The Al Bustan International Festival of Music and Performing Arts, the Italian Embassy in Lebanon, the Italian Cultural Institute and the CIDIM (Suono Italiano project) present the renowned pianist Giuseppe Andaloro in a recital that will span three centuries of the history and evolution of music.
Heir to the piano tradition of Giuseppe Fiorentino and winner of prestigious international competitions such as the Ferruccio Busoni, the London Piano Competition, the Sendai International Piano Competition, the Porto and Hong Kong International Piano Competitions, Andaloro stands out for his wide repertoire and his mastery of interpretation, particularly of the Russian masters.
The program:
FRESCOBALDI: Partita sopra l’aria di follia [7 min.]
BACH/BUSONI: Chaconne in D minor from the Violin Partita BWV 1004 [16 min.]
LISZT: Hungar:ian Rhapsody No.12 [10 min.]
RACHMANINOV: Piano Sonata No.1 in D Minor Op.28 [39 min.]
- Allegro moderato
- Lento
- Allegro molto
About the program:
During the 15th and 16th centuries, the production of instrumental music was essentially divided between dance, music and compositions inspired by the voice. At the end of the 16th century, however, there was a gradual but definitive emancipation from the forms of the past. The aim was to highlight the timbral, harmonic and melodic characteristics of the various instruments. The first piece proposed by Andaloro transcends epochs and extends the expressive possibilities to a contemporary instrument, the modern piano, following the tendency of composers of the time who often conceived their works as “sonatas for all kinds of instruments”. Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583 – 1643), a great virtuoso on the organ and a brilliant composer, was one of the first to assert a free and virtuoso form, capable of introducing other compositions, made up of musical designs of an improvisatory nature, designed to enhance the skill and technical ability of the performer.
In Bach’s Chaconne for solo violin, Busoni manages to treat the sound in an organistic way. This ‘treatment’ in the transition from violin to piano was not seen by Busoni as a constraint, because of two ‘truths’ that he had learnt precisely from the lesson of Bach’s transcriber: ‘that good, great, ‘universal’ music remains the same whatever the medium through which it is made to be heard’; ‘that different media have a different language (their own peculiar one) with which they communicate this music in a way that is always a little different’. Moreover, the supreme German composer appeared to Busoni as an author who “would prefer to be able to write pure notes, regardless of the means of execution, which in reality could be whatever one wanted with Bach”.
With the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12, one suddenly finds oneself in the streets listening to the gypsy orchestras of the past. Liszt himself declared that he wanted to offer ‘a kind of national epic of Gypsy music’. Liszt’s brilliant concert virtuosity and sound inventions dominate.
An expressive introduction, which ends with a serene chant, gives way to a gypsy allegro that lightens the timbre and hints at the mechanical accompaniment of a small dance orchestra; virtuosity (repeated notes and rapid passages in the high notes) relieves the gypsy music of its material and naïve weight. A more melodic theme reminiscent of a traditional song is interrupted by a trembling tremolo that introduces an energetic theme called Quasi marcia. The second part is announced by a high trill on which a graceful melody is grafted. The final stretto, introduced by arpeggios in the left hand, is a brilliant rush of rapid notes in an overwhelming crescendo.
Sergei Rachmaninov’s Sonata in D minor, which lasts about forty minutes, rivals Liszt’s in technical difficulty and is therefore rarely performed. Composed during a sojourn in Dresden in 1906 and subsequently revised several times, the Sonata was first performed in Moscow on 17 October 1908 by Constantin Igumnov. Rachmaninov wrote: ‘This work is wild by nature, like infinity. The basic idea consists of two opposing characters who refer to a literary subject, Faust. Of course, I have not written program music in the strict sense of the word, although the meaning of the sonata can be better understood by keeping this theme in mind. No one would ever dare to perform such a work because it is too difficult, too long and musically discontinuous. I was tempted to plan a symphony, but this proved impossible because the motif is typically pianistic”.
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