THE CHARACTER. To have it always at hand, Silvia Tessari brought the world to her home in Falcade. A carved world map hangs on the wall above the sofa, and a globe rests on the table. He has played the piano in various parts of the globe, from the United States to South Korea, from Thailand to many European countries. Italy has shot it all, from Cortina to the Aeolian Islands. In the end, however, he always returns here where he sees the Mulaz from the window and, above all, a stone’s throw from the woods. “The wild world,” he says, “has always fascinated me. Maybe it was already there in the name they gave me. The forest is a regenerating place where you can grasp the large amount of life that is around, the greenery, the hidden flowers ».
You can start from here, sit on a stage at Carnegie Hall in New York (one of the most important concert halls in the world), in Seoul, Tbilisi, Vienna, Moscow, Ragusa-Ibla and then come back, leave and come back. You can teach musicology and history of music at the University of Padua and do it at Falcade, either because in times of pandemic agile work allows it, or because you come and go. Dreams of exotic travel can come true and aspire to return to teaching in the small middle school of Canale d’Agordo among young people who wish to stay in the valley or leave. “I go away?” Asks Silvia, 37 years old. «Meanwhile, the centers of artistic life are fewer and fewer and then, yes, in the past I had rocked the dream of Paris, but slowly I realized that wherever you go you have to find the opportunity, to network. If I went to New York I wouldn’t do anything very different from what I do here. Over the years I have thought several times about what it would be like to live in a city, then I talked to many people and I am convinced that it is very important and stimulating to network with those who share your same interests, but it is not necessary to be in presence. I also add that it is true that the city, from a musical point of view, continues to attract more funding, but I see a positive trend in which, more and more often, quality festivals are held in smaller countries. It also happens here in Veneto ».
In Falcade Silvia every year proposes one of her summer concerts and brigade, together with the Dolomiti Symphonia and the Vannini family, to organize a winter one in memory of the local sculptor Dante Moro combined with a competition. In her, who accompanies mass on Sundays (the first Alleluja in the fifth grade), we note the iron and firm will to give her own contribution to her community, the one that thirty years ago began to be amazed by a child who won the first competitions. «At five years old», he says, «my parents gave me a micro-piano, 10×10, with colored keys and notes. Perhaps they sensed that I was at ease and enrolled me in the course that the International Music Institute held in Falcade. My first teacher explained to me that at 17 I could have graduated from the conservatory ».
And so it was, passing through the commitment and the “beatings”. “A famous pianist used to come to Garés on vacation”she explains, “someone must have told her there was a nine-year-old girl who was good at playing the piano. She came to see me and destroyed me: she told me that I didn’t think I had done who knows what, because the ones I had won were only competitions. If I wanted to make a career I had to apply myself a lot. At the time I was very upset, but I must admit that it was an important moment because then I started studying with greater awareness, understanding that it is easy to be considered a kind of prodigy when you do not have someone to compare yourself with ».
So mistreated in the present times where self-taught people emerge in all fields, in Silvia Tessari’s story the masters who have not only taught and transmitted the different ways of approaching the piano, but above all the idea that not you never get there and that no matter how good you may be in interpreting some arias, you must always stay with your feet on the ground. «I have had so many», he explains, «and each one has left me something. They are important figures in all moments of their career. I remember Sergio Perticaroli at the Santa Cecilia Academy in Rome. He was old, but when he sat at the piano we all gasped. It was he who once stigmatized the behavior of a colleague who, just graduated, had made a business card with the words “pianist”. “But how – said Perticaroli – is now that you start learning to be a pianist”.
While teaching and researching in Padua, Silvia Tessari continues to practice at least two to three hours a day at the piano. It has been doing this for almost thirty years. «I feel very Russian», she says, «which means having a warmer sound, attentive to nuances, not scratchy and that takes care of the appearance of the singing. The Russian style is very similar to our Venetian. I love Stravinsky’s piece Petrushka: 17 minutes during which different colors emerge that imitate the instruments of the orchestra. And I am moved by Schubert, who starts from classic melodies and then takes unexpected turns and offers moments of serenity and introspection that we always need ».
But how do you get these emotions to the young people who appear more distant from classical music? «In Korea», Silvia says, «among the public there were many children under 20 who, by the will of their families, acquire Western culture. Here I believe that we must be able to modernize the presentations, to find a language that can bring us closer to young people, otherwise we will continue to speak only to a segment of the population. When I happened to play in schools I saw that twentieth-century authors, together with Mozart and Beethoven, manage to break through. Romantic music, on the other hand, is more conceptual and perhaps they feel it more distant ».
On the other hand, what for Silvia the new young people have inside is the sense of belonging to the territory and to the community. She caught him in the years of teaching Italian, history and geography (she graduated in ancient literature) at the middle school in Canale d’Agordo where sooner or later she would like tadorn. «At this wonderful age when they can express themselves in an incredible way», says Silvia, «children are spontaneous and lessons with them often take unexpected turns, as with Schubert. When I was a student I had many friends who said they wanted to leave because there was nothing here. Now, as a teacher, I have instead noticed that there is a willingness to stay and work here. I think we need to find a balance: from my point of view it is necessary to know the world, open up to the different, cultivate talents and at the same time maintain the link with one’s own territory. A territory in which young people must enter by playing a leading role. Here a sense of community survives, but I feel some small crumbling that needs to be analyzed. Many care about their country, but there are also those who, when faced with certain problems, say “someone else will take care of it” ».
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