Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia - Brahms & Dvorak - 03/14/26

Johannes Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Opus 83 

Antonin Dvorak: Symphony No. 7 in D Minor, Opus 70 

Conductor: Daniel Harding 

Piano: Daniil Trifonov 

Life has been good for classical music lovers in Rome lately, as one week after Chinese fearless maverick Yuja Wang’s dynamite performance, the unflappable Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia was getting ready for Russian old soul Daniil Trifonov, who was going to tackle no less than Brahms’ epic Piano Concerto No. 2. The occasion would also incidentally be a very exciting wrap-up of my attendance at the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone since my Roman stay is slowly coming to an end. 

But then all hell kind of broke loose earlier in the week, when I had to give up my original plan (and the good seat that was going with it) to attend the Thursday night concert due to a frustrating combination of temporary lower back pain and truly apocalyptic weather. Add to that the exasperating finickiness of TicketOne’s website when I tried to buy another ticket on Friday (the 13th!) for the Saturday evening concert, and it is easy to see why just getting to the packed Sala Santa Cecilia in relatively good shape and in mild weather—and with a hard-earned digital ticket—already felt like a small victory of sorts even before the music began. 

While I confess that I have always been partial to the youthful élan and intense drama of his Piano Concerto No. 1, I will also readily admit that Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto Ni. 2, which he completed 22 years after the first one, shows the kind of complexity, breadth and poise that can only come with experience. On Saturday evening, Trifonov handled the sprawling piece with utmost knowledge and commitment, knowing exactly when to let blazing virtuosic sparks fly off and when to exercise an eloquent restraint, and delivered an awe-inspiring performance. 

While the entire journey was magnificent, I must single out the stunning Andante, whose gorgeous theme by the cello first discreetly loomed in exquisite simplicity before slowly leisurely coming into full bloom with a little help from the piano and its splendid ornamental flourishes. This was the undisputed highlight of the evening, the kind of extraordinary moment that feels suspended in time and leaves one at a loss for words once back to reality, not only for me but also for many others considering the eventual thunderous round of applause dedicated to solo cellist Luigi Piovano. 

Amazingly enough, even after this marathon, and with quite a bit of insistence on our part, Trifonov came back with a thoughtfully introspective encore that shall regrettably remain unknown to me. 

After intermission, the originally packed concert hall showed a few empty seats, including the woman to my left, who had clearly come for Trifonov and apparently figured that things could not get any better. In fact, they did not, but then again, how could they? I cannot say that I am a die-hard Dvorak fan, but I am happy I stayed for his Symphony No. 7, which turned out to be a very pleasant tribute to Czech music, not to mention that having a work by Brahms’ number one fan, mentee and friend kind of made sense at this point. The orchestra responded very well to their newish music director—and conductor for the evening—Daniel Harding, and their energized performance of the richly colorful score put a satisfying end to my Roman music season.

Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia - Debussy, Barber & Prokofiev - 03/07/26

Claude Debussy: La mer 

Samuel Barber: Piano Concerto, Opus 38 

Sergei Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Opus 16 

Conductor: Eric Jacobsen 

Piano and conductor: Yuja Wang 

Superstar pianist Yuja Wang is one of those musicians that I simply cannot miss whenever they come around my neck of the woods, so I was understandably thrilled when I noticed that she would be joining the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome’s Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone last week, while I was still living a few-minute walk from it. And although I did not even particularly care what she would be playing, I was ecstatically happy to find out that it would be a composition by Prokofiev and eagerly planned to resuming my early Saturday evening residency with the orchestra. 

And then last week, on the appointed day and time, an unknown gentleman came onto the stage with a mike, which rarely spells good news. And sure enough, he started by telling us that Wang had woken up with a 39-degree fever that morning, which prompted a collective murmur of concern throughout the concert hall, although it was not entirely clear if the audience was more worried about her compromised well-being or her possible absence from the stage. However, before we got to dwell on it, he went on and said that Wang, being the ultimate professional in addition to a genuinely generous person, would be playing after all, and he just wanted to thank her publicly. Whew! 

He also let us know that the order of the program, which had already been changed a few weeks earlier due to the original conductor’s illness and now included a work by Barber, had been shuffled so that she would have more time to prepare, which was fair enough with us as long as we got to hear our girl. 

So our concert started with La Mer by Claude Debussy, who called it “three symphonic sketches” and adamantly refused to describe it as “impressionistic”, a term that he whole-heartedly scorned, but pretty much everybody else agreed on. In any case, the work is a wonderful evocation of the ever-changing nature of the sea by a composer who was deeply in love with it, never mind that he was getting his inspiration mostly from paintings. On Saturday night, the large orchestra delivered a particularly soulful, delicately contrasting interpretation under the precise baton of Eric Jacobsen, a face I recognized from The Knights and Brooklyn Riders back in New York City. Ah, memories… 

But let’s face it, we were all there to see and hear Yuja Wang, and the packed audience went bonkers when she finally appeared, her petite silhouette complete with her signature impeccable bob cut, tight-fitting white mini-dress and vertiginously high Louboutin shoes. She did not let the rock star welcome get to her head though, and while she may have slightly teetered on her way to the piano (Who would not on those heels?), there was no question that she was in complete possession of herself once she had gotten situated in front of the keyboard and down to business. 

I had never heard Samuel Barber’s reputedly thorny Piano Concerto, Op. 38 before, and I obviously could not have dreamed of better company for my first encounter with it. The heroic duel between the fearless solo piano and the powerful large orchestra was a loud, occasionally uneasy, affair, but warmth and lyricism were never far beneath the rough surface. And there was of course plenty of acrobatic virtuosity flying from pianist’s hands, on which I happened to have a direct view. Feverish or not, the irrepressible miss Wang was hot, hot, hot! 

After intermission, Wang came back wearing a tight-fitting red dress as well as the double hat of soloist and conductor since Jacobsen, who had gamely filled in for the ailing Teodor Currentzis until then, was not familiar with the piece, but she serendipitously was. That said, aside from the all-important downbeat and a few fleeting moments, she never got around to conducting that much anyway as she kept incredibly busy dealing with Sergei Prokofiev’s formidable Piano Concerto No. 2, so formidable, in fact, that even Martha Argerich would not dare to give it a try. 

But then again, there are probably very few things that Wang and her well-known penchant for making the impossible possible would not dare to give a try to, and Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2 is not one of them, which was very fortunate for us. The technically brilliant performance was also an absolute blast, proving one more time that bold modernity and unabashed fun are not mutually exclusive. In Wang’s magical hands, the music came out exceptionally bold and playful, grotesque and romantic, exacting and colorful. And the ovation was thunderous. Again. 

After such an intensely satisfying evening, we would have all been happy to call it a night. But the unstoppable dynamo who once treated the stunned audience to seven encores at Carnegie Hall had another plan for us, poor health be damned. She eventually came back for three encores, including a devilishly irresistible Precipitato from Prokofiev’s Sonata n. 7. In the end, as we were all walking down the stairs on our way out, I could overhear a woman behind me raving non-stop to her friend about Wang’s “bravura” and “virtuosità”, and I could not have agreed more.

Quatuor Ébène - All-Beethoven - 03/04/26

Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 18, No. 2 

Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet No. 16 in F Major, Op. 135 

Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131 

One of the very few advantages of getting older is to be able to look back and reflect (Moreover, let’s face it, looking forward is kind of depressing these days). And that’s exactly what I was doing last Wednesday night in the medium-sized Sala Sinapoli of the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone as I was eagerly waiting for the all-French Quatuor Ébène to appear. I unfortunately could not attend their January concert due to a mild but ill-timed cold, and the time had finally come for me to make up for the missed opportunity. 

So there I finally was, fondly remembering hearing them for the first time at the Library of Congress, which was pretty much in my backyard back in 2009. Although they had already been generating an impressive buzz closer to home, they were kind of new on the international classical music scene, but not for long. Their splendid performance of quartets by Ravel, Fauré and Debussy, wrapped up with an a cappella version of “Un jour mon prince viendra” (One day my prince will come) from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Yes, Disney’s animated movie) left no doubt. They had arrived, and they would go much further. 

Almost two decades, a couple of personnel changes, and several encounters on both sides of the pond later, I saw two of those same musicians, who are now accompanied by two newer members, come onto the stage and I felt a kind of motherly pride that I did not even know I had in me. I guess it is one of those things you don’t even know you have until you suddenly experience it. 

Even better, last Wednesday night’s concert was one stop of their ambitious “Beethoven 2027” project, through which they will play all of Beethoven’s quartets, and not just any stop either since that one would feature the Opus 131 and the Opus 135, two dazzling masterpieces among the extraordinary six-packs that are his Late Quartets. So who cared of the performance started at the ungodly time of 8:30 PM?

The concert started with Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 2, a youthful piece that the composer wrote when he was barely in his thirties. While it is understandably not of the same caliber as his later works, it was still a very pleasant way to ease ensemble and audience into our Beethovenian evening. This lively homage to his beloved teacher Joseph Haydn overflows with humor and witticism, and the four musicians did an excellent job at conveying its carefree insouciance while warming up for the bigger and better things to come. 

We then fast-forwarded about three decades to his Opus 135, which is the shortest of his Late Quartets as well as the last major composition he completed. It is also, as far as I am concerned, the most stunning of them all, a priceless gift that keeps on relentlessly giving under its deceptively simple package, the countless gifts including an exquisite slow movement and the famous “difficult resolution”. The Quatuor Ébène brought it to life with all the fire and grace it so richly deserved, and just like the group of French attendees I heard comparing notes later on, I thought this was the best performance of the evening. 

After intermission, it was time to move on to the epic tour de force that is the Opus 131, a terrifying challenge that essentially consists in playing its seven movements without an actual pause over the course of about 40 minutes. This means that the musicians need to have not only superior technique and unwavering stamina, but also good reflexes and endless flexibility in case their much put-upon instruments decide to do their own thing. That said, when you have the right ensemble, you can just sit back, relax, and marvel, like the entire audience did on Wednesday night. Schubert and Schumann were allegedly in awe of that ground-breaking quartet, which is as good a stamp of approval as any. On Wednesday night, we all were too.

Teatro di San Carlo - Verdi - 02/28/26

Giuseppe Verdi: Messa da Requiem 

Conductor: Nicola Luisotti 

Choir Master: Fabrizio Cassi 

Pene Pati: Tenor 

Caterina Piva: Mezzo-Soprano 

John Relyea: Bass 

Pretty Yende: Soprano 

Any excuse for a little excursion out of town is a good one, and attending a performance of Verdi’s magnificent Requiem in Naples’ magnificent Teatro di San Carlo is certainly a better one than most. Add to that the presence of South-African soprano Pretty Yende, whose much lauded talent I had never gotten a chance to check out before (not for lack of trying though), and I grabbed some tickets for my Neapolitan friend Vittorio and me as soon as they went on sale last year. 

After an uneventful trip and timely arrival under the Parthenopean City’s famed bright sunshine last Thursday afternoon, things went somewhat downhill with a dreadful combination of overcast skies, low temperatures, and a temporarily out-of-service heater, but things perked up again on Saturday evening with a delicious sfogiatella and a delectable performance in downtown Naples, where we eventually showed up reasonably scrubbed, adequately fed and fully ready at the totally civilized time if 19:00 PM.

Once we had happily settled in the first row of our premium box—Never mind the little space for the knees before us and the invasion of French tourists behind us—we watched the spacious stage gradually fill up with the large orchestra, who were later joined by the equally sizable choir, the four soloists, and the conductor Nicola Luisotti. In the end, the space was unusually crowded, but it also was a real treat to see the faces of the musicians that we by default hear, but not see, when we attend an opera there. 

Fact is, the impressive number of performers felt more than justified when, in due time, the thunderous Dies Irae movement repeatedly took the entire audience by storm with irrepressible force and remarkable focus. Verdi obviously wanted to make sure that this Day of Wrath would not be denied or avoided, and I, for one, can never get enough of it. And sure enough, on Saturday evening, the brilliant Teatro San Carlo’s orchestra and choir unleashed their take-no-prisoners power and announced the upcoming biblical destruction with all the terrified intensity it deserved every single time. 

The rest of the performance went swimmingly too. The composition’s operatic grandeur and emotional intimacy were beautifully conveyed through gorgeous—Dare I say “divine”?—melodies and dramatically shifting rhythms that were commendably handled by musicians and singers. The choir demonstrated a strikingly unified front, the four soloists fulfilled their substantial parts with admirable technique and commitment, with Miss Yende effortlessly meeting my sky-high expectations, and the orchestra, for which Verdi has to be an old friend, kept everything going with predictable expertise and efficiency. 

 That was a prime example of the kind of dazzling accomplishment impeccably timed teamwork can create (Grazie, maestro Luisotti!), and the memorable experience made dealing with the rowdy Saturday night crowds totally worth it.