The first concert in the season organized by guitarist Giacomo Brunini and the Music School of Borgo a Mozzano was given in the town’s ex-Franciscan convent church of San Francesco.
The programme consisted entirely of piano duet (one piano, four hands) music performed by the Nicora-Baroffio piano duo.
I knew the two Bach pieces which opened the concert rather well but not in these versions for piano four-hands. There was once a time when music lovers did not have any sort of recorded media or access to a suitable instrument on which to play these pieces; this was the only way to get to know them.
Sometimes the music is a straight transcription of the original, as in Bach’s D minor organ prelude and fugue. Sometimes the transcribed piece may develop into something else. This was the case of the Chaconne, the last movement of Bach’s solo violin Partita no 2. There are several transcriptions of this wonderful movement but I had only been acquainted with Busoni’s for one pianist and Brahms’s for left hand.
In Reinecke’s transcription the original harmonies and melodic lines suggested intuitively in the original were elaborated into a mammoth architecture which sounded impressive but was really somewhat vacuous. Why transform something which could be succinctly expressed as a Japanese Haiku into a pompous ode? It was fun, however, to hear the piece in this way…occasionally.
The remainder of the concert consisted of pieces expressly written for piano duet and they were rather more satisfying.
Cecile Chaminade’s (1857-1944) pieces, written in a late romantic style, were delightful. Her ‘Hindu dance’, however, sounded more Indonesian than Indian. Like Debussy Chaminade must have been influenced by the Gamelan orchestra which came to Paris for the Great Exhibition of 1889. After years of neglect her music is being rediscovered, especially by feminists, for she has been described as “not a woman who composes, but a composer who is a woman.”
Cecile Chaminade
Czerny’s fantasia on Mozart’s “Non più andrai” from his ‘Marriage of Figaro’ was quite pleasurable: a typical example of the grand fantasias on operatic themes pianists used to write for an evening’s entertainment in one’s sitting room or salon.
The performance of all pieces was first-rate. The two pianists were always musically together and interpreted their repertoire most idiomatically. They even managed to tame the somewhat resonant acoustics of the church’s high-vaulted nave and preserved clarity and expression.
I look forwards to the next concert in the season which is tonight at 9.15 PM in the Chiesa Della Rocca near Borgo a Mozzano when the Atzori-Brunini guitar duo will present ’Mirrors’ their new CD.
Places should be reserved by phone at
3498496612 (via WhatsApp)
or email at:
borgoamozzanomusica@gmail.com
Here is the complete list of future concerts in this series:
