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Concert Artist/Fidelio Recordings
Royston, Hertfordshire, SG8 7EG, England
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Concert Artist/Fidelio Recordings Royston, Hertfordshire, SG8 7EG, England
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During those years as a student he developed a significant and remarkable affinity for the music of Rachmaninov. In 1947 he played the composers third piano concerto for the first time and he retained a firm affection for the work throughout his life. In fact he chose to play the concerto in a series of orchestral concerts in Germany not many months before he died. Fiorentino was one of the few top-ranking pianists to play the complete works of the great Russian composer and maintain them in his constant performing repertoire. In 1987 he gave a series of recitals in which he played Rachmaninov’s complete piano works in four programmes spread over a few days.
The Concert Artist association with this phenomenal young pianist started in 1953 when he accepted our invitation to make a stopover in London on his way back from his United States debut in New York’s Carnegie Hall. Fiorentino gave six recitals in the provinces, before rushing back to Rome and we arranged for his London debut in the following year. Thus began an artistic relationship that was to last a lifetime.
Fate, however, was all to soon to play an unkind card. In the following year the plane bringing Fiorentino back from a South American Tour to New York developed an engine failure and caught fire. In the emergency landing that followed Fiorentino suffered a back injury. This was not considered by anyone at the time to be serious. Fiorentino himself was naturally relieved that his hands were not injured in any way. He duly arrived in Britain to make his Wigmore Hall debut and gave, under our auspices, a whole series of concerts in London and the Provinces. He also began on a long series of recordings, over fifty long playing records, that in the following years would be sought after by collectors the world over. We are gradually making this golden legacy available on compact disc. The Liszt Transcendental Etudes have met with worldwide acclaim and his series of Beethoven and Mozart Sonatas, made available for the first time, have added a completely new dimension to the perceived opinion held by many critics on this great artist. We are making available as much material as we can and including recordings from public concerts that we hold in trust for posterity. We have already issued concertos by Chopin and Grieg and, in due course, we shall also be making available public performances of concertos by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.
In London, at the Royal Festival Hall, Fiorentino appeared with all the leading orchestras playing the repertoire with which he will always be associated. In one such concert he played both the second and third Rachmaninov concertos whilst, in another, he combined the Paganini Rhapsody with the Tchaikovsky B flat minor concerto. In everything he played he displayed the same seemingly effortless virtuosity sustaining a huge breadth of tone and whispers of sound that were always audible.
Gradually, over the following few years, his back injury became more apparent and a continuing source of pain. Nevertheless, Fiorentino continued to be a regular visitor to Britain making a large number of recordings and giving many exceptional concerts. Among these we must mention two stunning Liszt Recitals in the Royal Festival Hall at which many surprisingly celebrated pianists were to be seen in the audience.
Later, in Italy, after receiving a further severe jolt in a car accident it was realised the injury that he had sustained in the original air accident had been far more serious that had been diagnosed. By the mid-sixties the pianist found that back pain and travel, which he had never really liked, coupled with a general disenchantment of the life of a travelling virtuoso gradually persuaded him to withdraw from public concert giving. He had accepted an invitation to return to the San Pietro a Majella as early as 1956 and had balanced his life between teaching and playing. Now he devoted the greater part of his knowledge, talent and energies to teaching. He remained quietly at the Conservatory for over thirty years but he would still accept the odd concert engagement, if it interested him, but mostly he preferred to remain in Italy.
In December 1991 he appeared in Rome playing the Rachmaninov Paganini Rhapsody, an old favourite of his, to an affectionate and rapturous reception from press and public. Within a few months he received an invitation to play from Germany. A long-standing knowledgeable German music lover, who had followed Fiorentino’s career, decided to step in and made possible a series of concerts. Fiorentino fortunately decided to accept the offer and from this he was launched into an Indian summer that was to completely change the direction of his career.
His German appearances were recorded and the double CD from these performances issued in Britain on the APR label attracted worldwide attention. A series of new recordings were made in Germany to follow up the initial success and were again released by APR to acclaim - particularly in France and America. Invitations for concert appearances in America and throughout Europe and Russia again began to flow. Fiorentino made highly successful reappearances in America with laudatory press notices from leading critics. At the height of this success, so richly deserved, fate cruelly and mercilessly played the final card. Preparing for concerts in France, a tour with orchestra in Germany and a further recording series of recordings in Berlin, Fiorentino died from a heart attack in Naples on August 22nd 1998. So much had been accomplished but, seemingly, there was so much more yet to come. We are all made losers by his untimely death.
As an artist Sergio Fiorentino was quietly unassuming. Like Rachmaninov before him, Fiorentino was quiet of gesture and manner. He had no need of false posturing he dispensed only the music. Sometimes he appeared withdrawn and seemed surprised when his audience burst into enthusiastic applause. Once when asked about this, Fiorentino replied, “I had forgotten that they were there!” For him, it was the music that mattered and those of us who heard him, knew him or worked with him, have been privileged to share those moments.
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© 2005 Concert Artist Recordings
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Born
in Naples on December 22nd 1927 Sergio Fiorentino showed an early talent for the
piano. He was barely 11 years of age when he was awarded a scholarship and
entered the San Pietro a Majella Conservatoire in 1938 and was placed under the
guidance of Luigi Finizio and Paolo Denza. He was awarded his diploma in 1946.
He repaid those who had shown such confidence in his prodigious talent by
winning first prizes in every European Piano Competition of note before he was
barely twenty years old!