Sinopoli's Loneliness
A concert in memory of the Italian conductor,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
Fifteen years after the sudden and premature death of Giuseppe Sinopoli (1946-2001), the National Academy of Santa Cecilia celebrated him with an in memoriam concert given by the symphony orchestra with two world-known artists: conductor Yuri Temirkanov and baritone Markus Werba. The concert was
repeated three time on 23, 24 and 25
April. I attended the 23 April 2016 performance. This was
the long Spring week-end which coincided with
a national holiday for the end of World War II; thus, the
balconies were full in the huge three thousand seat auditorium, but in the
most expensive orchestra seats, some rows were empty.
They are subscribers' prime locations, and quite a few of them had most likely
gone to open their beach or country secondary residences. They
should regret it because they missed one of the most fascinating concerts of the National Academy's 2015-16 symphonic season.
 Markus Werba (left) and Yuri Temirkanov with members of the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome on 23 April 2016. Photo © 2016 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution |
It is not known whether the concert had been conceived originally as in memory of Sinopoli, or whether it
was designated in memoriam when the coincidence between the concert and
the date of Sinopoli's death was noticed. It is quite immaterial because it was
an engrossing evening with a concert that Sinopoli
himself would have liked. The program was not a standard requiem, often the staple of such
concerts, but a careful selection of three musical pieces dealing with death in
a tender, delicate manner.
Giuseppe Sinopoli had a major heart failure in Berlin on 20 April 2001, when he had
reached the podium and was about to start conducting a
performance of Aida at the Deutsche Oper in
Bismarckstrasse. He had had a successful career, mostly in the UK, the USA, Germany and Austria, and thus far away from the Italian music scene's intrigues. He was not only
a conductor with a special flair for Wagnerian, late romantic and contemporary music, but also a
prolific composer of contemporary music and a
writer of essays and books. Few people know that he had a degree in
medicine and had specialized as a surgeon. Also, just before dying, he had
completed his dissertation to graduate as an archeologist at the University of Rome. He had been musical director of the National Academy of
Santa Cecilia from 1983 to 1987 and principal conductor thereafter. He
intended to settle in Italy so that his children could follow the Italian education system and he himself the School of Archeology at the
University of Rome. Thus, in the late nineteen nineties, he accepted the
assignment of musical director of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. There he
had a number of terrible years. Like Gustav Mahler in Vienna, some hundred years earlier,
he attempted to introduce badly needed reforms, but the political world and the trade unions
built a thick wall of opposition. This caused him disappointment and bitterness
— maybe even his sudden death in a young age — and forced him to
resign. Most of the reforms he advocated are being implemented, twenty years
later, by Teatro dell'Opera di Roma's
current management.
 Giuseppe Sinopoli in 1983 |
The first part of the concert included Ravel's Pavane pour une infante
défunte and Mahler's Kindertotenlieder,
two quite different musical pieces dealing with
the same subject: the death of young innocent
children. In Ravel's piece, Temirkanov underlined the tenderness as well as the
references to Basque and Spanish popular music. In Mahler's lieder, Temirkanov, Werba and the
orchestra gave a deeply moving reading of the five songs composed using poems written by Friedrich Rückert
when two of his six children died of scarlet fever.
 Markus Werba (left) and Yuri Temirkanov at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome on 23 April 2016. Photo © 2016 Musacchio & Ianniello. Click on the image for higher resolution |
The second part was dedicated to Johannes Brahms' Symphony No 4 in E minor, Op 98, one
of the last works of the Romantic repertory, and thus particularly suited
to Temirkanov's temperament. Its focus is on man's loneliness, even
in the third movement, an allegro giocoso which sounds like a tragic epitaph — a reminder of
Sinopoli's loneliness in the years when he tried to turn Rome's Teatro dell'Opera around.
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