“Der Neue Tag”
Prince of the empire of the sweets
Pianist Gianluca Luisi carries away the guests of the Förderkreis in Weiden to ovations

By Anastasia Poscharsky-Ziegler

Weiden.
In China more than 50.000 children are practising the piano. Today, the names of the market-leading star pianists are also Asiatic. But the Weidener Förderkreis for chamber-music prefers roads away from the mainstream and presented on Friday in the almost sold-out Gustl-Lang-Hall of the Max-Reger Hall an Italian: Gianluca Luisi created (designed) the second master-concert of this 45th season with an original program with Scarlatti, Bach, Schubert, Liszt, and Tchaikovsky.
That he cannot only handle the claviature of the Steinway Grand Piano but also has (holds) the auditorium emotionally like puppets on the string, that proved Luisi already with the first Scarlatti-sonata, which was with her harmonic simplicity not really the highlight of the evening, but banished (eliminated) the agitation (unrest). And the Sonata attuned for the upcoming, like the very demanding A-Major- Sonata (with all possible pianistic feats) and two examples from Bach’s “Well Tempered Clavier”.

Moreover Luisi presented a singing-sounding Grand Piano, as the people from Weiden have never heard before. With the Italian sense of the beauty, for the sensuousity (sensuous), with time and leisure, the artist savoured every formula, every single tone. So, even the old Bach appeared in a new crystal-clear light and in a nuanced richness of the timbre, which remembered of the glittering, colourful Murano art of millefiori.
With a big souly strength an adequate trace of German seriousness Luisi pored himself into the “Wanderer-Fantasy” of Franz Schubert. With the Adagio, in tenderness and with an enormous expression of the depth also in the dynamic shallow water of the whispering instrument, the pianist touched the completely taken in audience. Finger-fresh and with an open mind was the Italian also the ideal cast for Liszt’s “love-dream wise” adaptations of Petrarca´s Sonnet, before the opening of the magically Christmas-Season started: the version for the piano Mikhail Pletnevs for the “Nutcracker”- ballet Tchaikovsky’s.

Solemnly Luisi drew the march, where the children are entering into the decorated Christmas-room, before more scenes of “the kingdom of the sweets” made the audience “dolcissimo” dreaming. At the Crystaldicant, describing the sugar-fairy, the cheerful tarantella, the charming Intermezzo, followed by the boot-tramping Kosac-Trepak, the Chinese-dance and to the figurative touchable “Pas de Deux” of the Nutcracker who was turned into a prince and his fairy.
As Encore: Chopin’s virtuoso b-Minor Scherzo and a calming Bach.
Bravo!