A remarkable pianist is due to make his come-back after 25 years...

Here is a pianist who has absolutely nothing to do with Leeds.

Remember Tower Records at Piccadilly Circus? Many years ago, in the days when I edited a piano magazine, I used to love going into the classical department and having a good old browse in the historical piano section. One of the staff members there was exceptionally helpful and informative on this topic. He wore a red shirt and the name label ANGELO. Struck by his evident inside knowledge and love for the repertoire and its legendary exponents, I thought he was well named. And I always wondered what such a special guy was doing working in Tower Records in any case.

Now we know. Angelo Villani was a pianist himself - a remarkably talented one. He hails from an Italian family in Australia. A quarter-century ago he arrived at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow with high hopes, a week before it began. Disaster struck: a trapped nerve in his arm led to his withdrawal from the contest before the first round. He travelled the world looking for effective treatment, but since then has performed only sporadically, and has made a living by teaching - and, for seven years, working in Tower Records. 

And now he's making a come-back.

He'll be playing at St James, Piccadilly, on Saturday 6 October, with a programme of Grieg, Brahms and Liszt - nothing less than the 'Dante' Sonata. Box office: 020 7734 4511.

After listening to some of his performances on Youtube, I thought we'd better ask him for an e-interview.



JD: Angelo, what happened to you?

AV: Specialists have not been entirely sure how the nerve in my neck/shoulder came to be entrapped; some said it may have been an early sports injury or even carrying a heavy school bag on my shoulder.

JD: What has changed?

AV: About two or three years after the Tchaikovsky competition, it was finally diagnosed as calcified scar tissue impinging on the nerve. Many diverse treatments were tried and after a long while I finally began to see tangible results. My current specialist Andrew Croysdale has been working on my shoulder for the past 8 years or so. He is a Master with Tui-Na techniques, a Chinese method of deep tissue massage.

JD: Was it a difficult decision to make a come back?

AV: Well, truth be told, I have been waiting for this comeback for over 25 years.

JD: How do you feel about taking to the concert platform?

AV: For me, the idea of performing in public has always been a double-edged sword. So I guess it is as daunting as it is thrilling. I love this duality.

JD:  What repertoire is really you, and why?

AV: I feel very at home with the Romantics, but generally I love any music that is overtly expressive by nature. Mood and atmosphere can be just as potent as emotion.

JD: Who did you study with and who do you consider are your chief influences?
AV: In Melbourne, my first proper teacher was Stephen McIntyre (who was himself a pupil of Michelangeli). Also at the Victorian College of the Arts Technical School, I studied with Alexander Semetsky (a pupil of Gilels). From the age of ten, I started collecting LPs, not only of any Classical pianists but of opera singers and conductors. Before long, I was buying the same concertos and operas but with different artists. I was very keen to understand what set them apart.

JD: Who do you like listening to and what type of playing do you love the most?

AV: After listening and collecting recordings for so many years and then working at Tower Records I realized how extraordinary it was that one could revisit these old recordings repeatedly and always find something 'new' in them. Recently after I became engaged I had further cause to rediscover and share these old treasures with my fiancee, herself a sensitive amateur pianist.

When I first heard the playing of greats such as Horowitz, Richter and Cziffra, I became extremely curious of their predecessors and hungry to understand why they played the way they played. I guess it didn't take long to notice how highly faceted and multidimensional these artists were...

JD: Name a few favourite piano recordings and state why you have chosen them.

AV: Ignace Tiegerman's rendering of Chopin's 4th Ballade is miraculous, as is the heaven storming performance of the same work by Josef Hofmann. I am constantly amazed, no matter how many times I revisit these marvels.They are so different and yet so Polish' in their unique way.

Same goes for Ervin Nyiregyhazi's Liszt 2 Legends. He seems to not only underline the Hungarian elements in Liszt's music but also the metaphysical and visionary aspects to the point where a critical response becomes engulfed by an emotional one.

Walter Gieseking is largely remembered for his Ravel and Debussy ,but I find him at his most telling in Schumann especially in works like the 'Davidsbundlertanze'.Here we have a moving example of intensely overt lyricism juxtaposed with a striking personal intimacy :Tragic heartache beneath a cloak of sublime dignity and resignation...

JD: What are your plans now?

AV: To not drive the neighbours crazy with my Dante Sonata!


Here is Angelo playing Franck's Prelude, Chorale et Fugue. As you'd imagine from someone who names Tiegerman and Nyiregyhazi as favourites, this is not exactly usual playing. (Three parts.)

Federico Colli: the flower of Leeds?

The Italian pianist Federico Colli, 24, scooped first prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition last night. I tuned in on R3 in the middle of his Beethoven 'Emperor' Concerto, without remembering exactly who was due to play it, and was entranced. Seriously beautiful pianism with wonderful tone; very sensitive to nuances, voicing and atmosphere; intelligent, energetic and never heavy-handed: the sort of playing, indeed, that you don't really associate with the final of a piano competition.

Radio 3's announcer, Petroc Trelawny, seemed fixated, meanwhile, with the pianist's red cravat, and one of several friends who was in the audience remarks that Colli, who hails from Brescia, slightly resembled a cross between Casanova and Dracula, yet clearly had a lovely personality and superb stage presence.

Colli has also won the Salzburg International Mozart Competition (last year). He studies with Boris Petrushansky at Imola and Konstantin Bogino at Bergamo. Apparently he is "fascinated by the complex equations of quantum mechanics".

I'd take an educated guess, though, that it was a fairly close-run matter between Colli and the Swiss pianist Louis Schwizgebel, who played first on Friday evening. Of all the performances I've listened to so far, it is Schwizgebel's Haydn C major Sonata that has really stayed aboard.

Our doughty commentator Erica Worth, editor of Pianist Magazine, has just phoned us to report that she was very happy with the result. "The two top prizes went, I think, to the most interesting musicians, the ones who had the most personality and the most to say," she declares. "Personally I would have given first prize to Louis Schwizgebel and second to Colli, but I'm so glad they both came through at the top."

Third prize went to Jiayan Sun (China), fourth to Andrejs Osokins (Latvia), fifth to Andrew Tyson (USA) and sixth to Jayson Gillham (Australia). A special prize voted by the players of the Halle Orchestra and presented in memory of Terence Judd went to Andrew Tyson.

You can catch both final concerts and a selection of semi-final performances on BBC iPlayer (radio) this week. Today at 2pm there's a gala concert to be broadcast by Radio 3 involving all six finalists. And from 21 September the TV finally wakes up: BBC4 has a series of six hour-long programmes on successive Friday evenings devoted to the competition (though as we now know the results it seems a bit late to the party).

Bravo, then, Federico Colli. Keep wearing that cravat.

Here's a write-up from The Arts Desk. [UPDATE] Here are some more details about the prizes and their winners, from Pianist Magazine.

And here's Federico in the final of the Mozart Competition in Salzburg 2011:



Meanwhile, Louis has already had a Wigmore Hall debut. He seems to have dropped half his surname since then. It turns out that his father is a maker of animated films. Here's Louis himself, very animated indeed in a spot of Moszkowski.

Leeds Piano Competition Finals 1: the story so far

The lovely editor of Pianist Magazine, Erica Worth, is on location at the finals of the Leeds International Piano Competition. JD got her on the phone and asked what she thought of the first three finalists, who played their concerti last night. The second three - and the results - will follow tonight, and we'll hopefully get Erica's feedback for that as well, so stay tuned.

"The standard generally is astronomical," Erica says. "In my view, it's way higher than it was three years ago. Every pianist we've heard so far is a fully fledged musician - and any of them we'd happily buy a ticket to hear in a concert hall.

"I was deeply moved by the performance of the Beethoven Piano Concerto No.4, by Louis Schwizgebel [Switzerland] - a beautiful, sensitive account, very elegant - really someone to watch. Jiayan Sun [China] in Prokofiev's Second Concerto was technically very impressive, even if I wanted a bit more from it in terms of sheer hair-raising scariness. Jayson Gillham [Australia] in the Beethoven 'Emperor' Concerto seemed the least nervous and most at ease at the piano, sovreign in many ways, though in places the interpretation seemed a little too light and Mozartian for the piece."

Listen out for the final part 2 and the announcement of the prizes on BBC Radio 3 tonight. I'm still cross it's not live on TV, but will try to catch up with what there is on the iPlayer.

JD on R3 today

I'm on BBC Radio 3's CD Review this morning at approx 11.05, chatting with Andrew McGregor about six Bach and Bach-ish discs. Not least, the Goldberg Variations on the accordion. Tune in here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mns4j

Strewth! Papageno gets a proposal

So it's opening night at ENO, they're doing The Magic Flute and at the moment Papageno counts to three in case a girl will agree to marry him before he hangs himself...someone does. A lady in the second row put up a hand and said "All right!"

The hunky baritone Duncan Rock, recipient of the RPS's new Chilcott Award (in memory of the late soprano Susan Chilcott), kept admirably calm and carried on, but made sure to give this unexpected fiancee a round of applause at the end of the opera. 

The Magic Flute - the fairy-tale that becomes magically deeper the lighter it is - had meanwhile fizzed by in a feast of that gorgeous Mozartness that has made this my favourite opera always and forever and confirmed it in that status yet again. In short, it evokes the way music can protect us through life's most terrible trials, and the way those trials strengthen the bonds between lovers. Never has it felt so true. Its profundity within that feathery touch is comparable, to my ears, only to the comedies of Shakespeare.

It's the last revival of Nicholas Hytner's classic production that has run since 1988. Our friends at What's On Stage suggest that something interesting may be lurking in the works by way of a new take. We're watching that space.

Meanwhile the well-chosen cast made the most of the fun, with plenty freedom to turn it their own way - "Strewth!" shouts this very Australian Papageno, spotting the snake. Shawn Mathey is a full-toned Tamino, Elena Xanthoudakis a powerful and charismatic Pamina, Robert Lloyd holding the stage and the low notes as the stringent 18th-century patriarch that this production makes of Sarastro. Rhian Lois as a Welsh Papagena joined Rock for the delicious upward ride in the Papageno family nest, complete with seatbelt [pictured above - photo credit: Alastair Muir/ENO].

Luxury casting for the Three Ladies with Elizabeth Llewellyn, Catherine Young and Pamela Helen Stephen. The Three Boys were superb. Everyone's favourite character, The Queen of the Night, was an admirably ferocious and focused Kathryn Lewek. And Boris the Bear - one of four cuddly furballs who pad out of the woods to enjoy Tamino's flute recital - is on Twitter as @abearnamedboris and has his own blog...

And in the pit, an auspicious presence: Nicholas Collon, kicking off the new season with his ENO house debut. The Magic Flute is no small ask, but he seemed nothing daunted; the pace never faltered and neither did the sparkle. If I have one little suggestion, it's to give it a tad more time and space here and there to let us breathe the emotion ever so slightly.

It's Friday afternoon, so here is a mega-Mozartian Friday Historical: The Magic Flute conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1937. Click through to Youtube for the full cast.