By Claudia Valenti
(©Emiliano Tarsetti)
A rough and moving evening, in which the music of Morandi, Bach, Guilmant and Liszt became a gesture of beauty, solidarity and community.
Falconara Marittima (An), 9 June 2026
***
You should ask yourself sometimes what you really want a crowd when filling a church to listen to an organ.
Certainly not the noise, of which the world is already prodigal dispenser; not light leisure, which is born and dies with the same hurry; not the vanity of being there, because there are places in which also vanity, if it enters, is forced to lower the voice. On the evening of June 6, in the Church of Sant’Antonio da Padova of Falconara Marittima (An), a very numerous community — a full church, indeed filled, as rarely happens for an organ concert — seemed to look for something more ancient and more necessary: a reason to listen together.
And that reason came with the first sound.
It wasn't a simple start. It was as if the air, until that moment immovable, suddenly found a soul. The organ took voice and the church, which was already full of people, seemed to fill itself only then. Because there are tools that accompany thought, and others who call it to judgment. The organ belongs to the latter. He does not ask for distraction, does not give superficiality: he takes the silence of men and measures it.
At the instrument, Marialuisa Veneziano, organist, pianist and musicologist, interpreter of rare intensity, able to combine a powerful technique with an even more difficult quality to find: the inner necessity of sound. He did not play to adorn the evening, nor to please the audience, nor to exhibit that mastery which also appeared evident from the early jokes. It sounded like those who know that every note, if not born from a truth, remains only a note; and that music, when it is not called to say something of man, becomes a useless luxury.
The concert was promoted to Caritas, with the support of President Ondina Valeria Ghergut and the Franciscan friars community of the parish. And it is not a detail to put at the bottom, among the obligatory thanks. It is, on the contrary, the moral key to the evening. Because beauty, when she meets charity, stops being isolated contemplation and becomes work. And the Franciscan friars, with that laborious simplicity that often makes more than many proclamations, have opened the doors not only of a sacred building, but of a possibility: to show that a community can still gather around what it elevates.
(©Emiliano Tarsetti)
To present the concert was Eleonora Tarsetti, and those who had careful eyes would immediately understand that his was not an ornamental presence. There are people who announce them only; others, instead, generate them before they even begin. Eleonora belongs to this second species, more rare and more precious. His voice, measured and participated, brought with him the silent story of a strong, operous friendship, not exhibited. A friendship that believed, organized, supported, prepared the way. Next to her, Marina Mancini has contributed with kindness and grace to lead the public through the evening, as those who accompany without ever oversight, offering to the words the discreet measure of the welcome. This also gave the concert a special tone: not the cold one of the official occasions, but the rarest one of the evenings treated with a light hand, in which every intervention prepares listening and invites the public to enter, step by step, in the deeper meaning of the event.
Between Eleonora Tarsetti and Marialuisa Veneziano we felt that connection that does not need many statements, because it speaks through gestures. And in times when talent is not always kept — sometimes it is looked suspiciously, as if the light of others was a decrease in its own — It is good to see a friendship that does the opposite act: it does not turn out, does not hold, does not measure; it opens. Eleonora Tarsetti opened a door. And from that door that night, the music passed.
(©Emiliano Tarsetti)
The program was not a sequence of songs, but a moral itinerary.
With Giovanni Morandi and his Offer, the organ showed its Italian face, clear, cantabile, almost smiling in its composure. There was on that page a simple, not poor grace; a luminosity capable of combining the sacred measure with a more human, almost theatrical breath. Marialuisa Veneziano made it with finesse, without limestone, without weighting, letting the sound walk in the church as a morning light. It was the right beginning: not the inruption of the sublime, but its announcement.
Then Bach came. And when Bach really enters a church, he never enters as a guest. Get on the ground.
The Touch and escape in minor king (BWV 565), so famous to be often consumed by habit, that evening he found his original severity. It was not the "famous" page that the public recognizes with satisfaction; it was a call. The Toccata has torn the space with a force that seemed musical and moral together. The Escape, then, recomposed that shock in order, voice after voice, as if chaos was called to give reason for itself.
Here the Venetian Master showed an extraordinary mastery. The organ technique, in its complexity of hands, feet, registers, sound balance and control of acoustics, was safe, clear, dominated. But the real merit was another: that technique did not ask to be admired. Served. He claimed. He was carrying. It was like a column hidden inside a building: who looks admiring the time, but the time would not hold without that column. Thus it was the virtuosity of Venice: not vanity, but architecture.
In Bach, his interpretation took the breath of the necessary things. Every voice of escape seemed to advance with its own dignity, and all together they built that miracle that only Bach does so naturally: transforming thought into emotion without betraying either one or another. The church listened real. And there are immobilities worth more than many applauses.
With Alexandre Guilmant and the Symphonie n°1 in D minor by organ, the speech became wider. The organ has assumed symphonic dimension, almost orchestral. Not only liturgical instrument, but sound world: imaginary brass, invisible arches, luminous masses, deep shadows. French writing demanded greatness, but greatness is a dangerous matter: in less experienced hands it becomes weight, rhetoric, noise. Venetian, however, has been able to breathe. The sound widened without overturning; it climbed without crushing; it filled without confusing.
It was, that, one of the moments in which the nature of the interpreter was better understood: a musician capable of power, but not in love with power; able to make the space tremble, but without losing the modesty of detail. And the smell, in art, is not weakness. It is the custody of greatness.
Finally Franz Liszt.
Here the evening entered a harsher, more burning, almost prophetic region. The Präludium und Fugue über It is not only a tribute to the genius of Eisenach: it is a struggle with the name, with the memory, with the inheritance, with that absolute that Liszt pursued throughout his life, now with the impetus of the virtuoso, now with the restlessness of the penitent. On this page the music is not limited to proceeding: search, question, rush, go back. Marialuisa Veneziano has entered there without satisfaction. He did not make Liszt an exercise of skill, although the difficulty was evident and very high. He made a play of it. Every passage seemed to bring with it a question: what remains of man when he entrusts his name to music? What remains of pain when it is transformed into form? What remains of fatigue when it becomes beauty?
In Liszt, the artist appeared in his fullness. Not only the performer from the safe technique; not only the scholar who knows the internal structure of the songs; but the interpreter who risks something of himself. There are correct executions, there are brilliant executions, and then there are executions that seem to have gone through a life before arriving to the public. The Venetian one belonged to this last category. He didn't just produce sound: he delivered it.
And the audience, in a church now almost a single being listening, received.
It could be said that applause was warm, and that would be true. One could say that participation was great, and it would still be true. But there are smaller truths, and for this reason more revealing. One of these happened when, in the still vibrant silence after music, a very young voice shouted:
"Brava prof!"
You cannot invent a better phrase. No critic, no presenter, no release could have said more with so little.
"Brava prof!": two words only, but inside there was the whole evening seen from the eyes of a young man. There was the affectionate amazement of those who recognize, in their teacher, not only the daily figure of the school, but the artist capable of shaking a church. There was the tenderness of a generation that, when it is not educated only to noise, still knows how great it is. There was evidence that music, when it is true, does not remain closed in titles and skills: it also comes there where technical language does not serve, because it speaks the heart.
That cry didn't break the silence. He did.
He entered the solemnity of the evening a simple, clear, irresistible note of life. And perhaps it was at that moment that the concert showed its deepest meaning: not to separate the top from the daily, but to unite them. Bach and school. Liszt and affection. Caritas and virtuosity. The Franciscan friars and the crowd. The friendship of Eleonora and the voice of a boy. Everything, for a moment, together.
This is the power of music when he meets a community: he reassembles what life often divides.
The evening of 6 June had, in fact, a beauty not only artistic, but civil. Caritas, President Ondina Valeria Ghergut, Franciscan friars and those who made the event possible remembered that solidarity is not only an answer to the emergency, but an education of the gaze. Help also means creating places where man can feel part of something again. A church full for an organ concert is not only a success of public: it is a sign. And the signs, when they are honest, are worth more than the statements.
In this sign, Eleonora Tarsetti had the discreet and decisive role of those who know how to recognize before others. But to say only this would be little. There are people who do not come to life to occupy space, but to return it; not to ask for light, but to allow others not to be afraid of it. Eleonora, in this evening, was exactly this: a presence able to believe without intruding, to support without holding, to prepare the way without pretending to be the way.
Not all friendships are generative. Some consulate, others accompany; the highest, however, make things happen. They are those friendships that see when the world distracts, that guard when others disperse, that do not return before the greatness of the other because they do not live it as a threat, but as a gift. At a time when too many energies are consumed to resize, contain, extinguish what exceeds the common measure, a friendship that promotes beauty becomes almost a countercurrent act.
Eleonora did this: she believed in a light and prepared her space. He realized that a concert could become something more than a musical evening; he could become a meeting, charity, memory, recognition. He brought his care within the organization of the event, but above all he brought that rare form of trust that does not need clamor to be decisive. Because sometimes the greatest things do not arise from those who raise their voices, but from those who know how to say, with firmness mild: "this beauty must happen".
So the concert became more than a concert. He became a small parable about recognition.
And in the middle of this parable remains the figure of Marialuisa Veneziano. An artist who does not ask for indulgence, because he possesses the tools of rigour; but who does not take refuge even in rigour, because he knows that art without soul is only well dressed discipline. Its execution has combined precision and fire, control and abandonment, thought and vibration. He made the organ not a monument, but a living creature.
There was, in his way of playing, something we could call responsibility for beauty. Every song seemed brought to the public not as personal possession, but as a gift. Morandi with his grace; Bach with his ordained abyss; Guilmant with its solemn breadth; Liszt with his spiritual fever. Each page became a stage, and each stage allowed not only the composer, but also the interpreter: his culture, his strength, his history, his ability to transform fatigue into form.
When the last vibration dissolved, the church did not immediately return to normal. No place returns identical after being crossed by a necessary music. The walls seemed to hold something again; the faces of the public brought that particular light that appears when you received more than you expected.
Then what happens in true evenings cannot be commanded or predicted: the public stands.
The applause, already long and grateful, has become a full, warm, almost liberating standing ovation. Not only the tribute to a successful execution; was the recognition of something that had touched deeper. The viewers did not applaud only the technique, although extraordinary, nor only the strength of the songs: applauded the experience lived, the emotion received, the feeling of being carried by hand into a higher place.
And precisely in the final greetings, when an artist could easily take refuge in the pride of success, Marialuisa Veneziano chose instead the most difficult and brightest way: that of humility.
He thanked the public with simple words, but capable of moving. "The artist without the public is nothing, because music does not live in the solitary gesture of those who perform it, but in the encounter with those who welcome it. Music needs humanity, people willing to listen, to get excited, to recognize each other through sound."
It was a moment of rare truth.
After Bach, Guilmant and Liszt, after the power of the organ and the intensity of the evening, those words brought everything back to its purest root: the music does not belong to the artist as a possession, but passes through the artist as a gift. And a gift exists only when someone receives it.
The standing ovation, then, is no longer just an applause standing, but an answer. The audience returned to the artist what he had received; and the artist, with humility, handed back to the public the very meaning of music. In that dialogue without score, made of hands, shiny eyes and gratitude, perhaps the deepest meaning of the evening has been fulfilled.
And perhaps this is the right word: gratitude.
Recognize towards Caritas and friars, for making the church an open house. Recognize towards Eleonora Tarsetti, for believing and building. Recognize towards Marina Mancini, for having guided the public with grace and kindness through the passages of the evening. Recognize towards the public, for having filled not only a space, but a silence. Recognize to that young man who, with his "Brava prof!", delivered his most innocent and true phrase to the evening. Finally, she recognizes Marialuisa Veneziano, for having remembered that music, when born from study, pain, faith and dedication, can still perform the most difficult miracle: to make men feel less alone.
We do not know if everyone, coming out of the church, has been able to accurately say what they had heard. Perhaps some will have appointed Bach, others Liszt, others the power of the organ, others still the full church or the emotion of that young cry. But it is not always necessary to give a name to the things that change. Sometimes you just take them away.
On June 6, in Falconara, many entered the church for a concert.
They came out with a memory.
And memory, when it is made of beauty, friendship and charity, resembles a form of grace.
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