolute ear – that consists in being able to recognise, thanks to a mix of innateness and education to hearing and musical faculty, the pitch of the notes heard and in the capability to identify them by name and possibly transcribe them in the correct tonality – after having won the Canada’s Honens International Piano Competition – one of the most important prizes in the world, held every three years – and having had great success in Canada and United States, Roberto comes back to Europe for a series of concerts. To be noted how, despite the many international engagements, he is part of the Italian Pianists National Football Team that will soon meet the Italian Priests National Football Team in the province of Milan for a match, the takings of which will be handed over to charity: Roberto is not only a great pianist but also a great man.
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