AFIM-LCFE Day of Remembrance in Florence: Bellucci Sablich Concert
Florence – 9 March 2023
Sold out at Bellucci’s concert Sablich remembered with music by Liszt
Love and death but also nostalgia and Remembrance, the myth and legend in the works of Franz Liszt, whose only ambition as a musician was to “throw a javelin into the indefinite spaces of the future”. This is why a concert dedicated to the great “European” musician, father of modern piano technique and recitals, arouses emotions, respect, strong sensations, especially if entrusted to the interpretation of a sensitive and extraordinary pianist like Giovanni Bellucci. He performed a few nights ago at the Cherubini Conservatory in Florence, in the Sala del Buonumore with a sold-out audience. The concert was dedicated to the musicologist, son of Rijeka parents, Sergio Sablich whom Bellucci had the opportunity to meet and with whom he collaborated in some innovative projects, dedicated among other things to two other greats of the eastern North Adriatic area, Ferruccio Busoni, whose mother was from Trieste and Luigi Dallapiccola, born in Pazin. How can we fail to appreciate the extraordinary mix – Dante, Florence, Sablich, Bellucci –, of the Fantasia quasi Sonata: Après une lecture de Dante (from the cycle “Années de pèlerinage, Deuxième année, Italie”), which unites Florence, Dante and the Carnaro “that Italy closes and its terms bathes” (Inferno, Canto IX, 113-114), to make one’s wrists tremble for the precise symbolic value through which the contrast and struggle between evil and good was musically expressed.
“We wanted this evening – explained Franco Papetti, president of AFIM-LCFE before the concert – to remember an excellence of the people of Rijeka in the world, in the path of redefining the dimension of a people scattered by the exodus that has been able to redeem itself in the relationship with the world”.
Sergio Sablich, born in Bolzano to parents from Rijeka, exiles in Alto Agide because they were welcomed by family members, was trained in Florence, with his sister Marina he got to know Rijeka and the Kvarner islands during the summer holidays, in repeated returns that allowed him to build a relationship of affection with these lands.
“Sablich was a professor at the Cherubini Conservatory” – recalled its President Rosa Maria di Giorgi –, “only a stage, but an important one, in his successful career. Bringing Sablich’s thought back through Bellucci’s concert here fills us with joy”.
Sablich deeply loved Liszt, as explained by Eleonora Blacks of the Lyceum Club of Florence, presenting a memory of the musicologist, a passionate man, sometimes prone to conscious depression and a necessary meditation. The ups and downs of an existence to escape the grayness, the homologation.
It was necessary to choose a program of music by Liszt, so multifaceted, so rich, visionary and innovative genius. With him were born Impressionism on the piano, the orchestral piano, transcendent performance and the literary piano. For the occasion, as often happened in the past, the libretto contains a text by Sablich, in which we read, among other things: “No event, no character, no trend that emerged over the fifty central years of that century remained extraneous to Liszt’s influence, to his ability to stand as a protagonist and judge of grandiose artistic changes, to reflect them on himself with extraordinary force. The multiplicity of figures that coexisted in him (virtuoso of the piano and orchestral conducting no less than an innovator in composition, and then again transcriber, teacher, organizer, critic, writer, master of thought and energetic man of action) had a profound impact on all fields of musical activity, cooperating in giving a unitary physiognomy to the unprecedented variety of personalities who acted in them before, during and after the romantic storm…”.
The evening’s program included music by Liszt, Wagner, Mendelssohn, Verdi performed with incredible strength by the pianist Giovanni Bellucci who managed to move the audience and snatch applause, repeated and convinced for his virtuosity, sweetness, sensuality and passion. “Just as Sergio would have wanted” – underlined Marina Sablich at the end of the concert – who concluded the evening with a hug of gratitude addressed to Giovanni Bellucci from whose idea this evening was born, to be repeated for the beauty, the depth and the message, once again, “launched” towards the future.
