Berg, Liszt, Scriabin: Poem-Sonatas

Massimiliano Motterle studied with Sergio Marengoni and graduated from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan with the highest honours and a special commendation. He continued his training with Franco Scala, Lazar Berman, Paul Badura-Skoda and Alexis Weissenberg.

He won twenty-one national and international competitions, including the international competition in Parma, where he also received the jury’s special award for his performance of Liszt’s Sonata. He was a finalist in the José Iturbi Competition in Valencia and won third prize at the Franz Liszt Competition in Budapest, where no first prize was awarded, as well as at the international competition in Cincinnati, Ohio.

In 1994 he made his debut in Milan’s Sala Verdi, performing Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto with the Milan RAI Orchestra conducted by Daniele Callegari. In the same hall, he was selected to perform on a piano that had belonged to Vladimir Horowitz. In 2004 he performed Liszt’s twelve Transcendental Études for the Società dei Concerti. He was also invited to perform Liszt’s Malediction in Budapest’s Great Concert Hall with the Liszt Chamber Orchestra, and Totentanz with the Hungarian Matáv Symphony Orchestra at the Liszt Academy.

His concert career has taken him to Austria, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, Hungary, Taiwan, Oman and the United States. He has performed with the Liszt Chamber Orchestra, the Hungarian Matáv Symphony Orchestra, the Valencia Orchestra, the RAI Symphony Orchestra and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, under conductors including Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli, Piercarlo Orizio, András Ligeti, Riccardo Frizza, Jonathan Webb and Neal Gittleman.

His chamber music partners have included Andreas Brantelid, Karin Dornbusch, Elisa Citterio and the Quartetto della Scala. His collaboration with violinist Fulvio Luciani began in 2007; together they recorded for Naxos and performed the complete Beethoven sonatas for violin and piano for the international television channel Classica HD.

He has given seminars and masterclasses in Italy, Taiwan and the United States. His teaching and artistic leadership have included the Gaetano Donizetti Conservatory in Bergamo, the historic GIA music association in Brescia, and the Onde Musicali and Iseo Classica festivals.

Alban Berg: ( b Vienna, 9 Feb 1885; d Vienna, 24 Dec 1935). Austrian composer. Along with his teacher Arnold Schoenberg and fellow pupil Anton Webern in the years before and immediately after World War I, he moved away from tonality to write free atonal and then 12-note music. At once a modernist and a Romantic, a formalist and a sensualist, he produced one of the richest bodies of music in the 20th century, and in opera, especially, he had few equals.

Alexander Scriabin: (b Moscow, 25 Dec 1871/6 Jan 1872; d Moscow, 14/27 April 1915). Russian composer and pianist. One of the most extraordinary figures musical culture has ever witnessed, Skryabin has remained for a century a figure of cultish idolatry, reactionary yet modernist disapproval, analytical fascination and, finally, aesthetic re-evaluation and renewal. The transformation of his musical language from one that was affirmatively Romantic to one that was highly singular in its thematism and gesture and had transcended usual tonality – but was not atonal – could perhaps have occurred only in Russia where Western harmonic mores, although respected in most circles, were less fully entrenched than in Europe. While his major orchestral works have fallen out of and subsequently into vogue, his piano compositions inspired the greatest of Russian pianists to give their most noteworthy performances. Skryabin himself was an exceptionally gifted pianist, but as an adult he performed only his own works in public. The cycle of ten sonatas is arguably of the most consistent high quality since that of Beethoven and acquired growing numbers of champions throughout the 20th century.

Franz Liszt: (b Raiding, (Doborján), 22 Oct 1811; d Bayreuth, 31 July 1886). Hungarian composer, pianist and teacher. He was one of the leaders of the Romantic movement in music. In his compositions he developed new methods, both imaginative and technical, which left their mark upon his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated some 20th-century ideas and procedures; he also evolved the method of ‘transformation of themes’ as part of his revolution in form, made radical experiments in harmony and invented the symphonic poem for orchestra. As the greatest piano virtuoso of his time, he used his sensational technique and captivating concert personality not only for personal effect but to spread, through his transcriptions, knowledge of other composers’ music. As a conductor and teacher, especially at Weimar, he made himself the most influential figure of the New German School dedicated to progress in music. His unremitting championship of Wagner and Berlioz helped these composers achieve a wider European fame. Equally important was his unrivalled commitment to preserving and promoting the best of the past, including Bach, Handel, Schubert, Weber and above all Beethoven; his performances of such works as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Hammerklavier Sonata created new audiences for music hitherto regarded as incomprehensible. The seeming contradictions in his personal life – a strong religious impulse mingled with a love of worldly sensation – were resolved by him with difficulty. Yet the vast amount of new biographical information makes the unthinking view of him as ‘half gypsy, half priest’ impossible to sustain. He contained in his character more of the ideals and aspirations of the 19th century than any other major musician.

Profile from The New Grove dictionary of Music and Musicians