Pierre Hantaï meets BIZZI: the DVD

Dalla collaborazione tra Pierre Hantaï e BIZZI è nato un nuovo DVD.
Guarda l'anteprima su Youtube.

Dal libretto: Pierre and Guido

I met Pierre Hantaï many years ago, at an exhibition of musical instruments, in Paris.
Exhibitors always hope to receive a sign of attention by great performers, have their opinion, suggestions, criticism; and this was also my case, of course.
I was lucky because he stopped at my booth and played a double manual.
At the end, I asked him “should I throw it away?” and he replied “Oh yes, but please tell me where and when”.

That’s how our friendship started.
In those days, he was teaching at the Paris Conservatoire and I had the chance to meet several students of his and hear during friendly conversations their talks about him. 
A couple of things immediately impressed me; a feeling towards him that is more appropriate to call love than admiration and the fact that they had troubles, not only to repeat what he was doing on a keyboard but even to understand it.
In fact, Pierre never plays twice the same piece in the same way, because his performing is always different, depending on the place where he is or the light or the dress color of the lady sitting in the second row.
Before a concert he takes care of all the smallest details and checks tuning and voicing, all the time. One day, before a concert with a little and unsophisticated audience, after a couple of hours of additional controls, I proposed him to have an ice cream in a very appealing gelateria, nearby.
He looked at me and said that “No, thank you. Don’t forget that the day of the concert, no matter if it is for your friends or in the most prestigious concert hall, that day is always the most important day of my life”.
Another time, in the church of our small village, in front of people who had never seen a harpsichord before, he decided that the program was too poor for that inexperienced audience. So the intermission arrived at 11 pm and the concert was over at midnight.
The audience was just bewitched.
By the way, after the concert, we went home and he started to try all the harpsichords around, till 3 am.

This is Pierre, a great person and a great musician who has inspired my work with his ideas and suggestions, always offered in a humble way, like “I don’t know much about harpsichord construction, I can just tell you some impressions”.
On such impression a maker could build a career.

Guido Bizzi

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