Many of my posts are about music, either to publicize concerts or to describe those I have attended. Music for me is clearly a great love whether it’s so-called ‘classical’  (a misnomer if there ever was one as ‘classical’ correctly refers to a style immediately preceding the advent of romanticism) or whether it be ‘pop’ or whether it be ‘world’ music.

My critical distinction in music is between good and bad or between music and muzak. I have a pet hate about entering into any public establishment where there is piped muzak, often at an exceedingly loud volume, and where one’s request to turn down the noise down goes unheeded. In such cases I just walk out and they lose my custom.

Love of music is both inherited and cultivated. My mother was originally destined for a career as a pianist.

Graduating with the likes of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli at Italy’s largest musical institution, the Milan conservatoire, founded in 1807 (another graduate was Giacomo Puccini) my mother did not fulfil her pianistic ambitions since the last war changed her course towards  nursing, medicine, social work and, eventually, psychoanalysis.

During Maurizio Pollini’s UK concert tour of 1997 (where he played all of Beethoven’s sonatas) I was able to arrange a back-stage meeting between my mother and Pollini, another Milan conservatoire graduate.  It was interesting to hear the two discuss their student days; I was hoping that the subject of Michelangeli would crop up since Pollini had been one of his pupils and had been criticised for the increased coolness and restraint of his playing as a result of being influenced by someone my mother had described as a ‘cold fish.’ However, neither had anything negative to say about Michelangeli who I regard as one of the greatest of all keyboard players: his interpretation, for example, of the slow movement of Ravel’s G major piano concerto is utterly ravishing.

My mother’s career change, however, did not mean the end of her piano playing. Indeed, as a string player in the school orchestra I recollect playing with her an acceptable rendering of Mozart’s poignant E minor violin sonata. The black upright, with its sculpted laurel wreath on the front soundboard accompanied my mum from the time her father had purchased it at a knock-down price during a pre-war depression hit Italy to her migration to England and to Wales where a special room was built onto her cottage there. I do not know, however, where that piano is now.

My mother’s musical tastes were very clearly defined and firmly based in the nineteenth century with a few exceptions. The composers that spoke most directly  to her were Chopin and Brahms.

Chopin provided her with the deepest searchings of the heart: she particularly loved the preludes but the ballades, too, much affected her: in fact I still have the old shellac 78’s Alfred Cortot recordings. (A pianist, incidentally, she much admired and about which she stated ‘his unique interpretative powers makes one completely forget his several fluffs).

Brahms, instead, released the rebellious side of my mum’s character. She took me, with her friend Doctor Montuschi (in whose memory the Montuschi ward at London’s Whittington Hospital – where my dad spent his last night – is dedicated) to the Royal Festival Hall to hear the two Brahms piano concerti played by that great Chilean Claudio Arrau and the gipsy-like finale of the Violin Concerto was her particular favourite.

One of the highlights of my teen visits to the concert hall was in June 1974 when my mum’s ‘wunderkind’ hero, Herbert Von Karajan, came to London to conduct  Brahms’ symphonies in two concerts.

My mum’s concentration on the 19^th century was clearly characteristic of her generation but she mentioned with pride that one of her graduation pieces was Bela Bartok’s uncompromising ‘Allegro Barbaro’ and she was a great fan of Stravinsky.

Did my mum have any pet musical hates? There were some genres she was less than happy to listen to. She remembered the tedium of having to sit through Ponchielli’s opera ‘La Gioconda’, for example. Oddly (for me) my mum was no great enthusiast for British classical music (no Elgarian…) although she admired the high standards of English light music as exemplified by Eric Coates. Mendelssohn she did not regard very highly either. However, my mum was open to much she heard on the wireless and suffered me to introduce her to the more abstruse stuff.

If my mum had been on the radio programme  ‘Desert island discs’ I feel certain that the following would be her favourite eight records:

J. S. Bach: D minor organ Toccata and Fugue.

Brahms: Violin Concerto, (Bruch’s concerto would have run a close second).

Chopin: Ballades.

Stravinsky: Petrushka.

Mussorgsky: (orch. Ravel). ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’.

Puccini. ‘Un bel di’ (Madama Butterfly)’.

Verdi. Dies Irae. Requiem.

Any Italian mountain song sung by the Coro Alpino.

 

…which reminds me .. The next concert in the enterprising series managed by artistic director and guitarist Giacomo Brunini  and promoted by the Salotti Civic Music School of Borgo a Mozzano will be held this Sunday November 24th at 5.15 pm at the San Giovanni Leonardi Library in Diecimo.

The performer will be the Lydian Guitar Trio – Nicola Fenzi, Dario Atzori and Giacomo Brunini – who will perform music by Filippo Gragnani, Astor Piazzolla, Paul Hindemith, and contemporary composers Antonio Gabriele Martinique and Luca Guidi.

Before the concert, at 4.15 pm, it will be possible to take part in a guided tour starting from the Pieve di Diecimo to the birthplace of San Giovanni Leonardi, the venue for the concert.

Thanks to the San Giovanni Leonardi Association, the Leonardini Fathers and the staff of “Borgo è bellezza” for their cooperation in organizing the events.

All concerts are free admission with free-will offering.

To receive more information about the concert and the guided tour, please contact the following:

borgoamozzanomusica@gmail.com – Cell. 3498496612

Or visit the website at

http://www.scuolacivicasalotti.it