Rodrigo Scotini
e-mail: rohumano@yahoo.com.br

As for this performance, I must honestly admit that I envy the young lady a little bit for having had the opportunity (and deservedly so!) of performing Capuzzi with a full orchestra at such a young age. I don’t think I would’ve lived up to the task at age 16. She seems to know the piece pretty well, her performance is remarkably self-assured and her overall understanding of the style is also fairly impressive. „Good elocution“, so to speak. The orchestra – well, fair enough, there are some insecurities, but the recording conditions don’t seem to have been what I would call favorable. If it’s true that they had only one week’s rehearsal time (and, I assume, more repertoire to work on than Capuzzi only), there’s no point in throwing any stones at them.

A few thoughts on the concerto itself: Sure enough, it’s not exactly a milestone in music history (but let’s face it, the same holds true for most of our solo repertoire). I wouldn’t belittle its value to that of an inconsequential student piece. It’s a nice, straightforward, „pretty“ affair, to be sure, dating from a period when composers could begin to think of making a little extra money by writing music (commissioned or not) for dedicated amateurs – which is, as far as I know, precisely what Capuzzi did here. Back then, a capable soloist was always welcome to improvise and elaborate on the written text. In my opinion, that’s the one great invitation hidden in the concertos by Capuzzi and some of his contemporaries: Do something with it! If you have that extra bit of technique, why not take some of the passages up an octave? If you know the style well enough, why not add a little embellishment here or there? The two fast movements in particular offer any number of apparently rather shallow scale runs and arpeggios (just think of the Minore section of the Rondo!) – don’t they conjure up a vision of the composer saying, through some unspoken and now-forgotten code: „Well, that’s the basic idea, but you might just as well let it rip here“?

Do I sound like I’m exaggerating? Well, consider your reactions when you heard that Swedish student play a cadenza different from the one(s) we’re all used to – for us it’s a stunning musical effect, but that’s exactly the effect intended by the composers of early classical music. Suprise, create interest, demonstrate a bit of showmanship as well as your personal approach to any given piece. This young lady did it all in an instant. I don’t know who made it up, maybe she (or her teacher) worked out this cadenza for the occasion, but the fact of the matter is: It can be done easily, provided that all our theory lessons had some good at all . The various editions of the Hoffmeister Concerto (Nr. 1) now available provide a lot of insight as to how a text can be interpreted, but Capuzzi with his extremely clear harmonic, melodic and formal layout is exactly the type of piece to start working on the subject on your own – or with your student.

-TA