CD CLASSICA, Year 13th - Nr.123
(Firenze City Magazine Editrice)
May 1999 (page 18):
Sergio Calligaris, pianist-composer,
talks to us about his compositions,
by Danilo Prefumo

Sergio Calligaris is the typical "italiano d'Argentina" (Italian from Argentina), as the singer-composer Ivano Fossati would say. Born in Rosario in 1941 from parents of Friuli, he studied piano and composition in his native country and began performing as piano concert performer when he was thirteen, in 1954. After working for several years in the United States, in 1974 he settled in Italy, in Rome, and finally assumed Italian citizenship. He began composing very young, but his soloist career absorbed him for a long time; only some years after coming back to Italy, in 1978, he started composing again with a piece, the Quaderno pianistico di Renzo (Renzo's Piano Notebook) op.7, dedicated to an Italian friend of him, earning him wide popularity among pianists, not longer after. From then onwards composition became his main activity and now his curriculum vitae of works counts an impressive series of performances by most of important Concert Institutions and renowned soloists , in Italy as well as all over the world. As composer, Calligaris is in the wake of a tonalism modernly intended, open to polytonal combinations; his first Argentinian teacher, Father Luis Machado, was admirer of Hindemith and certain aspects of hindemithian inspiration can be easily found in Calligaris' major works, as Piano Concerto op.29 or Symphonic Dances op.27, for instance in the frenetic dynamic following or in the strict structure of certain pages, worthy of a baroque Kapellmeister. But the maybe most ingenious and touching moments, at least in his Concerto for violin and piano, are the ecstatic and contemplative ones, in which, among other things, Calligaris shows a really original melodic vein.

I met Sergio Calligaris in Milan on February 15th, at the opportunity of the first Milanese performance of his Concerto for violin, piano and chamber orchestra, composed in 1998 and dedicated to Sergei Krilov and Stefania Mormone, and this is what Maestro told me in about one hour conversation.

- His name is Italian, but your tone is still unequivocally Argentinian. Tell me about your story.

Yes, I'm Argentinian, from Rosario, but my parents were Italian, from Friuli. I was born in Argentina and I fulfilled my first music studies there. I was a very precocious child, I studied piano as well as composition. As a pianist I made my début when I was seven and I began my career when I was thirteen. As you know, Argentina produced such great pianists as Martha Argerich and Bruno Leonardo Gelber, and me too I come from this tradition of Argentinian pianism. As a pianist I played very much in Europe, Americas and even in Africa and I also made lots of recordings for Radios everywhere, included Italian RAI of course. In 1966 - I was twenty-five - I began teaching in the United States, at Cleveland Institute of Music and at California State University; in those days I had as colleagues people like James Levine and Lynn Harrell, among the others. In 1973 I became artistic director of the American Academy of Arts in Europe, sited in Verona. I wished to settle in Italy so, in 1974, I left the known for the unknown and I settled in Rome. I assumed Italian citizenship and began teaching here, first in Naples and then L'Aquila and Pescara. I've been teaching in L'Aquila but I live in Rome. I love Rome, that's a really beautiful and fashinating city indeed.

- Do your experiences as a pianist have influenced your activity as composer?

Well, I believe that technique really influences invention and what one writes depends also on what one can do with his hands on piano…

- The famous invention "coming from fingers tips" Stravinsky speaks about…

That's right! When I write I can't leave out of consideration what I know. What's more. I can't leave out of consideration even myself. Take my Concerto for piano op. 29, for instance, and try to compare it with this Concerto for violin and piano. I wrote my Piano Concerto for myself, so it's written in a certain way, a way I feel perfectly comfortable, with a certain type of virtuosity fit to my characteristics both technical and physical. The Concerto for piano and violin is dedicated to Stefania Mormone and Sergei Krilov, so you'll find in it a different type of pianism. It's normal that's like this.

- You make like great Opera composers in Nineteen century, writing parts of their operas fit for singers to perform them the first time…

That's it! Then, you know, I count to devote myself more and more to composition, because this is my real interest. Also because teaching, nowadays, is more and more difficult and less satisfying. It's difficult to find really motivated and interested young people, you always get impression they feel no enthusiasm for what they're doing. Instead enthusiasm, for me, is something fundamental, in everything. One must love art and life. I've never stopped a second to love life and what I do.

- Then tell me about how you began composition.

I had begun composing still boy, in Argentina. I was pupil of Father Luis Machado, a very gifted musician, admirer of Hindemith. In Argentina, during the first years of my youth, there was a lot of space for modern music and experimentation. I began composing. I must say that I liked all that, but in the end I realized that in fact it didn't represent my ideal. It happens like this also in life, sometimes one meets people he likes very much, but finally realizes they aren't suitable for us. So I stopped composing: on the other hand I was successful as a pianist, I was young, I felt like asserting myself and I didn't have enough time to write music. When I came to Italy, in 1978, I wrote for a friend of mine this Renzo's Piano Notebook op.7, published by Carisch, which little by little began to be inserted in concert programs by several pianists. As they say, one thing leads to another: the following years I got requests from musician friends for new compositions, like for instance the Sonata for cello and piano op.9; then choreographer Vittorio Biagi asked me for musics for his ballets; in 1985 the Istituzione Sinfonica Abruzzese (Symphonic Institution of the Abruzzi) ordered the Concerto for strings op.25, and so on. Nowadays my works are very often performed. I believe I'm one of the most performed Italian contemporary authors. No week passes without some work of mine being performed somewhere in the world.

- What are your relations with tradition?

I would like to make clear that I'm not a neoromantic, nor a neoclassic. I've always composed like this, with a language that can be polytonal in which perfect chords, when they appear, are always consequence of the horizontal movement of parts. My music is constructively very complex, and each composition is full of thin relations among themes and motifs of its various parts, from time to time recurring changed, turned over etc; nevertheless I believe that this complexity, in the end, can't be seen nor heard, because it mustn't be seen nor heard. In conclusion, what really counts is emotion, this is what music communicates; the work behind is important, is fundamental, centainly, but it's not for this that music has to be enjoyed and appreciated. I know many young musicians writing music very different from mine, I'm on excellent terms with them, but I write in another way. And on the other hand, there's nothing more rewarding than seeing audience appreciating what you did, applauding and becoming enthusiastic. This persuades you to go on.

- Well then, cite me your favourite composers, so as to better make clear to readers your spiritual horizon.

Oh, they're a lot. One of them, for example, is Rachmaninov. He's a misunderstood composer by many people, who consider him dull, whereas he's an exceptionally complex author, ofter ruined by bad performances. I think to works like the Third Symphony, for instance, a really wonderful work, or The Bells, or The Isle of the Dead, that I consider a masterpiece. Another author I love very much is Hindemith. And then Chopin, another author that many love, but few really understand, and Schumann. Schumann has always been a model of composer for me, my ideal.

- You haven't cited even an Italian name…

You see, when I was young I treated Verdi with a condescending air, he sounded like too simple. Today I realize what greatness is behind that apparent simplicity. Today I can't listen to the Prelude of the First Act of Traviata, that once I snubbed a bit, without being moved. So we come back to the question as before: music must be able to communicate emotions. If it doesn't make it, something doesn't work.

- Tell me about your records, to conclude.

I recorded several records as a pianist, especially in the Sixties and Seventies, not only with my compositions, but also including pieces by Chopin, Rachmaninov, etc. Some of these records have also been awarded by international criticism. The last one I made, in 1996, was entirely dedicated to compositions of mine, the Concerto for piano op.29, the second suite of Symphonic Dances op.27 and the Sonate-Fantasy op.32 for piano. In the Piano Concerto I was accompanied by the Albanian TV-Radio Symphony Orchestra of Tirana conducted by Massimo De Bernart, a dear friend of mine and an excellent musician. This record was published by Agorà.

Danilo Prefumo