Gresham Street, London EC2V 7BX

Tuesday 8th July at 1.10pm

‘Mediterranean Soul’

This performer’s outstanding technique, based on a remarkable quality and control of touch, was apparent from the outset, with glistening runs in Scarlatti’s Sonata K45. A slight leaning and accentuation of the syncopation combined excitement with delicacy. But it was delicacy that then took over completely - and splendidly - when the dreamy quality of K213 was brought out by some flexibility in the tempo and the closest control over touch: this was extremely sensitive playing.

A sonata by Cosuenda provided a contrast. One of Michele Benuzzi’s great interests is enabling audiences to hear works that are comparatively unknown - and this was certainly one such piece; so the performer did us a service in bringing it to our attention. It proved that - though he excels in delicacy - he is well able to handle a piece in rhapsodic style.

Two sonatas by Seixas followed. The playing of the first, Sonata XXVIII, was an object lesson in what clarity in music really means - not wooden stiffness, but the application of rhetoric. In the very best sense of the metaphor, Michele speaks the music. The technically challenging Sonata XXIV - with a bouncing bass against a molto perpetuo right hand - was expertly handled: Michele’s command of touch brought an appropriate organ-like sound to the bass.

Perhaps the most memorable item was Scarlatti’s very lovely sonata K208: this was a performance of indescribable beauty. Michele did not suppress a tendency to let the emotion in the music demand the flexibility that was natural: it was impossible not to be moved. Appropriate contrast followed again with the energy of K36, in which the rhythms were under due control.

There were two sonatas by Sebastián de Albero. In Sonata IV, a sense of power was somehow conveyed within the scope of the instrument. It seems one of the particular characteristics of this performer is the ability to achieve a paradox: the swinging rhythms of Sonata XVII were combined with a sense of dignity. The whole performance seemed to move logically towards an affecting ending, conveying a sense of structure and meaning.

The recital ended with more Scarlatti. In K136, the crispness of gestures was a delight in itself, but there was far more to it: they were made to rise meaningfully towards a climactic note from which they would then fall - the execution enacting the sense. Once again it was clear that this was a performer interested in rhetoric - in ‘telling’ the music, not merely reproducing sounds. Finally, K436 proved that Michele’s technique, which excels in slow movements, is also well up to producing bravura and velocity. A sense of triumph in the closing section of the piece brought to an end a recital that - despite the difficulties imposed on a harpsichord and its tuning by extremes of weather - was triumphantly good.

The art of rhetoric surely consists in making the utmost communicative sense out of sound by speaking it as language and voice demand: it is the imposition of artistic objectivity on a basic emotive and personal naturalness. That is precisely how Michele Benuzzi plays the harpsichord: it is playing that is driven by a sense of rhetoric in music.

Michele Benuzzi plays next in the UK at St Cecila’s Hall, Edinburgh, on August 20th.

About Michele Benuzzi...

Michele Benuzzi studied harpsichord with Ottavio Dantone and obtained the harpsichord Performing Diploma at the Royal College of Music in London. He also studied musicology at the University of Pavia. He attended master classes with Andreas Staier, Andrea Marcon, Bob van Asperen, Ketil Haugsand, Jaques Ogg, Jan Whillelm Jansen, Christine Whiffen, and Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini. He was awarded scholarships for three consecutive years by Istituto Fernando el Católico of Zaragoza, where he followed courses on the eighteenth-century Iberian repertoire with Professor J. L. González Uriol. In 2003 he won the third prize at the seventeenth Yamanashi International Harpsichord Competition in Japan.

He performs in Italy and abroad as soloist and with different groups of chamber musicians, and is invited to perform as soloist by different Italian orchestras. He plays for important music organizations in Europe, the UK, and Japan. He promoted and played, with other harpsichordists, the opera omnia of Domenico Scarlatti's Sonatas, which were performed from 1995 to 2002 in France. He has founded Arcomelo, a group performing seventeenth and eighteenth-century music, and examining baroque music - especially problems concerning execution on ancient instruments. A great deal of effort goes into recovering and executing music from unedited manuscripts from European libraries.

Michele has recorded the harpsichord concertos by C. P. E. Bach for La Bottega Discantica: the CD had excellent reviews. In 2007 he recorded the harpsichord concertos and symphonias by W. F. Bach, and he recently signed a contract with the same label to record the complete W. F. Bach harpsichord works.

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