Newsletter - Nr.66
(Rachmaninoff Society)
June 2006 (page 10):
Sergio Calligaris
by Maurizio Brunetti

Few contemporary composers are equally appreciated by the critics and the public. The Argentinian born Sergio Calligaris is among those. Never attracted by the so-called avant-garde in the 60s and 70s, he doesn't feel himself to be a neo-romantic. Rather, the composer feels at ease if described as neo-classical musician. His music, in fact, often rich of lyric outbursts, it doesn't abdicate the formal rigor and the art of the counterpoint, sign of a youth hindemithian heritage. In 2004, he was awarded as "International Musician of the Year" by the International Biographical Centre of Cambridge (UK).
I've decided to get in touch with the composer after listening his Piano Concerto op. 29 and the 2nd Suite of Symphonic Dances op. 27 recorded in 1996. Excerpts from this CD can be heard browsing the site http://calligaris.carisch.it/ . Calligaris has never hidden his admiration for SVR, and approved enthusiastically to be interviewed. I meet him in his house at Rome, where he lives since 1974.

- Maestro, could you please tell us your first encounter with Rachmaninoff's music?
- I'd already played some of his music when I was twelve. At fourteen, one year later my debut as performer, I played for the first of many times his 2nd Piano Concerto. When I first approached the score, I wanted to hear Rachmaninoff himself playing the piece, and I purchased the disc. It was one of the first LPs circulating in Argentina, we were in fact in 1955. My surprise was great, when I realized that sometimes Rachmaninoff didn't respect his own dynamic signs on the score. Thus, I learned once for all that a performer can take some liberties without betraying the author. My scores are rich of dynamic signs; nevertheless I tell my performers: "Don't feel enslaved! Only if you perform the music as if it were born from yourselves, it will succeed in being convincing and communicative."

- Did SVR take similar liberties in performing other people's music?
- Let me give you just one example. Look how Rachmaninoff played the Carnaval op. 9 by R. Schumann, who is by far my favourite composer. You find there a richness not shared with other "philologist" interpretations. Note in particular the unusual decision to play the breves of Sphinxs, and to add at that point a tremolo and a vibrato: the emotional effect is somewhat miraculous, and Schumann himself would be favourably surprised!

- As composer, do you acknowledge any author as inspiration source?
- No, I don't. Surely there exist composers to whom I'm spiritually close, and it is quite natural that sometimes such affinity crystallizes in thematic cells, in harmonic cues or rhythmic solutions. Such reminiscences spring from an unconscious love for what aroused a strong emotion inside me.
Someone has compared the architectural solidity, the piano virtuosity and the symphonic grandeur of my Concerto op. 29 to the 4th Rachmaninoff concerto, and the pianist Irina Osipova has once described the spirit of my Concerto for two pianos op. 41 as linked to the Russian soul.
Nevertheless, if you listen the tracks of those works on my site, you come across a harmonic world that takes into account Hindemith before all, French impressionism, and Berg. I frequently use fourths and altered fourths chords. The so-called Scriabin's mystical chord (C, F#, B flat, E, A,D) appears in the great Fugue with double subject in the sonata for clarinet and piano op. 38 dedicated to Vladimir Ashkenazy and to his son Dimitri. It's an atonal piece, structured however in such way that the dissonance doesn't vex or disorientate the listener.

At this point, Calligaris insisted on giving me a generous taste of his art. He sat at the piano, the shoulders totally relaxed, and an instant later, without any attack from high or a stiffening of his bust, his fingers suddenly started to masterly fly on the keyboard, immediately evoking the beauty of sea reflexes that a mathematician like me doesn't dare to describe: it was Une barques sur l'Ocean from Ravel's Miroirs. The recital continued without the aid of scores, with the Schumann's Novellette op. 21 no. 2, the Prelude Feuilles Mortes by Debussy and ended with the Beethoven's Rondò op. 51 no. 2 played with a springing, almost electric, vivacity. What struck me, during the performance, was the fixity of his wrist, his forearm firmness, and the strength of his fingers able to sustain the fortissimo.
- My pianism is in some sense athletic, at the school of the Argentinian Jorge Fanelli and to the Russian school that landed in the United States at the beginning of the XX century. I'm convinced that only a strong hand can face whatever kind of repertoire, and be at ease both with the lightness required by Haydn or Mozart, and with the percussive Prokofiev and Bartok.

- Listening to your Schumann performance, it seems to me that you have decided to emphasize as much as possible the contrast among the tempos, placing the Florestan of the Prestissimo con bravura in an absolute polarity position with respect to the Eusebius of the Intermezzo.
- In my music too some people noticed the opposition between a dithyrambic mood and an elegiac one. For instance, in the Concerto op. 41 for two pianos, the rhythmic impetus tends to resolve, but only temporarily, in two contemplative moments that I put in two Intermezzos as well. However, unlike Rachmaninoff that had a melancholy nature, between the two attitudes it prevails in me an optimist nature, that is perfectly reconciled with my love for the form and a disciplined life. Only the fools, after all, associate joy to superficiality in a consequential relationship!

- Is it your American soul that is shining through?
- I'm a New World man with Italian parents that grew up at a cultures cross-road. A mitteleuropean taste for the contrapuntal rigor, the Latin-American exuberance, a certain vitality typical of peoples in their youth: all these things cohabit in me. Unfortunately, I notice in Europe a diffused prejudice towards the United States. On the contrary, I've artistically met there a very sophisticated world, able to value other people's skill. In 1964, once appointed in the staff of the Cleveland Institute of Music, I found there George Szell conducting a wonderful orchestra, probably better than the most prestigious European ones. James Levine, George Petre and Emil Gilels made their first appearance there! Let me also say that nobody in the States could ever assume the finicky intellectual attitude to criticize Rachmaninoff's music for being…too beautiful! The teaching experience I've made at the California State University in Los Angeles has been extremely stimulating as well.

- You also have personally known Victor Babing and Vitya Vronsky…
- Yes, Victor was the Director of the Cleveland Institute at that time, and formed with his wife Vitya an exceptional piano duet. Both had been intimate Rachmaninoff friends. To them, who played both his Suites for two pianos, the composer dedicated the Symphonic Dances in the two pianos version. The expressive abilities of two pianos constitute for me a strong source of inspiration, in fact I've inserted them in several works. I've also composed two sets of Choreographic Scenes and two suites of Symphonic Dances, to whom the public has always reacted warmly. I've a great passion for the ballet dancing. Even my first composition "The Eternal Fight", that I composed at ten, is a ballet for piano and orchestra…

Sergio Calligaris, whose aim was to offer me a highly gratifying musical experience, invited me to listen to a passage of the Sonata op. 38 recorded live at its premiere on June 30th 2001 and interpreted by Vladimir and Dimitri Ashkenazy. We heard together few minutes from the first movement, a demanding piece of almost 600 bars!

- The Vladimir's olympian easiness in performing this arduous piece is definitely impressive...
- On the very day of the concert, Vladimir and Dimitri had already tried three hours and a half in the morning. After lunch, Vladimir devoted 3 hours to rehearse again and again. I'm personally touched by the obduracy and the responsibility with which Vladimir faced my music.

- How is the friendship born with our honorary president?
- The dear friend that takes care of my site, delighted with a performance directed by Vittorio Parisi of my Concerto op. 29 watched on TV, get in touch with my publisher Carisch obtaining the score and a promotional tape. Then, he approached Vladimir that had just directed Sviatoslav Richter in one of Beethoven's concertos in Milan, and asked him to have a look to it. Today, I keep among my most beloved things the letter that Ashkenazy wrote me communicating that he'd appreciated my Concerto.
Subsequently, we've been able to ascertain a strong artistic and spiritual affinity. For instance both we attribute a great value to the discipline on ourselves. In particular, it's important that a budding composer, almost doing violence to himself, should not spare himself: the inspiration has to be supported by a strong architectural logic…

- Could you say something on your more recent works and future projects?
- The Carisch, to which I'm thankful for the well-designed graphics of their editions, has recently published a version for piano solo (op. 47a) of my Panis Angelicus op. 47 for piano and mixed choir dedicated to Benedict XVI. I've composed it in 2005. The piano part was not thought as a mere accompaniment and it's sufficiently dense and structured to justify a piece for piano solo.
In Mantua, on next April 29, it will be performed the premiere of a version for flute (that replaces violin), piano and string orchestra of my Double Concerto op. 37.
Afterwards, as I usually do, I will spend Summer at Rocca di Mezzo, a peaceful place among the beautiful mountains of Abruzzo. It's there that I intend to write down a composition that the young and brilliant Spanish conductor Luis Carlos Badía asked for his chamber orchestra Siglo XXI.

- A last question. You know that the theme of the Dies Irae emerges in many SVR's works, I wonder if you too put recurrently thematic fragments or rhythmic figurations in your works.
- With the "Piano Notebook of Renzo" op. 7, written for my beloved friend Renzo Arzeni in 1978, I returned to composition after 25 years exclusively devoted to public performances and didactics. It consists in 10 brief pieces, where the technical complexity is as high as the anxiety to communicate my inner world. The pianist Marcella Crudeli wanted to insert it in her repertoire. She has performed it more than 500 times till now! That work constitutes for me a real aesthetical manifesto, and in every other subsequent work I've voluntarily inserted a theme from the "Notebook", looking forward that the new piece at hand could share with the op. 7 its integrity, uprightness, veracity and human warmth.

(English text entirely written by the Author)

Maurizio Brunetti at Sergio Calligaris' home
(Rome, 24th March 2006).

Maurizio Brunetti is a mathematician and belongs to the Faculty Staff of the University "Federico II" of Naples - Faculty of Engineering as Researcher. He got the Doctorate in Italy and the Ph.D. at University of Warwick (UK). He is an algebraic topologist. His scientific works appeared on several specialized journals, and were often presented at international conferences.
He is also a classical music lover; since 1993 he is a member of the Rachmaninoff Society, which was just two years old at that time.