Antonin Dvorak: Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major Op. 81, B. 155
Johannes Brahms: Piano Quartet No.1 in G Minor, Op. 25
Franz Schubert: Piano Quintet in A Major, D. 667 (The Trout)
Teachers:
Andrea Lucchesini: Piano
Franco Petracchi: Piano
Sonig Tchakerian: Violin
Ivan Rabaglia: Violin
Students:
Pasquale Allegretti Gravina: Violin
Gabriele Antinoro: Violin
Sara Mazzarotto: Violin
Tommaso Troisi: Violin
Giovanni Mancini: Viola
Lorenzo Meraviglia: Viola
Matteo Mizera: Viola
Daniele Valabrega: Viola
Francesco Angelico: Cello
Christian Barraco: Cello
Filippo Boldrini: Cello
Ludovica Cordova: Cello
Emanuele Crucianelli: Cello
Nicola Giacomelli: Piano
Dimitri Malignan: Piano
Rodolphe Menguy: Piano
Francesco Maria Navelli: Piano
Springtime, along with its longer and warmer days has arrived in Rome, and while the city has been frantically and often annoyingly trying to get ready for the jubilee next year (There were 6,702 work sites in early February, and while some have ended, others have popped up), it is still a wonderful time to be here, provided that unpredictable bouts of rain and predictable hordes of tourists do not spoil la dolce vita.
My concert schedule has been kind of dormant lately, mostly because the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, which is basically Rome’s classical music home team, has been spending time in Salzburg for Easter and not much else has been happening, except for the variously talented but invariably indefatigable buskers regularly performing at the numerous landmarks all over the city.
And then, earlier last week, just as I was walking by the quiet Auditorium Parco della Musica feeling rather desperate, I noticed a poster advertising a chamber music marathon featuring works by Schumann, Dvorak, Brahms, and Schubert in memory of Alfonso Guedin at 6:00 PM the following Sunday in the Sala Petrossi. I had no idea who Alfonso Guedin was, or where the Sala Petrossi was, but I was more than ready to partake in the tribute to him.
I soon found out though, that Alfonso Guedin was a beloved violinist and violist teacher with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, who also led an illustrious career as a violist with the Academia’s orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai. He passed away in 2022, and Sunday’s concert would be the second one featuring teachers and students of the Accademia playing together in various combinations to honor him.
So, on Sunday, as if to conclude a splendid and busy weekend on a high note, I had my first foray into Parco della Musica’s Sala Petrassi, which turned out to be a sleek-looking and acoustically blessed medium-sized concert hall, which kind of reminded me of Carnegie Hall’s intimate and oh so cool Zankel Hall. I was even handed a program upon arrival, which is a very unusual thing in Europe, where you have to pay for them, but hey, I did not question the favor and happily grabbed it.
As we were already running slightly late, the Academia’s president showed up and introduced the event, paid a short tribute to Alfonso Guedin, and a lengthy tribute to retiring maestro Franco Petracchi, an eminent—and very talkative—double bass player with particularly enduring ties with the Academia, who would be playing his penultimate concert on Sunday for Schubert’s irresistible Trout. Not a bad way to wrap up his long and prestigious career in the Eternal City.
Eventually, 20 minutes after the official start time, the marathon was finally kicked off with Schumann’s ground-breaking Piano Quintet in E-Flat Major, Op. 44. Indeed, it looks like, amazingly enough, nobody had seriously thought of combining piano and string quartet before. And then, in 1842, not only did Schumann decide he was game for experimenting with it, but he also ended up writing one of chamber music’s most brilliant compositions at an astonishing speed. The musicians on the stage were apparently as excited to play it as we were to hear it, and the marathon was off to an excellent start.
After sliding down a few seats to escape the fidgety young girl behind me (Note to parents: If you’ve undertaken the laudable mission of introducing your unprepared child to classical music, an extended chamber music performance is not a good place to start), I had the ideal spot to fully enjoy the stunning opening line coming from the cello in Dvorak’s Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major Op. 81, B 155, as well as the impressive remainder of the highly melodic, perfectly balanced, and boldly wide-ranging piece. The Czech composer may have been the least exalted name on the program, but this quintet clearly stood second to none.
After a well-deserved intermission and a partial exodus of the audience, the second half of the marathon started with Brahms’ Piano Quartet No.1 in G Minor, Op. 25, another widely acknowledged masterpiece of the genre. On Sunday, however, it distinguished itself not only for its well-known ambition, magnificence, and scope, although all of them were on full and dazzling display, but also because for the first time in all my decades of concert-going, I saw somebody actually talk on their phone during the performance. The incident was short and discreet, the culprit quickly switching to texting (One has to be grateful for the little favors), but it still felt like a new low in concert behavior had been reached.
And then came Schubert’s The Trout, whose unusual instrumentation consisting of piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass would finally give us the opportunity to hear Franco Petracchi do this thing before he hangs up his double bass for good. Composed by the young city-dwelling Schubert as he was discovering and delighting in the joys of summer in the countryside, the ever-popular classic never fails to bring a breath of fresh air into stuffy concert halls. The dynamic take on it that filled the Sala Petrassi on Sunday evening did the trick once again, and also critically helped the audience members still in the race make it to the finish line in about three hours, which is incidentally and by far my best marathon time ever.
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