On Sunday February 24th, Aldo Mancinelli and his wife Judith played Mozart’s Sonata in D Major; Chopin’s Rondo in C Major, Opus 73 and the Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brillante, Opus 22; and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue on a two-piano recital at St. Mary’s University. Per usual (be it poor PR or simply a location that is less than central or as accessible as TrinityUniversity’s Laurie Auditorium) only a handful of mixed faculty and student-body attended. And yet, Mr. Mancinelli is world renowned.
Unfortunately, though the audience applauded him after the first movement of Beethoven’s 4th when he played Carnegie Hall — (a vastly inappropriate gesture to applaud between movements unless, of course, the performance is so great that the audience cannot contain itself) — San Antonio, Texas, does not seem to know how to properly receive him.
And yet, Mr. Mancinelli continues to make yearly sojourns here. Perhaps this is more so due to the invitation from the Chair of the Music Department at St. Mary’s University, Mr. John Moore — Mancinelli’s former piano student, and my father. Although, it must be a noted difference for Mancinelli when he plays a concert for a few hundred well-versed and enthusiastic concert-goers, and then to a small and mostly apathetic crowd at the university. But maybe like most musicians, the number in the audience does not disconcert him in the least.
And so each year, I too join the small handful of students — who mostly attend because they must meet the Fine Arts class requirement — who have come to see this man, who is quite small in build, play technically arduous pieces by Rachmaninoff (whose hands so large could stretch over a span of 13 keys) and by many of the other great classical composers. In fact, Mr. Moore and Mr. Mancinelli can both claim an ancestral heritage to Beethoven through a very grand lineage of piano teachers. My father studied under Aldo Mancinelli, who studied under Claudio Arrau, who studied under Martin Krause, who studied under Franz Liszt, who studied under Carl Czerny, who studied under Beethoven. Suffice it to say, it is a great honor to see and hear Mr. Mancinelli perform; and this time, it is a dual honor, as Mr. Mancinelli and his wife Judith split harmony and melody between the two grand pianos.
The first movement of the Mozart Sonata begins with the Allegro con Spirito. It is light and spirited and fast, with falling-down runs and up-and-down-keyboard turns. Sometimes the left hand would chase the right up the keys, and other times the thumb and pinky of the right hand would ping-pong back and forth between two notes while the left pounded a fiery foundation below.
The second movement, the Andante, had a heavier, more connected left hand that was accompanied by light turns in the right; which was then followed by octave descents and trills. The third movement, the Allegro molto, was quite aggressive and displayed the up-and-down simultaneous descent and ascent of the hands moving in thirds.
The second Chopin piece had all the beautiful familiarity that I love so in the nocturnes: the fanning left hand that requires optimal wrist movement; and the eerie, almost melancholic echo of minor melodies that play over it in the right hand. With Chopin, the first time through the melody is in its simplest form; but by the second or third return, subtle changes and slight ornamentations keep the ear intrigued. And then there are the classic Chopin runs: feats of scale technique in which it sounds more like a tantalizing breeze has just passed through a blown-glass window chime. Mancinelli plays the Andante Spianato and Grande Polonaise Brilliante from memory, as he does the last piece, Gershwin’s Rhapsody.
Rhapsody in Blue has always been that great jazz classic that transcends classical music. Classical pianists love it because it is reminiscent of the influential dream-like pieces of Debussy. Present day, it conjures images of the accompanying animation created solely for this piece in Fantasia II.
Aldo and Judith Mancinelli end the concert with this piece, through a flurry of cross-over hand positions, diminished and dominant chord structures, double-handed octaves, and ascensions and descending melodies. Some parts are reminiscent of Bach’s Gigue, in which the left hand jumps back and forth over the right hand in a catch-me-if-you-can way.
And it is not until the encore, during which Aldo and Judith Mancinelli sit at the same piano for Georges Bizet’s The Ball, that I notice Mr. Mancinelli has been sitting on a large volume of Beethoven’s Sonatas for Piano Volume II, unedited Kalmus edition. He kindly offers it to his wife before they begin the short piece that ends this warm recital on this warm February afternoon.
