Il Giornale di Vicenza
Chopin marathon - De Maria mature and elegant pianist
Pietro De Maria resolves each passage with authoritative self-assurance, style, maturity of expression, fluid technique. And above all, with estreme elegance. A poised composure in which we recognize the inspiration of the great Michelangeli, not only in the external forms of gestures and posture, but in the pursuit of a sensitive touch.A piano recital in the name of Chopin reconfirms Pietro De Maria as a first rate soloist. For the unified season of the Amici and the Quartetto associations, the thirty-six-year-old Venetian pianist gave the enthusiastic audience of the sold out Canneti Auditorium a monographic excursus that icluded the 24 Etudes of opus 10 and 25 and the four Ballades.
Frederic Chopin is sometimes defined, a bit rhetorically, as “the poet of the piano”, but listening to his music we can understand how appropriate the metaphor is. Rhythm, pauses, thematic cues, poetic images follow each other in harmony and equilibrium from the beginning to the end. Musical passages like songs. Measures like quatrains. And, in order to make the piano sing freely and spontaneously, the pianist must not allow the technical aspects to overshadow the moving atmosphere. Like the best soloists, Pietro De Maria has the gift of making his solutions technically unexceptionable, without allowing the mechanical aspect to to prevail upon the characteristic aspect, that is, the lyrical one. The Etudes of opus 10 and 25 are a perfect yardstick. Essential points of reference in the history of piano music, they are extremely concentrated symphonic poems, but, above all they are, precisely, studies for the development of technical ability, aimed at a specific technical desideratum based on a single musical motif. And the combination of a single practical task with the highest musical contents and significance is absolutely ad hoc. Pietro De Maria resolves each passage with authoritative self-assurance, style, maturity of expression, fluid technique. And above all, with estreme elegance. A poised composure in which we recognize the inspiration of the great Michelangeli, not only in the external forms of gestures and posture, but in the pursuit of a sensitive touch.
De Maria’s Chopin is, at the same time, pure and absolute; it has class, but no mawkishness, it is dizzying, and not modish. In fact, he plays the first Etude in the sunny tonality of C major with precision but no agitated virtuosity, and the arpeggios are soft from the beginning to the end. Etude n.1 has its mirror image in the 12th and last Etude of Opus 25 and closely resembles Paganini’s first Caprice, which inspired it (in fact, Chopin used to recommend to his students a performance similar to the famous bow strokes)
The pianist certainly did not shrink from the trills, the various kinds of embellishments, daring octaves and staccatos, legatos and brilliant agility and, dominating the keyboard as if it were a violin, he succeeded in his intention of combining virtuosity with expressiveness.
In the Ballades we also find a great variety of technical expedients but, as in the Nocturnes or the Impromptus, they are compositions of a more intimate and personal kind. With Ballade n. 1 in G minor op.23 and with the n. 4 in F minor op. 52, De Maria captures the audience displaying romantic charm and passion, together with the fresh, changing spontaneity of form and harmony that is the music of Chopin. The second Ballade in F major op. 38 on the other hand is fascinating thanks to his touch (the first bars imitate the chiming of bells) and for the supporting role of the grave part of the keyboard, and the third Ballade, in A flat major op. 47, in the hands of the Venetian pianist mediates with simplicity delicacy and sentimento, impetuosity and sweetness. De Maria’s trip in the company of Chopin enthralls the large audience. He shows he is an interpreter even in the timing of his curtain calls and in the encores he chooses. He offers two, after almost 120 minutes of playing, with enviable freshness and brilliance. The intimate and poetic October from Tchaikovski’s The Seasons and La Campanella by Liszt. Absolutely exceptional. Like the audience’s reaction.
Pietro De Maria resolves each passage with authoritative self-assurance, style, maturity of expression, fluid technique. And above all, with estreme elegance. A poised composure in which we recognize the inspiration of the great Michelangeli, not only in the external forms of gestures and posture, but in the pursuit of a sensitive touch.A piano recital in the name of Chopin reconfirms Pietro De Maria as a first rate soloist. For the unified season of the Amici and the Quartetto associations, the thirty-six-year-old Venetian pianist gave the enthusiastic audience of the sold out Canneti Auditorium a monographic excursus that icluded the 24 Etudes of opus 10 and 25 and the four Ballades.
Frederic Chopin is sometimes defined, a bit rhetorically, as “the poet of the piano”, but listening to his music we can understand how appropriate the metaphor is. Rhythm, pauses, thematic cues, poetic images follow each other in harmony and equilibrium from the beginning to the end. Musical passages like songs. Measures like quatrains. And, in order to make the piano sing freely and spontaneously, the pianist must not allow the technical aspects to overshadow the moving atmosphere. Like the best soloists, Pietro De Maria has the gift of making his solutions technically unexceptionable, without allowing the mechanical aspect to to prevail upon the characteristic aspect, that is, the lyrical one. The Etudes of opus 10 and 25 are a perfect yardstick. Essential points of reference in the history of piano music, they are extremely concentrated symphonic poems, but, above all they are, precisely, studies for the development of technical ability, aimed at a specific technical desideratum based on a single musical motif. And the combination of a single practical task with the highest musical contents and significance is absolutely ad hoc. Pietro De Maria resolves each passage with authoritative self-assurance, style, maturity of expression, fluid technique. And above all, with estreme elegance. A poised composure in which we recognize the inspiration of the great Michelangeli, not only in the external forms of gestures and posture, but in the pursuit of a sensitive touch.
De Maria’s Chopin is, at the same time, pure and absolute; it has class, but no mawkishness, it is dizzying, and not modish. In fact, he plays the first Etude in the sunny tonality of C major with precision but no agitated virtuosity, and the arpeggios are soft from the beginning to the end. Etude n.1 has its mirror image in the 12th and last Etude of Opus 25 and closely resembles Paganini’s first Caprice, which inspired it (in fact, Chopin used to recommend to his students a performance similar to the famous bow strokes)
The pianist certainly did not shrink from the trills, the various kinds of embellishments, daring octaves and staccatos, legatos and brilliant agility and, dominating the keyboard as if it were a violin, he succeeded in his intention of combining virtuosity with expressiveness.
In the Ballades we also find a great variety of technical expedients but, as in the Nocturnes or the Impromptus, they are compositions of a more intimate and personal kind. With Ballade n. 1 in G minor op.23 and with the n. 4 in F minor op. 52, De Maria captures the audience displaying romantic charm and passion, together with the fresh, changing spontaneity of form and harmony that is the music of Chopin. The second Ballade in F major op. 38 on the other hand is fascinating thanks to his touch (the first bars imitate the chiming of bells) and for the supporting role of the grave part of the keyboard, and the third Ballade, in A flat major op. 47, in the hands of the Venetian pianist mediates with simplicity delicacy and sentimento, impetuosity and sweetness. De Maria’s trip in the company of Chopin enthralls the large audience. He shows he is an interpreter even in the timing of his curtain calls and in the encores he chooses. He offers two, after almost 120 minutes of playing, with enviable freshness and brilliance. The intimate and poetic October from Tchaikovski’s The Seasons and La Campanella by Liszt. Absolutely exceptional. Like the audience’s reaction.
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