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Italian PianoVirtuoso
EMANUELE
ARCIULI
by Stuart Isacoff

Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli is not a household name in America-but he should be. In Italy, where his reputation and career are at the top echelon, his remarkable CD of music by American composers Frederick Rzewski and John Adams (on the Stradivarius label) was named Best Recording Of The Year. Indeed, he prides himself on a growing identity abroad as an American music specialist.

Not that one can limit this spectacular artist to such a narrow category. I've heard him in New York perform Haydn with elegance and whimsy, Beethoven with dark passion, and Grieg with all the tender lyricism in the world. (His recordings on Stradivarius also include the complete piano works of Berg and Webern, as well as the second book of Franz Liszt's Années de Pèlerinage.) Nevertheless, what especially astounded me was his rendering of John Adams's Phrygian Gates. Truth to tell, I never cared much for this music. Yet in Arciuli's hands it took on a wondrous depth-the piano producing a rainbow of colors and subtle textures, with hairpin dynamic shifts and an overwhelming sense of musical architecture. Months later, I was in the audience for the Adams work once again at a small, private recital in Milan; the piano was not in particularly great shape or tuning, and yet the effect was just as magical.

In Milan, I asked him about his attraction to this music, and why he seems able to unearth such astonishing beauty from it. "I've loved contemporary culture since I was a kid," he explained, "because it is free from the tradition of other great performers. That is, when the work is new, I can create a performance directly from the music, without the influence of previous interpreters. I don't like all contemporary music, of course. And I like works from Bach to Mozart to those of the twentieth century-as long as it is music to which I can relate.

"The idea to play the Adams was not mine, though," he revealed. "It was a commission from the director of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples [where Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi once reigned]. He felt a connection between Beethoven's last sonata and Adams's Phrygian Gates, and he wanted me to play them both on a program. In fact, what they share is a combination of both the metaphysical and the sensual, the concrete. The piano writing in the Adams piece is skillful. But to play it as written is almost impossible, and it requires a lot of practice. When you enter the spirit of the piece, though, it's easy to love. The ideas are interesting-there is a palindrome episode, for example, just as you might find in dodecaphonic music, but in Adams's style.He used both ancient and modern techniques in a very personal way. This is difficult to talk about, of course: I like the music to come directly from my brain and heart."

European audiences have known about Emanuele Arciuli since his debut, in Lugano, Switzerland, which was broadcast live by RTSI Concerti Euroradio in fourteen countries.

Continued in the Winter 2008 issue of Piano Today subscribe

From the editors of Piano Today