Life and Career of Robert Cunningham

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.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.