Press review

With this initiative, the civic museums have been enriched with a new experience: music in the museum. And this is happening thanks to the contribution of one of the most refined artistic personalities of contemporary Mantuan culture, Stefano Gueresi. For this reason I’d like to thank the author who, by breathing in the suggestions of the museum, has composed unpublished pieces of great charm, destined to accompany us on our visit. I would also like to thank the director of Museo della Città San Sebastiano, Stefano Benetti, who conceived and made the project possible.

Fiorenza Brioni (Mayor of Mantua)

Today more than ever museums must open up to the city and its liveliest and most creative forces. I am therefore proud to be a witness and convinced supporter of an experience like this one, bringing together museum and music in a union capable of enhancing both. A musical talent like that of Stefano Gueresi can only be a source of pride for a museum precisely because it is the Museum of the City’s primary mission to promote our cultural and artistic excellence. Our heartfelt thanks go to Stefano Gueresi.

Ilario Chiaventi (Vice Mayor and Councilor for Culture of the Municipality of Mantua)

Give voice to the museum. With the sound reinforcement of the multimedia stations, the City Museum introduces music as a visitor's travel companion. With the artistic talent of Stefano Gueresi and thanks to modern technology, this idea has materialized in an unprecedented but extremely fascinating combination: a musical experience that, in a modern key, proposes the ancient echoes of a building like this one, that in the Renaissance was a space of excellence of the arts, not only pictorial, but also musical.

Stefano Benetti (Director of the City Museum)

The notes of the savory musical season of Isabella d'Este and Francesco II Gonzaga still echo in the ancient rooms of Palazzo San Sebastiano, in the expression of an imaginary discipline, pulsating essence of ferments, of the playful and spectacular dimension experienced in the court. The music carries away, enchants, penetrates the Prince, projecting him into an empyrean of profound emotion, to which he abandons himself, caressed by the sounds and the subtle charm of the instruments. And then she, the Marquise, who anticipates every era, every fashion, who plays the viola, the guitar, the clavichord, and today as then, together with the lord of the horses, the lord of the hawks, she seems to return to Palazzo San Sebastiano.

Giancarlo Malacarne (Historian)

The frescoes in chiaroscuro. The affection of memory: of the mind and of the heart. The sounds of a journey and the traveler's breath nestles each encounter in each sound. every light, every breath of wind. Exactly, the wind: in some way the protagonist of “La notte nel grande vento” ("The night of the Great Wind"), pianist and composer Stefano Gueresi’s third record. He will be at the Feltrinelli Bookshop in Udine today at 6 pm to present it. It is a human and a cultural journey intended as a return to the music of sensations, moods and impressions aroused by different and distant aspects of everyday life.
That is the main theme, but it is not absolute, therefore, given that in this last work we find some passages closely related to the city of Mantua. Love and war are also part of these musical pages. A small suite is in fact dedicated to the conflicts that took place only a few years ago right on our doorstep, in the former Yugoslavia.
“La notte del grande vento” ("The Night of the Great Wind") follows two works that fully illustrate the interaction of Gueresi's music with the various arts, theater, dance, painting and literature, through means such as video and television. An educated artist and an excellent pianist, definitely in love with musical romanticism (and not only), a vision of the world that creates its own and lives again with modern, current sensitivity, capable not of decorating with cold elegance, but of touching memory and dream, imagination and heart of the listener.
What is rare in these times and the value and richness of Stefano's journey. A true artist, with whom it will be possible to dialogue today in Udine.

Nicola Cossar (Il Messaggero Veneto, 11/14/2008)

Pianist Gueresi applauded at the Ducal Chapel for the event dedicated to the Poles

When man comes into contact with hostile and spectacular natural landscapes, majestic yet as fragile as those of the Poles, he can do nothing but start listening. It is difficult to translate these seemingly sacred image into words: they are “Cattedrali di Ghiaccio” ("Cathedrals of Ice"), the title of the event that entertained a large audience in the Ducal Chapel of the Farnese, in collaboration with Geofest and sponsored by the Municipality. The initiative is part of the activities of Piacenza’s Committee for the International Polar Year: “Piacenza Difende i Poli” (this is the name of the project) for the occasion has created an effective attempt to give sound to that polar silence through the notes of the Mantuan pianist Stefano Gueresi, who accompanied the projection of photos of the Poles: crystalline sounds, flowing tinkles rule the leaden skies; affectionate sounds describe the animals' resistance to a relentless cold. Sometimes in the images men appear, small, listening, willing to study to preserve this resource for humanity.
Not everyone knows that Italy has been present in Antarctica for 20 years to do research: the ice of the Arctic pole in fact decreases by 9% every 10 years. Present at the event, in addition to Amanda Castello, organiser and presenter; the councilor for culture Paolo Dosi, who recalled how the end of the collateral exhibition at the event organized in the Museum of Natural History on Italian research at the Poles was postponed for the growing attention on the theme; Getty Bisagni, author of the painting Esodo (“Exodus”), the leitmotif of the year which will soon be auctioned and the proceeds will go to the peoples of Greenland. I racconti del lago ("Tales of the Lake"), “La città del principe” ( "The Prince’s Town"), “Ali della notte” ("Wings of the Night"), “Le stelle di Cluj” (“Stars of Cluj"), Fiori nella nebbia ("Flowers in the Mist") , Nato libero ("Born Free"), Cattedrali di ghiaccio ("Cathedrals of Ice") and, as requested and applauded encore, La neve e l’amore distante (“The Snow and the Distant Love"): Gueresi’s notes slide on the skin as the master's fingers fly over the keys. The penguins are Hamlets on the scene that reflect on the broken waves. The sounds slip between suspensions and volume shots, the ice accompanies them in the warmth of mother earth who listens to the complaints of her children.

"Hopefully there will be less missiles and more ice," said Gueresi. Each piece ends with a distinct and clear note, a strong and masterful punctuation mark at the end of a speech that spoke of collective responsibility and individual emotion.

Elisa Malacalza (La Tribuna di Piacenza) - 8/12/2008

PAYS COTE-NORD
BISCARROSSE

As part of the Festival of Association des Peintres et Poètes Européens Libres, the Church of St. Martin of Biscarrosse offered its exceptional acoustics to the great Italian pianist Stefano Gueresi. In the silence of the audience, suspended as the master's magic finger started to play, Stefano Gueresi sublimated his instrument. The musician and the piano were no longer just a harmonic of light. The figure of the maestro, devoted to his art in the middle of the altar, had something supernatural to it.

Stefano Gueresi, without saying a word, exhibited the opulent richness of his personal compositions. Works that reflect the unfathomable psychic depths of their author, oscillating between the removed lyricism and cascades of generous notes, flown in the air up there, very high. The silent artist delivered his raw music, to the heart of the audience's ears conquered by the master's freedom, the beauty of his creations, the purity of his game executed obviously without scores. His friend explained that Stefano receives his inspiration from the places he visits, and that the master, particularly charmed by the Landes, felt the notes that would make up a future creation, witness to his time in Biscarrosse.

Dominique Boudet