Giovanni Bertolazzi in Padova
Homage to Zoltan Kocsis
A giant returns to celebrate a genius
It was almost four years ago that Giovanni played in the Sala dei Giganti in a Sunday morning series dedicated to young competition winners. Giovanni, I had already heard in Bolzano and had immediately realised that here was potentially a remarkable musician and passionately dedicated pianist. I wrote about that first concert in Padua giving it the title ‘A Giant amongst the Giants’.
Giovanni has now grown into a very mature young man with a quarter of a century behind him as his playing is growing steadily in stature. He has been taken under the wing of the Keyboard Trust and has already played in London on two occasions. On the first occasion he took advantage of the generosity of Leslie Howard ,the leading Liszt expert of the day and Artistic director of the KT ,to discuss repertoire and consult scores with a true expert. Leslie had been a esteemed student of Guido Agosti who had studied with Busoni who in turn had been a student of Liszt. On the same occasion he played the Liszt Sonata to Peter Frankl at his home and they spent many hours discussing it together. Giovanni on his second visit to London last June took the National Liberal Club by storm as he gave the first in a series of six concerts for young musicians in a hall which had seen Rachmaninov and Moiseiwitch before the war. Last autumn he toured America and astounded all that heard him including the New York critic Jed Distler one of the most informed critics of our day. I like to think that Giovanni and I have become friends since that fateful day in Bolzano when I by chance bumped into him with his father and was able to congratulate him on the superb performances he had given in the ‘Busoni’.
