Artistic Path
Giovanni Velluti came on the international stage not only as a pianist but as an artist-musician.
In an environment in which most instrumentalists behave in a professional, standardised way, Giovanni gives priority to the freedom of musical language : freedom that means to move out of the “standardised tracks” of the so called “career”, whose patterns, in fact, can often be a great obstacle for expressing one’s own creativity.
Giovanni therefore shows a curriculum far from the rules, a path rich of that anxiety proper to real artistic research.
The study in his youth with Aldo Mantia, favoured pupil of Wladimir von Pachmann, the legend pianist of the “post Liszt” era, who studied with Vera Kologrivof, pupil of Chopin.
Mantia first introduced Giovanni. to the deep love for Chopin’s music and is a guide ( he who had played in the presence of Busoni, Rosenthal, etc.) to the authentic interpretation of romantic music.
Aldo Mantia was born to a great pianist, his mother was Ida Bosisio, pupil of Sgambati and Liszt , pianist of the Savoia Italy court.
He grew up in the musical world, being friend of many collegues students as Carlo Zecchi and took part to the “futurismo” artistic movement headed by Filippo T.Marinetti .
Giovanni started working together with the bass Carlo Lepore, a close friend from the youth age, then he performed with Katia Ricciarelli as a substitute for her pianist Vincent Scalera. After the first tournée (Verdi theater of Padova, Trieste’s Rossetti , Teatro Regio di Parma, Switzerland, etc.) Katia wanted frequently Giovanni as her musical partner since he became her regular accompanist in Italy and abroad.
The artistic liason with Katia opened Giovanni the doors of the great lyrical music world: he has collaborated with many singers among which are D. Barcellona, A. Bocelli, G.Cecchele, M.Custer, K.Johansson, G.Prestia, R.Rinaldi, E.Salvadori P.Bordogna.
Notwithstanding his aim was to become a soloist and on this path he met Rodolfo Caporali, the great teacher and pianist heir of the Thalberg and Chopin pianistic tradition through his teacher Alfonso Rendano , pupil of Georges Mathias.
The idea of style is very important in music, particularly today: most musicians perform using in the authentic published editions, nearly every pianist has a good tecnique, but fewer and fewer are the performers who can really recreate the atmosphere that was in the composer’s mind. This applies particularly to the XIX century composers (from Beethoven to Scriabin, with the culminating point in Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Liszt). That is the reason why more and more listeners are attracted by the old recordings.
Nowadays we lack that poetry of playing and this is due to not knowing the style proper to any single composer.
To explain this we can think how obvious is that of playing Mozart with the rubato and the touch of Rachmaninov music really is “out of style”. The difficulty in learning the correct “style ” is in the impossibility of an intellectual study of it.. It doesn’t exist, and cannot be learned from any handbooks: it is just the result of the sharpening of ones own sensibility and taste. In clear words one can only obtain it working closely together with a teacher who got this legacy from a line of Masters , as the painters did in Italy during the Renaissance, living in the master’s atelier, in the “bottega”.
This is a reversion to a more craftman’s vision of art, a conception more connected to talents that need time and room to develop, a point of view that doesn’t want to sacrifice to the run of the mill.
Now he assumed also the role of teacher to give this legacy to young students, and is working closely with W.Grant Naborè, director and fouder of the famous Como lake piano Academy.
Here is the list of images in order:
- Academic Hall of the Conservatory Santa Cecilia Roma
2. Autograph by Aldo Mantia 1973
3. Autograph by Carlo Zecchi ad Aldo Mantia 1928
4. Autograph letter from Giuseppe Verdi to Ida Bosisio
5. Concert program of a recital by Ida Bosisio and Giovanni Sgambati 1902
6. Giovanni Velluti and Katia Ricciarelli 1995
7. Poster for the “Amici della musica di Firenze” season 2001-2002
8. Giovanni Velluti’s YouTube channel presentation by Katia Ricciarelli
9. With Rodolfo Caporali 1999.
10. William Grant Naboré
11. William Grant Naboré and Giovanni Velluti with Dimitry Maaslev, winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow 2016.