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Filippo Gorini:

Nothing makes me as passionate as delving deep into a work of music, taking a long time to make sense of it, and then sharing what I have achieved with an audience. This is the heart of making music for me as a performer.

Italian pianist Filippo Gorini (26) has been thinking deeply about Johann Sebastian Bach’s unfinished masterpiece, The Art of Fugue, since 2013 and is now poised to launch a highly imaginative, far-reaching project that will arc across the next two years and embrace a multiplicity of genres beyond music. Global lockdown gave him the unexpected opportunity to research and prepare for this epic personal quest and develop a number of ways – live, digital and virtual – to share his discoveries and passions with the largest possible audience.

ALBUM
The first step is the album, BACH The Art of Fugue, released worldwide on 27 August 2021 on the award-winning Alpha Classics label. A short film made during the recording in September 2020 at Berlin’s Teldex Studios, featuring Gorini at the keyboard and also explaining what this work means to him, will accompany the release. For the CD booklet Gorini has also written his own cycle of sonnets and haiku poems to serve as preludes to the counterpoints and canons on the album.

Much more follows.

Gorini believes that historical masterpieces such as The Art of Fugue are vitally connected to both the present and the future. His overriding aim is to explore this work, not as a fixed monument in the past, but through vivid dialogue with contemporary culture. “The triumphs of intellect and craft, the symbols and layers of meaning hidden within this work’s conception are at one with the singing lines that are really at its heart,” he explains. “The view that it should be seen solely as a theoretical marvel is misguided; as the counterpoints and canons evolve in formal complexity, so does their emotional tension, until the heartbreaking mystery of the unfinished Fuga XIV.”

DOCUMENTARY SERIES OF VIDEO PODCASTS
As well as including The Art of Fugue in his recital schedules for the forthcoming seasons, Gorini will be releasing a series video podcasts featuring his conversations with legendary figures in the worlds of the arts and science. Each interview is referenced to a particular counterpoint and imagery from TS Eliot’s Four Quartets which, as a collection of meditations on the human relationship with time, the universe and the divine, resonates strongly with The Art of Fugue.

Interviews have already been filmed with artist and sculptor Alexander Polzin and pianist Alfred Brendel. Lockdown rules have complicated and prolonged production this year, but forthcoming sessions are now lined up with filmmaker Alexander Sokurov, pianist Mitsuko Uchida, architect Frank Gehry, theatre director Peter Sellars, conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin and mathematician Marcus du Sautoy, among others. Negotiations are underway with a major European cultural channel for broadcast.

RECITALS
Live performances remain at the heart of the project. Like many other musicians, Gorini’s recital tours are being rebuilt after the effects of the global pandemic. Following a summer of intensive music-making at Marlboro Music in the US, he will embark on a recital tour in Europe including Italy, France and Germany throughout the Autumn of 2021. His performance of The Art of Fugue at the extraordinary Mole Antonelliana building in Turin (Italy’s National Museum of Cinema) was filmed last year for Gorini’s debut at the Montréal Bach Festival.

MORE TO COME
Gorini has established other contacts with eminent cultural commentators and practitioners and is in the process of developing a feature film with a renowned director inspired by his exploration of The Art of Fugue and also a significant digital project. These will be unveiled in 2022.

Gorini firmly believes that The Art of Fugue merits constant exploration and delivers endless rewards to anyone willing to dedicate time and effort. He comments, “n this project, all the forces that have meant most in my life come together organically; from my love of music – especially of counterpoint forms – to passions for art, architecture, mathematics and science. I am looking forward to making it a reality during the coming years.”

The Art of Fugue Explored is entirely curated by Filippo Gorini, organised in consultation Keynote Artist Management and Ute Fesquet and supported by the Borletti-Buitoni Trust, of which he was an Award winner in 2020.

FILIPPO GORINI piano
www.filippogorini.it

• Born 1995 into a family of nuclear physicists.
• Awards and prizes include Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award 2020, Telekom-Beethoven Competition (First and Audience prizes) 2015, Neuhaus Competition Moscow 2013 (First prize)“Una Vita per la Musica – Giovani” of La Fenice Theatre, Young Euro Classic Award and Beethoven-Ring of Bonn.
• Concert appearances include Wigmore Hall London, Tonhalle Zurich, Meany Hall Seattle, Vancouver Playhouse, Berlin Konzerthaus, Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Munich Herkulessaal, Società del Quartetto di Milano, Samsung Concert Hall Seoul.
• Orchestras he has recently guested with include Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, Ochestra Leonore, Sinfonieorchester Leichtenstein, among others
• Festival appearances include Marlboro Music, Al Bustan Festival Lebanon, Cliburn Beethoven Festival, Naples Associazione Scarlatti, Accademia Filharmonica Romana, Ravello Festival, Ravenna Festival and Festival Bach Montreal.
• Chamber music collaborators include Steven Isserlis/Prussia Cove and Chamber Music Connects the World in Kronberg.
• Debut CD in 2017 on Alpha Classics of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations critically acclaimed with 5-star reviews in media including The Guardian, BBC Music Magazine, Le Monde and more, plus Diapason d’Or Award. Alpha released his second disc in early 2020 – Beethoven’s Op. 106 & Op. 111 – which was equally well received.
• Contemporary music also features prominently in his repertoire including performances of works by Stockhausen, Kurtág, Lachenmann, Gervasoni and Lanza in the past season alone. His main passions are the works of Bach, Beethoven and Schubert.
• Studies with Maria Grazia Bellocchio and Pavel Gililov and is mentored by Alfred Brendel.
• Graduated from scientific high school with a thesis on Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems, then with honours in piano studies from the Donizetti Conservatory in Bergamo, followed by postgraduate course at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg.
• Photo credit: Marco Borggreve

The Critics – Filippo Gorini on Alpha Classics

Filippo Gorini’s fearless, breathtaking debut disc ★★★★★
Beethoven’s massive and confounding Diabelli Variations isn’t the obvious choice for a debut disc, but the young Italian pianist Filippo Gorini seems intently drawn to the strange drama of this martial little tune and its mysterious decoration. Gorini has a fearless attack in heftier variations and an inquisitive, ultra-focused touch as the themes start to splinter and turn inward … It is brave, original playing for a musician of any age.

Kate Molleson, The Guardian, August 2017

Everything in his recording of the Diabelli Variations shows musical awareness and technical aplomb at a high level of fusion, and his own booklet essay confirms his grasp of the overall architecture – a journey from the mundane to the celestial in four arcs, as he puts it – as well as immediate character.

David Fanning, Gramophone

A Triumphant Success ★★★★★
This is, it soon becomes evident, one of the great interpretations of one of Beethoven’s most invigorating, far-ranging and finally ethereal works.

Michael Tanner, BBC Music Magazine, December 2017

In an incredibly mature account of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, the young Italian pianist Filippo Gorini perfectly catches the various moods of the music, with powerful climaxes, a feverish youthful drive, beautiful lyricism and deep inner feelings.

Remy Franck, Pizzicato, August 2017 (Supersonic Award)

★★★★★ Diapason D’Or
There is no doubt: a star has risen, perhaps of the brightest kind.

Patrick Sznersovicz, Diapason, October 2017

Most important is the staggering maturity in evidence here
Filippo Gorini’s star is in the ascendant: winner of a number of prestigious awards, he also studies with Brendel. Gorini’s intellect is way beyond his tender years. This is a ‘Hammerklavier’ to cherish, sculpted beautifully with full structural awareness, one that nevertheless bends with the wind. Gorini’s grasp of Beethoven’s contrapuntal workings in the outer movements of this gargantuan sonata are exemplary.

Colin Clarke, International Piano Magazine, April 2020

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The Art of Fugue Explored