Flavio Villani – Reflections and Reveries by Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Liszt, Villani, Od (2023/2023), Auckland Town Hall, Auckland, New Zealand

L’Accademia & Flavio Villani Flavio Villani – Reflections and Reveries Join us for an evening of Reflections and Reveries – where music and storytelling intertwine to create a deeply moving and unforgettable experience. The Prelude was once an improvised musical work. It offered a tempting taste of the musical possibilities and mood to come during the concert programme that followed. In this event it is the promise of a dialogue, a dialogue between the pianist, the composer and the audience. The first half of the programme features Rachmaninoff’s Preludes, where the Russian composer’s rich and varied Preludes Op.23 are intertwined with Villani's own improvisations inspired by Rachmaninoff's harmonic and rhythmic ideas. This musical conversation invites the performer and audience to reflect on the profound impact of this music on the performer's artistic journey – sometimes what remains of is just an echo and other times what we do changes and enriches us to the core. The second half of the program pays homage to Franz Liszt, one of the greatest improvisers of the 19th century. His Ballade n.2 draws inspiration from the myth of Hero and Leander, conveying their impossible love drowned in the sea that divided them. Liszt's use of technical devices, such as arpeggiated accompaniment, broken chord figurations, scales and counterpoint, for narrative effect is astounding but used as a means of storytelling. The Chopin Etudes – which Liszt used to study – are complex and harmonically exploratory. These provide the foundation for Villani’s own Ballade-like piece which, with its restless "tammorra" rhythms and lamenting melodies, drawn on the folk music of his home region, Campania. This semi-improvised piece is a reflection of Villani’s experience of loss. It wants to be a poignant, yet liberating expression of grief and transformation – an epitaph to the memory of what one's place of origin means to us after change, life and loss. It wants to answer the question: what has all this music really taught us, musicians and listeners alike? What story is left to tell?