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ALDO CICCOLINI
Your programme’s second incursion into the Austro-German repertoire is
an excerpt from Brahms’s Sixteen Waltzes op.39. You’ve selected no.15 . . .
A.C.
: The best-known piece in the set; this music really embodies Vienna. I
must say I think it’s a pity that people don’t play op.39 as a whole. But we should
probably seek the explanation in something Artur Rubinstein once said: musicians
prefer to perform works that end
fortissimo
. Always the quest for applause . . .
Grieg has been present in your activity as a recording artist since the
1960s, and you came back to him late in your career with a complete set
of the
Lyric Pieces
. What is your relationship with this composer?
A.C.
: I’m enormously fond of Grieg. I feel, and I'm not alone in this, a sense of
tenderness for this little man – I remember his photo in his house in Bergen, taken
when the King of Norway had given him a Steinway. Grieg had eyes of incredible
beauty. I chose
Efterklang
(Remembrances) op.71 no.7, the last of the
Lyric Pieces
, a
waltz in which he nostalgically recalls the melody of the Arietta that opened the
first book of
Lyric Pieces
, op.12. After that, Grieg closes the door behind him.