Artistic Path
In the ‘90s Giovanni Velluti came on the international stage in an uncommon way: claiming that . his role is that of artist-musician.
In an environment in which most instrumentalists behave in a professional, standardised way, Giovanni always gave priority to creative freedom, which is a primary need for any artist.
Freedom that means to get out of the “standardised schemes” of the so called “career”, whose patterns, in fact, can often be a great obstacle for expressing one’s own creativity.
These patterns often privilege not the more sensitive artist, the one who can share with the audience great emotions , but the performer who has greater solidity.
Giovanni therefore shows a curriculum with a variety of experiences , a path rich of that creative anxiety proper to real artistic research..
The study in youth with Aldo Mantia, favorite pupil of Wladimir von Pachmann, a legend among nineteenth century pianists , pupil of Vera Kologrivof, who had studied with Chopin himself.
Mantia first instilled devotion for Chopin’s music in Giovanni and is a guide ( he who had played in the presence of Busoni, Rosenthal, etc.) to the “authentic” interpretation of romantic music, the one who descends from oral tradition in the succession of masters).
After a period of study in which he takes also a degree in Economics, Giovanni begins to collaborate with the great stars of the Opera, first of all Katia Ricciarelli who, after performing with him as a substitute of Vincent Scalera in a tournée (Verdi theater of Padova, Trieste’s Rossetti , teatro Regio di Parma, Switzerland, etc.) more and more she wants him by her side as regular accompanist in Italy and abroad .
After a period of study in which he takes also a degree in Economics, Giovanni begins to collaborate with the great stars of the Opera, first of all Katia Ricciarelli who, after performing with him as a substitute of Vincent Scalera in a tournée (Verdi theater of Padova, Trieste’s Rossetti , teatro Regio di Parma, Switzerland, etc.) more and more she wants him by her side as regular accompanist in Italy and abroad .
The artistic liason with Katia opened for Giovanni the doors of the world of the great Opera: he has collaborates with many singers among which are Andrea Bocelli, Daniela Dessì, Carlo Lepore, Barcellona, Bordogna, Canzian, Johansson, Prestia, Rinaldi, Salvadori, etc. He performs also in recitals of music and poetry with great stars of theater and movies: Roman Polanski, Michele Placido, Piera Degli Esposti, enriching himself of great concert and artistic experience.
Notwithstanding he wants also to carry on his early desire to become a soloist and to melt soloism with his experience with singers.
On this path he met Rodolfo Caporali, a great teacher and pianist heir of the Thalberg and Chopin pianistic tradition through his teacher Alfonso Rendano , pupil of Georges Mathias.
Giovanni will meet also other great pianistic personalities , particularly Sergio Fiorentino, who gave him great encouragement, and William Grant Naborè, with whom he establishes a collaboration becoming his assistant in Rome.
The piano had its “Golden Age” in the period from 1825 to about a century later.
Up to that time it wasn’t necessary to define the canons of interpretation in the romantic music because the oral tradition was still alive.
Now it has become of decisive importance the idea of style: most youg pianists perform using the authentic published editions, every pianist has a very good tecnique, but fewer and fewer are the performers who can really recreate the atmosphere that was in the composer’s mind particularly in the romantic music tha only recently seems to have become object of a philological research.
That is the reason why more and more listeners are attracted today by the old recordings.
Those pianists , a generation extinct between the ‘80s and ‘90s of 20th century were the last custodians of that oral tradition that originated from Chopin .
” The difficulty of learning the correct “romantic style ” lies in the impossibility of an intellectual study of it.
It cannot be learned from any handbooks : it is just the result of the refinement of ones own sensibility and taste. One can only learn it by working closely together with a teacher , as the painters did in Italy during the Renaissance, living in the master’s atelier, in the “bottega”.
This emphasises a more craftsmanship way of being an artist, 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.