Siena
I have traveled to Europe only once, exactly half a century ago. For two months in the summer of 1968, between years of college, I participated in the summer session of the North Carolina School of the Arts in Siena, Italy, playing violin in the orchestra and taking piano lessons. I found out that I would be included in the session only about two weeks beforehand, so I hastily imbibed as much Italian as I could. Although I am good at languages, a mere two weeks’ study could not equip me to follow the rapid native conversation when I arrived there. Fortunately, like a number of Americans, I found that many Italians spoke good French and we could converse easily in that language.
The orchestra rehearsed and then traveled about the countryside presenting concerts. Two orchestral works that I particularly remember playing that summer were the overture to Rossini’s opera La gazza ladra and Richard Strauss’s tone poem Tod und Verklärung. I especially loved the late Romantic harmonies of the latter work. In fact, I think there is some Strauss influence in the closing section of my Rhapsody for Woodwinds and Piano, which I wrote many years later.
My piano study was with a gentleman by the name of Vincenzo Vitale, with whom I worked on Scarlatti sonatas, Schumann romances, and other repertoire.
We stayed at the Hotel Continental, and every evening I would mosey down to the piazza and order a “pistacchio” ice cream cone. (After I returned to the States, I had to relearn the English pronunciation of the flavor.) So this picture of Siena conjures up pleasant memories. 🙂
Here is one of the Scarlatti sonatas I worked on with Signore Vitale, as I played it in a recital two decades later. The performance includes some corrections that Vitale made to my Ricordi edition.