The very young promise of the plan, winner of the José Iturbi Prize in Valencia, has enchanted the audience with a complex and compelling program. A mix of expressiveness and high technical mastery for a night to remember
Night of great music at Lauro Rossi, Elia Cecino captivates the audience with a masterful concert. The 59th Macerata Opera Festival celebrates the piano through one of the great promises of the instrument internationally, a pure talent that will not be so easy to see again on the stage of the city theater.
Born in 2001, originally from Treviso, Cecino is a true piano virtuoso, able to excite both for his excellent technique and for the ability to convey emotions and pathos through his performances. Already winner of several international awards, he also achieved the highest result at the XXII Concurso Internacional del Piano de Valencia “José Iturbi” where the young Italian has defeated the competition ranking first out of over 180 colleagues from around the world. Cecino, thanks to the collaboration between the Macerata Opera Festival and the award of Valencia, has landed in Macerata presenting a program articulated and very interesting.
Despite winning in Spain the award for the best performance of a concert by Beethoven and for the best interpretation of Chopin’s music, the young man performed a selection of songs focused on the 800 and 900, literally silencing the audience.
The opening is the Varations Sérieuses by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, followed by the Symphonic Studies by Robert Schumann. Both compositions, of high difficulty, can be considered as samples of what a virtuoso is able to produce on a piano by demonstrating his technique and the possibilities of the instrument itself. After the pause, also used for an unusual tuning of the instrument, the young man returned for the second part of the show, winning back the audience with his touch as a true veteran. Béla Bartók’s Sonata Sz.80, one of the poems symbol of the creativity of the Hungarian musician, where the romantic emphasis gives way to a purified language, based on a counterpoint and modal writing and on the rigorous economy of expressive means. Instead, it was born from a news story of 1905, the death of a young man who demonstrated for the opening of the national university, the Sonata of Leos Janácek “From the street”.
Finally, the last piece on the program, was the Sonata n.7 by Sergej Prokofiev, a mixture of poignant moments and delirious virtuosity, associated with terror and fear of the world war evoked both in the memory and in the vision of the future, and expressed through sounds sometimes dreamlike, sometimes mercilessly pounding.
At the end of the intense and tiring rehearsal, those present, extremely satisfied with the excellent musical level, asked the young performer to continue with an encore that immediately arrived with two tracks: Schumann op. 82 from the scenes of the forest and the Prelude and escape of Sostakovic. The extras have earned further appreciation to Elia Cecino that in the after concert received behind the scenes compliments of the Councillor for Culture Katuscia Cassette and the artistic director of Mof Paolo Pinamonti, also judge of the competition “José Iturbi”. A truly magical evening of which those present can perhaps one day say: “We were there”.
Marco Ribechi
cronachemaceratesi.it
August 19, 2023
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