Capelli, the new album by Maurizio Mastrini it is the story of a life spent pursuing music, but also the culmination of a journey made of study, experimentation and continuous research. An album that crosses different worlds, from classical tradition to Cuban suggestions, passing through original compositions that reflect his way of understanding the piano.
«These are contaminations that I acquired during my musical career», he says. «I have always been a pianist and music has taken me around the world. I have the curiosity of a child and this has always pushed me to explore worlds that seemed far from mine.”
His training is that of the great Italian piano school. «I come from classical music, I was one of the last students of maestro Vincenzo Vitale. However, despite being a classical pianist, I have always wanted to explore worlds that did not belong to me.»
Among the intuitions that have marked his career is that of perform the pieces by reading the score backwards. An idea born almost for fun and which became, in 2009, an international phenomenon.
«It was an experiment to which I owe a lot», he explains. «At the beginning it was almost a game. I enjoyed reading the scores from the end to the beginning and what came out was something crazy, magical. The melodies became unrecognizable, but they continued to be pleasing to the ear because the harmonies are vertical.» It was precisely that experiment that brought him back into the spotlight.
«The BBC, television from all over the world, the Italian news… suddenly all hell happened. I had stopped being a pianist for a few years and that intuition gave me back a new life.»
Leaving again, however, was not easy. After seven years away from concerts, finding confidence again required time and sacrifice. «I did my first concert in the town where I was born, in front of seven or eight people. I messed around a lot. When you stay away from the stage you lose technique, but above all you lose confidence.»
That fragility, surprisingly, still accompanies him today. «Every time I go on stage it’s like it’s the first time. I try to think that I have already done more than a thousand concerts, but my instincts continue to be afraid. Then, after two or three minutes, you start talking to the audience and everything goes away.» Over time Mastrini decided to leave behind the image of the “pianist who plays backwards”. «For the first year I was considered almost a freak. They only called me for that and this thing was too tight for me. So I stopped and started mainly offering my own compositions.»
A choice that allowed him to enhance a preparation that often remained in the shadows. «I also graduated in composition. I tried to build a space that was neither too commercial nor far from the piano values that formed me: the search for sound, phrasing, technique.»
In his story there is a special song, Heart. «The inspiration comes from the friendship with Professor Massetti, one of the most authoritative Italian heart surgeons. I promised him that I would dedicate a song to him and from that promise it was born Heart. I wanted it to be something unique, that really spoke of the heart.”
To transform that intuition into music, Mastrini decided to go beyond simple composition. During the recording he had sensors applied that monitored his heartbeat in real timeusing it as a real metronome.
«A week before entering the studio I had this slightly crazy idea: to play exactly following the beat of my heart. I thought it was simple, but I immediately realized that the heart is not a perfect metronome.» The difficulty emerged above all in the more technically complex passages. The effort and tension increased the heart rate, continuously changing the tempo of the execution.
«When the most demanding passages arrived, the heart accelerated. For a few moments it almost seemed like I was the one going out of time, but instead it was the beat that changed. It was one of the most difficult recordings of my careerbecause I had to control the technique, the emotion and the breathing at the same time.»
In the end, however, the result was worth every effort. «I managed to find an emotional and musical balance and bring home a performance that truly represents me.»
When he is not travelling, Mastrini returns to his home in the Umbrian hills. «It’s my refuge. I lead a very stressful life, I travel thousands of kilometers every week and that place is truly my lifeline. That’s where I find those little emotions that then become music.”
Despite being deeply linked to the classical tradition, he listens to very different genres. «I listen to a bit of everything. From Queen to Cage and Satie. On this record I wrote a tribute to Erik Satie that moves me every time. I play it as the third encore and I see people coming to greet me with tears in their eyes.»
Among the names he admires most he cites Keith Jarrett and Stefano Bollani. «Jarrett is a genius. It takes your soul, plays with your heart in your hand. Bollani, on the other hand, has an incredible brain but also a huge heart.”
Despite the fifty million plays on Spotify and an international career, Mastrini does not hide that the goal of his dreams is yet to arrive. «I miss the great success. I say this with sincerity. For many years, perhaps, I didn’t even really look for it because it scared me. Live television, big events… I feel the pressure a lot.»
Today, however, the desire has changed. «Above all, I would like my children, one day, to be able to say with pride: that is our father. It’s more for them than for me.”
Among the most intense memories remains Carnegie Hall in New York. «When I was fifteen I studied for up to ten hours a day and in the evening I dreamed of playing there. When I actually walked on that stage it was like realizing the dream of the boy I was.” But if today he is the musician that the public knows, much of the credit goes to maestro Vincenzo Vitale.
He still remembers their first meeting perfectly. “He told me something that I will never forget: ‘You play well, but only for the deaf. If you want to be a pianist we have to start from scratch.’ At that moment it was a stab in the heart, but he was right. It was he who taught me the search for sound, technique and respect for music.»
And it is perhaps precisely this continuous desire to improve that explains Maurizio Mastrini better than anything else. After over a thousand concerts, millions of plays and an international career, he still continues to sit in front of the piano with the same emotion as the boy who dreamed of Carnegie Hall.
