FERRERO
12 videos • 634 views • by maisonvuillod Lorenzo Ferrero (Torino, 1951) Concerto per pianoforte e orchestra (Prague 1991) There are only two movements in the Concerto. The Adagio molto is dreamy, allusive and mysterious but soon enters dangerous harmonic spirals which sound like walking on quicksand, The movement fades out, in fact, whit the strings in high resister leaving a profound sense of suspense. The entry to the second movement (Allegro vivo) is assigned to the piano which, forgetting its nineteenth century past, takes its cue from the basic rhythmic patterns of today's popular urban music. While the orchestra plays another simple and easy to be remembered theme, the rhythm of the piano widens in virtuoso patterns cruelly imprisoned in inexorable rhythmical schemes, to then explode in a toccata vaguely reminiscent of Bach, with baroque and popular elements, hand crossing, and close alternation between soloist and orchestra. There is then a reprise which does not, however, bring the Concerto to a conclusion. Indeed after the "false reprise" the work seems to withdraw into a new sonorous world characterized by a certain expressive introversion. This turning point in the movement starts with a section which is less defined by the rhythm and whose tempo is looser. There are moments of dark anger recalling the first movement, there are suspend arpeggios and numerous repetitions of the various themes. Some of these use the same harmonic patterns of the first movement but the real reprise is a few pages before the conclusion, beginning with a kind of low piano rumbling. On a first listening the Concerto seems to evolve from a classical form, but whit the abolition of the first movement, a contraction of the slow tempo and an unusual expansion of the final rondo. Naturally the composer does not choose the solution of having the piano constantly playing with the orchestra (as in most contemporary scores), but keeps them in distinct and separate roles, as in the traditional repertoire. Nevertheless the significance of the relationship between soloist and orchestra is distinguished from that of romantic style. The thematic content is often different between orchestra and piano, and in many cases it traces a kind of elaborate "dialogue between the deaf". The piano in particular seems to be reluctant to take part in the orchestra's themes, with only a few exceptions. Basically, to understand the form of this work on must regard the miniaturization of the themes, which causes there to be a closer alternation between the parts, a vast and interlinked structure within a long but not excessive time period. It has a style which is continuously referring to and alluding to well known musical attitudes that do not need to be insisted upon repeated, as the past models are still fresh in the audience's mind. On the subject of post-modernism Ferrero says that after all the colonnades we have seen from ancient Greece to the Renaissance, one column is sufficient to evoke classicism as a result of this he truncates the cadences of the piano, he suggests the atmosphere of a theme without following it through, schematizes development links and is thus able to continuously vary the form and keep the listener's interest thanks to intentionally contracted elements.