I am going to describe a singular story in a world where, as they say a little banally, the mold of talent and genius has been lost. Sure, there’s Bill Gates, but do you want to put Einstein or Da Vinci?
A year and a half ago a friend called me, “Come to the Cutter bar, there’s someone I’d like you to meet. He is a little Mozart. He thinks he’s been playing the organ in the church of St. Mary of Nazareth. It was deserted, after five minutes it filled up with people.”
I go to the bar that-as the name suggests-is located by the sea in Sestri Levante. I find the “Mozartino” (we are all opinionated when we meet someone new, and we tend to dismiss the best and glorify the worst, like the Russians with Stalin or the Germans with Hitler). She is 29 years old like my daughter, and is in town for a few days with her mother, guests of Mrs. Adele D., who for years has been funding a foundation that cares for the elderly and as a laudable patron promotes the careers of “young talent.” This is how I met Stefano Mhanna.
The word “talent” is not a biblical quote. When Stefano Mhanna was nine years old, the great violinist Uto Ughi, after hearing him play at the Argentina Theater in Rome, declared to Tg1, “He was really born to play, he is a unique talent.”
Of the rest, he has won seven competitions for instrumentalists, national and international. He entered the Santa Cecilia Conservatory of Music at age seven, graduating at age 12 with 10 with honors and a special mention (a unique case in the Roman music institute’s ultrasecular history). After performing Tchaikovsky’s Concerto Op. 35 entirely from memory at the age of 10, he was awarded a scholarship by the SIAE.
But this is nothing. I saw Stephen Mhanna again a few days ago, on the occasion of one of his concerts (on organ and violin) at a local church, as part of a very interesting project to revitalize history, social and spiritual life in churches through music, not just organ music. Below is an excerpt from our conversation.
How could you meet music at such an early age?
My father is a doctor and my mother a psychologist, but she studied piano. In the house therefore there was a piano, and I began to play it. Then I chose the violin and began to study the instrument with the support of some teachers.
At the age of seven, you entered the conservatory….
Yes, and it was not easy, because you needed a waiver to enter Santa Cecilia at that age. It was Maestri Pasquale Pellegrino and director Lionello Cammarota who decided that I could and should enroll. I graduated in 2012, one day before my 12th birthday. I had already won a SIAE Award and then the CIDIM (Comitato Nazionale Italiano Musica) New Careers Award, after which I was cast as violin soloist for Mendelssohn’s concerto op. 64 at the Teatro Regio in Turin, and for two chamber concerts in Tirana. In the meantime I continued at Santa Cecilia as a trainee for two more years.Also in 2012 you also graduated in organ and organ composition -also in Rome-, and then as a private student you graduated in viola and piano in Brescia and Teramo.
There was already a complicated bureaucracy… There were rumors that private students should be banned from taking the diploma exams, so I tried to hurry, because I had already started my career as a concert pianist. I also studied conducting at Santa Cecilia for a year.
It wasn’t enough for you to be a graduate in violin, organ, piano and viola, in addition to taking the normal compulsory course of study and pursuing a brilliant career as a concert pianist… You also enrolled in college.
I enrolled in the Faculty of Law at La Sapienza in Rome. I received my master’s degree in Administrative Law in 2019, after which I did the regular year of practicum at a Notary Firm, but I did not continue further because being a notary cannot be reconciled with making music.
Let’s talk about your repertoire. These are certainly great classics, but among modern composers who do you prefer? Also, you have a repertoire of about 50 works, all of which you perform without sheet music. How do you know by heart complicated scores like those of Bach or Paganini?
Among 20th-century composers, I performed works by Sergei Prokof’ev and Maurice Ravel. For my organist degree, I performed Olivier Messiaen’s L’Ascension….As for playing from memory, it’s a guideline of mine. You have to assimilate the composer’s style, his musical phrases… As in everything related to harmony and melody (even jazz or pop) you have to know the maps on which musical forms like the fugue or sonata are based. If you know the map, you can move through the forests of composition without losing your bearings. The same applies to conducting an orchestra.
Speaking of family economy, how do you manage a complicated life, with almost continuous touring from city to city, country to country, and reconcile this immense work (because in the meantime you have to continue your studies, meet new authors etc.) with a bright but insecure career, almost like in Mozart’s time?
Unfortunately, a classical musician is almost always forced to teach middle school or conservatory. This guarantees a fixed income but severely limits the career. There is a major problem of economic disparity in the field: an artist is paid ten times more than an orchestral player. Music associations are poor, and in some major TV and non-TV events orchestral performers are paid 50 euros a day, while guests or pop groups are paid much more.
Until fifteen years ago one could make money from record production. I remember that a well-known pop music singer received a beautiful villa (where I stayed) as a gift from his record company. It was equipped with a soccer field etc. and was located in Rome in a valuable area. Since you are an uncommon instrumentalist who has also played abroad as a soloist, were you contacted by Deutsche Grammophon?
…No, however, I was contacted by a private manufacturer who is still waiting for my feed-back. More than anything else, his proposal seemed economically unprofitable to me. Of course I understand that the record market today has little room, given the almost total and free dissemination of music on the Internet.
Now is the time of international success for you. What ideas do you have for your music?
I don’t do marketing, because I don’t have the expertise. I understand that to gain popularity you need special tools and that young people to a large extent have a very low attention threshold, even when they listen to music that is “easier” than classical.”
We continue to discuss, and we agree that rock is also in crisis, apart from great performers like Coldplay (very good, by the way) who played a month ago in Rome to 65,000 spectators, with tickets sold out for a year. However, apart from bands that offer content, pop no longer has the cultural and social drive that classical and jazz have maintained. Pop is dying: the risk is the triumph of noise…In addition to management, we tell ourselves, in order to have international success it is necessary to understand:-that the mark of modernity is rhythm;-that one also needs to compose one’s own music;-that one must study cross-musical authors such as the Philip Glass of Passages (with Ravi Shankar);-that one must fight MoM (shitty music) without quarter and work hard for MoA (art music).
The article Stephen Mhanna, new Mozart to be valued abroad comes from TheNewyorker.
