Leonetta Bentivoglio

Rome: The news will make those, keen on this kind, dizzy. A Beethoven huge-festival entrusting a sovereign orchestra such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, will be hosted " as residence" in Rome in February 2001 at the Santa Cecilia Auditorium for two integral Beethoven cycles: all Symphonies and all the orchestra and piano concertos. The platform will belong to a now very rare presence for Italy, and particularly for Rome; Claudio Abbado, the musical conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker. He had the idea to insert a burst of piano soloists in this review: Brendel, Argerich, Kissin, Cascioli and Pollini. Actually the best of the international nowadays pianists offered in a precious mixture of generations and schools.
It will be an ensemble of "first Arial", a splendid convergence of "unprecedented" rendezvous: the first time Abbado will conduct in Rome for so many evenings in succession, the first time that the five piano-stars will join a single program, the first time that the fabulous Berliners will play in Italy during a week-long festival, the first time that this german orchestra will come to Rome since '93, the year of its quick appearance at Santa Cecilia (but at that time the Berliner missed the capital even since '58, when they came conducted by Karajan).
Here is the program, opening with the Egmont's ouverture, than the fourth concert, soloist Alfred Brendel and it will end with the Seventh Symphony. On the 9th Martha Argerich will be the soloist of the 2nd Piano Concerto in an evening opened by the First Symphony and closed by the 3rd ("Heroic") symphony. On the 11th evening the young Evgenij Kissin, by many people as the best living russian pianist, will be the soloist of the 3rd Piano Concerto, programmed together with the 4th and 8th Symphonies.
Two italian pianists, generationally very far from one another, appear in the play-bill on the 12 and 14th evenings: they are the very young Gianluca Cascioli for the First Concerto (he will have that played with the Berliner, just before coming to Rome, during a tournée in Japan). It is once more programmed between two Symphonies , the 2nd and the 5th. Then Maurizio Pollini closing the parade of champion-pianists with the Beethoven's 5th Piano Concert ("Empire"). On the 14th, in the first part of the evening program the 5th Symphony (pastoral) will take place. The gran finale of this review is the 9th Symphony that on the 15th will involve, as an homage to the host Institution, a roman group: the choir of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. The soloist singers will be Luba Orgonasova, soprano, Larissa Diadkova, mezzosoprano, Rainer Trost, tenor and Bryn Terfel, baritone.
The confirmation of this event arrived in Rome yesterday evening after only one week of very close negotiations between Santa Cecilia and the Berliner. It was Claudio Abbado , a week ago, to directly offer to the composer Luciano Berio, presently temporary manager of Santa Cecilia, the glamorous "packet" of concerts. The cycle, that after Rome, during the second half of February, will be programmed at the Musikverein in Vienna, was originally appointed to Paris as a part of the Piano review of the Great Interpreters whose artistic director is André Furno but for a worth reporting accident that made all the parisian dates of the Berliner break.
The famous parisian concert hall Salle Pleyel, that traditionally hosts the Furno's review, was recently bought by a french billionaire, Martigny, whose wife, Madame Tarditti, is herself a conductor. And to make the hall available for the musical aspirations of his lady, Martini decided to turn the habitual tenants out of it. Not only Furno (and with him the Berliner and the great pianists) but even a formation such as the Orchestre de Paris. It is thank to this poorly edifying story that Rome, in one year, will be able to exclusively enjoy a probably historical musical rendez-vous. To egoistically say that good can come from evil.

Berio: " A great challenge"
The temporary manager of Santa Cecilia, and with this charge, promoter of the double Beethoven cycle in Rome with the Berliner and Abbado, underlines how exceptional is this project:" To my knowledge there has never been anything similar. It is a challenge, a great trip. As if to make a round-the-world trip in a week: an experience of the same intensity".
Fantastic costs can be figured out. Do you think you will be looking for sponsors? " Yes of course. And, as it appears at present it seems to be plenty of sponsors only to chose among. Anyhow, the Municipality of Rome has already confirmed its participation. But I will say no to the Ministries: in Italy there are very good ministers, but as far as music is concerned, they are surrounded by unconscious people".
"Will you program side events with the concerts?"
"I would like to involve at least three pianists in a series of organized masterclasses in the Hall of the Conservatorio of Santa Cecilia in Via Greci, the same in which Mahler conducted two concerts in 1907".
It is amazing that , among many star-pianists, the choice of an ascending young pianist like Cascioli.
"It is a choice of Abbado that I fully share. Cascioli is a boy of great quality and talent I know very well. When he received the prize at the Concorso Micheli, three years ago, I was foreman of the jury".
have all the choices ot the review been made by Abbado?
"Yes. And in the total event, so rich and impervious, his way of programming can be recognized. His programs haave always a project, a trajectory, not necessarily a thematic one, but defined by an internal structure, by a global sense. It is the kind of formulation I augur for the future of Santa Cecilia and for the new Renzo Piano's Auditorium. We had enough of the aleatory programs made of small odd pieces that lokk like a collection of stamps". (l.b.)