Unconventional musicology-based approaches to classical-music performance
Concerts, talks, and concert-lectures
A personal project by Luca Chiantore
Musicological research can prove an unparalleled stimulus for bringing ideas to performance. But I have long been aware that performance can just as easily feed back to musicological thinking. And this is not all. Very often these synergies reveal no clear unidirectional trajectory. I experience this fertile collision with growing interest, in particular because of its potential to reshape our historiographic, stylistic, and professional categories. With this in mind, in November, 2018, I launched this new personal project: concerts, talks, recordings, and other initiatives, some addressed to an academic environment, others to general audiences, the common thread being my yearning to offer alternative ways to perform the classical-music repertoire from a starting point of unconventional musicology-based approaches.
Luca Chiantore
…or four different ways of not playing “what is written in the score”. Piano recital with spoken commentaries.
2018-2020
Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata with added movements, improvised fermatas and interludes, recomposed cadenzas, and original melodic material from the Landsberg 6 manuscript, together with 9 startling etudes by Hélène de Nervo de Montgeroult, the extraordinary woman who embodied better than anyone that turbulent age of revolutions. Piano recital with spoken commentaries.
2020-2022
Lecture at the piano. Works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johannes Brahms, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
2018-2020
Lecture with excerpts of works by Hélène de Montgeroult, Fryderyk Chopin, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Johannes Brahms, played and commented at the piano.
2019-2021
A radically different performance of Beethoven “Emperor” Concerto: inVersion by Luca Chiantore with variants and thoroughbass according to the first edition; fermatas, cadenza, interludes, and solos (re)composed from autograph sketches; ornamented timpani and added snare drum parts; and two original melologues, partially derived from the incidental music for Egmont.
Private world premiere: Mexico City, December 2, 2021
Public world premiere: Morelia, Mexico, December 4, 2021.
Tzintzuni Chamber Orchestra. Conductor: Juan Vázquez.
An exploration between music, instrumentation, and spoken language together with the Tzintzuni Chamber Orchestra and its conductor, composer Juan Vázquez. Winter 2023-24.
Concert-lecture. Works by Fryderyk Chopin and Maria Szymanowska.
2023-2024
Concert-lecture. Works by Johannes Brahms.
2023-2024
The thrilling life and unbelievable music of a unique figure in music history. Works by Hélène de Montgeroult.
2021-2023
Concert-lecture. Works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Muzio Clementi, and Ludwig van Beethoven.
2019-2020