Let me introduce myself: my name is Daniela Santerini and I teach piano and keyboards, also online. From the very beginning, I have been passionate about research and musical teaching experimentation, developing a new method, "Limus", to learn how to play consciously (and not just the piano); let's say to learn how to "read" music. Then, thanks to the infinite possibilities offered by computer science and also my friendship with the late Maestro Franco Bignotto, I digitized two of his works, "Suono subito" and "Carillon".
In 1983, I founded the "Centro Artistico Le Muse" in Carbonia (because followers of the Muses were anciently called musicians; only later did the definition narrow down to just the art of sounds), where piano and keyboards, dance, painting, and acting were taught. In 1993, I continued my activity in Alghero, opening music courses with "Le Muse Music School", which left a trace here, thanks to the arrival of computers...
Now, after various moves for family reasons, while waiting to open another music school, I dedicate myself to private lessons, also online, and to the maintenance of my websites, mainly nuovemuse.it. I found myself in this forum because I was looking for Paul Hindemith's "The craft of musical composition" in Italian. I translated a bit of it myself, but I stopped.
He was my idol! I recognized him from the touch of the first notes! I heard him three times, one of these I was so in ecstasy that my elbows, which I had resting on my knees, slipped, also making my bag fall... such a racket!
I am reading now. Yes, I knew him very well and spoke with him many times. At that time I was a young student pianist and Riccardo Orsini assisted me, his personal tuner in the Roman area. Thanks to him, I was able to get closer to the Maestro. Many memories. It's not that I participated in a recording. It was a story from Orsini. He met him while participating in the recording of the Mazurkas at via Tiburtina in Rome. Simply put, the piano was out of tune and the recording could not proceed. He, Orsini, then the official tuner for RCA in Tiburtina, was called to try to fix the piano that wasn't working. He told me that, in his opinion, it was merely out of tune. He took two hours, and when Rubinstein sat at the piano, everything was fine. The maestro was forced to record the 56 mazurkas in succession, from 3:00 PM until late in the evening. Fantastic! That marked LM recording still exists. The next day a concert in New York awaited him.
Orsini was of great help to me. At that time he gave me many suggestions regarding tuning and the functioning of the mechanics. Suggestions dictated more by intuition than by "science," but he was a person who truly entered into communication with our instrument!!!
I sighed so much over your answer ... You know who manages to excite me today? Stefano Bollani! A daring comparison, but the enthusiasm remains unchanged!
Bollani is Great and very well-prepared. I like him very much and he is also likable. Today, that distance of the great artists of yesteryear no longer exists. Other times. Anyway, Rubinstein was truly Great! He also had an exceptional physique. He would change time zones for the world and play without recovery. He smoked 3 cigars a day. He felt lazy and said he never studied enough. He had an exceptional memory. As his son John says, his secret was simplicity. From his performances, one could not expect "strange" things. He observed a strict reading of the text, which, at that time, in the early century, in the height of Art Nouveau, gave a breath of modernity and style, especially regarding interpretations of Chopin. At times, however, he was theatrical. He himself recounts in a video that he played the Op. 25 No. 11 étude in New York with a very imprecise and unclear right hand. He relied entirely on the extreme evidence of the left-hand theme, and this literally "drove" the audience crazy. We could never hear that on record. We are missing many Beethoven recordings that he never made and much Spanish music that he frequently played in concert during the first mature period of his life. He insisted heavily on the weight of the right hand and on the transmission of the weight of the arm and forearm to the tips of the fingers. Even Pollini recounts having felt an example of the Maestro's right-hand "support" on his shoulder. This allowed him to develop an exceptional legato and a beautiful cantabile, perhaps the primary objective to be achieved on our instrument.
