Listening to Giovanni Bertolazzi's richly enterprising 3 CD Liszt album, first issued in 2022, I was immediately struck by a variety of responses. Firstly, the twenty-six Italian pianist possessed qualities above and beyond the obvious, beyond his overwhelming technical command and his burning commitment to Liszt in all his multi-faceted genius. He possesses talent; a slim virtue when set beside other less elusive, more easily definable qualities. I recall hearing Alice Kezeradze(wife and mentor of Ivo Pogorelich) exclaim in wonder when, as a jury colleague at the infamous 1980 Ivo Pogorelich Competition, she turned to me after listening to the Russian pianist Evgeny Zarafiants and exclaimed, 'you see, I just adore talent.'
But if talent is ultimately the key ingredient of every great performer, what is it and can it be quantified? Again, the answer has to be negative at one level, positive at another. It is something you sense, that strikes you as quickly and unmistakably as a flash of lightening, high above such admirable qualities as professionalism, accuracy, fidelity to the score, intelligence and an ability to see things as they are, it is the chief aspect that separates one pianist from another. It is the quality you treasure and hoard in Cortot, Moiseiwitsch, Rubinstein, Horowitz, Michelangeli, Richter, Gilels and later Lupu, Perahia and Argerich etc. All widely differing artists yet united by a single virtue with talent the jewel in the crown.
I say all this because Bertolazzi, though in the early stages of his career, is a clear possessor of talent, something that blazes out with a communicative force(though also with poetic delicacy) that rivets your attention. You cannot not listen. Such characteristics make constant references to his success(relative or otherwise) in this competition or that irrelevant. His playing has moved beyond that endlessly contentious subject. As the American pianist Claude Franck so succinctly put it 'it matters a lot less to lose a competition and a lot less to win one.'(see Michael Kimmelman and his cogently argued article, 'Trial by Jury' in the New York Times). Listening to Bertolazzi it to confront one recreative triumph after another.
Time was when the Liszt Sonata was considered both incomprehensible and unplayable, before it was so formidably taken in hand by Vladimir Horowitz. Brahms reputedly fell asleep during the opening bars and Clara Schumann was outraged by the dedication to her husband(' that is just meaningless noise—not a single healthy idea anymore, everything confused,a clear harmonic progression is not to be found here any longer;' for her and like MacDuff (Shakespeare's Macbeth) 'confusion now hath made his masterpiece'). Today it is in the repertoires of a majority of pianists. There are recordings of legendary status by Horowitz(his first 1932 version), GIlels, Richter, Arrau, Brendel, Argerich, Hamelin, Anda, Zimerman and a sorely missed still unissued live performance by Radu Lupu, to name but ten. From Bertolazzi there are striking features set within his overall virtuosity. His opening is full of foreboding(a compromise between Horowitz's snapping off of the octave and Brendel's timpani- like resonance}. His thunder at the return of the principle theme after the fugue comes within an overall strong sense of lyricism beneath the heroics, while the abrupt termination of sound of the second subject on is final phantom return is yet another striking feature.. Already at twenty-four(his age at the tine of this recording) Bertolazzi is every inch the master pianist.
In two of the 'Transcendental Etudes,' 'Harmonies du soir' and 'Chasse-neige' there is a fulminating power in the massive rhetoric of the former and an elemental fury in the pre-impressionistic negation of the latter; ' the nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is'('The Snow Man' by Wallace Stevens). The 'Dante' Sonata provides another opportunity for Bertolazzi to flex muscles that nonetheless allow him the widest spectrum of drama and expression while in the 'Totentanz,' heard here in the solo version, there is a born feel for LIszt's far-seeing modernity, for the macabre and grotesque. In two of the Hungarian Rhapsodies(LIszt's epic tribute to his native country even if he did not speak her language) Bertolazzi sweeps aside all negative views and accusations of garishness('the hasty workmanship, the shallowness, the expensive glare which mar the Rhapsodies'-- Edward Sackville-West) He includes a brief flourish before the coda of the Second Rhapsody as opposed to the lengthy cadenza composed and recorded by Rachmaninov. In 'Un Sospiro; there is a fine balance between Liszt's first and second thoughts, between 'poetique caprice' and 'etude de concert.' and in the more restrained poetry of 'Puszta Wehmut'(Nostalgia of the Steppes, a prophecy of the late Hungarian Rhapsodies Nos 16=19) and in 'Chants des fleurs'(charming if over-extended) you are made aware of a calm in contrast to 'sound and fury' elsewhere.
Bertoloazzi ends with a moving tribute to Gyorgy Cziffra—his 'La Valse triste'-- a pianist whose temperament and pyrotechnics took the music world by storm(' he combines the precision of a metronome with the electrical discharge of a thunder storm'). Cziffra's later years were clouded by personal tragedy and finally by seclusion.
These are extraordinary performances, thrillingly recorded and demanding widest recognition.
Bryce Morrison