A return to Jesi between roots, dialogue and form – with the FORM and the breaths of Santa Cecilia
By Marialuisa Veneziano
There are evenings that do not announce with clamor, but with a sort of discreet nobility. You enter the theatre as you enter an ancient house: with respect, with a slight curiosity, with the secret expectation that something — perhaps imperceptible to others — can change the course of your thoughts.
The room of the Pergolesi Spontini Theatre of Jesi (AN) was immersed in a restrained light, almost pudic. The audience took place with that all-Italian compoteness that knows to be elegant and restless together. Yet, before the first bow touched the rope, the evening had already a heart. He had received it a few hours before, in a phrase pronounced without theatricality from Alessio Allegrini: «The most serious thing you can do is not do what the composer would want».
There was in that statement something more than an aesthetic principle. There was a moral. And when, with almost disarming simplicity, he added that every symphony should be faced as if it were the last, it did not seem to indulge in romanticism, but to declare a method of life.
It is with this spirit — together humble and burning — that the music started.
Impressions of Marche by Gianluca PiomboCommission FORM – Marchigiana Philharmonic Orchestra, it did not appear as a simple ouverture, but as a slow disvel.
Piombo does not describe the landscape with the urgency of a painter, but evokes it as a poet who knows the stratification of memory. The orchestral lines stick with patience, the stamps overlap in a weaving reminiscent of the morphology of the Marche hills: wavy, never sour, yet deeply rooted.
There is no superfluous gesture in writing. Tension does not seek the explosion, but the permanence. It's a music that slowly indulges, like a confidence.
And in that slow sharpening, the words of the interview returned to resound. The memory of Grandma Marche, that «I feel at home», pronounced with sobriety, he now bought a different weight. Directing a passage that speaks of his own land is not neutral act: it is an act of belonging. He's a rhetoricless exposé.
The FORM responded with a sound quality that deserves the highest praise. The arches have built a dense and luminous fabric, able to support writing without weighing it down; the woods have engraved details with almost cameriistic finesse; the brass have colored with measure, avoiding any excess. There was no pleasure. There was membership.
And so, while Impressions of Marche He withdrew with the same discretion with which he was afflicted, there was no feeling of a conclusion, but of a crossed threshold. Because the earth evoked by Gianluca Piombo It was not just geographical memory. It was root. And every root, if it is alive, generates relationship. The music just remembered who we are. Now he was preparing to ask how we can be together.
It is in this passage — almost imperceptible, but decisive — that Mozart becomes inevitable.
If Piombo had given voice to the ground, to the stratification of time, to the silent permanence of the earth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart He would have given voice to the human breath that over that earth moves, meets, recognizes.
From depth to relationship.
From memory to dialogue.
And when the orchestra began to lay the first sentences of Concert symphony, it didn't seem like a change of scenery. It seemed the natural evolution of a thought that, born from the earth, was looking for the other.
Because if the first music lived the place, the second would have inhabited the meeting.
The Concerting symphony for winds K. 297b by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart born in a Paris that is not only city, but proof. It is 1778: Mozart seeks recognition, compares with a different taste, and above all crosses a mourning that will deeply mark it, the death of his mother. In that context a page takes shape that, while adhering to the brilliant genre of symphonie concertanteHe's over it. Where the French model tended to the elegant competition between soloists, Mozart builds a true architecture of dialogue.
It is known that the autograph has been lost and that the version reached us derives from a later copy, probably restored. Yet — and maybe that's why — the work preserves an almost paradoxical quality: a perfection that seems to survive the material shortcomings. It is as if the musical idea was stronger than its historical events.
The first movement unfolds with that naturalness that only Mozart knows how to achieve: the themes are presented as spontaneous conversations, the four solo instruments do not cope but are sought. On stage, the breaths ofOrchestra of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia they did not give the impression of wanting to "emerge", but of wanting to intertwine. The flute of Andrea Oliva brought a serene, never ostentatious brightness; the oboe of Francesco Di Rosa he found phrases with an almost vocal nobility; Andrea Zucco offered depth without burden, as a thought that sustains without interrupting. And the horn Alessio Allegrini, within this plot, he did not seek primacy but cohesion: a timbre that united, that opened spaces, that responded without imposing itself.
But it is in the second movement that the Concertant reveals its most secret heart.
Choosing the minor hue — in a formally elegant and public context like that of symphonie concertante — It's not a detail. It's a slight but decisive fracture. If the first time is a civil conversation, the younger Andante is a confession. Mozart makes an almost philosophical gesture here: it suspends the external brilliance and leaves a shadow emerge. It's not tragedy, it's not despair. It is a melancholy composed, a shadow that does not turn out the light but makes it more true. Writing becomes more stripped, dialogues between the soloists become more intimate, almost hesitant. The phrases do not seek applause: they seek listening.
From the musicological point of view, tension arises from the continuous oscillation between stability and harmonic instability. The modulations are not brusque, but insinuating; the melodic line stretches as if it wanted to avoid closing; the harmonic suspensions seem to hold the breath. It is a movement that lives on the edge of balance, as if the music was afraid to say all the way.
And this is where interpretation has touched a point of rare intensity.
The soloists did not emphasize the pathos: they let it emerge. The flute became more veiled, almost fragile; the oboe assumed a darker color, as if the voice cracked without breaking; the bassoon sustained with a gentle gravity, avoiding any excessive weight. The horn of Allegrini, with its naturally ambiguous timbre — heroic and nostalgic together — became the place of conjunction between light and shadow.
And as he played, Allegrini kept running. The gesture was minimal, essential. There was no desire to sculpt the effect: there was the will to protect the balance. At that moment we really understood what he had said in the interview: that in front of the orchestra is the place where he feels most true. Because the truth, here, was not in the intensity shown, but in mutual trust.
The second movement of the Concertant does not ask to be "interpreted" with excess; it asks to be guarded. And that night was guarded.
When the final came back to the brightness of the major, it was not a simple return to shine. It was as if, through the shadow, the light had acquired a different quality. More aware. More human.
Thus, in the heart of the evening, Mozart taught something that goes beyond form: that authentic dialogue is not only made of harmony, but also of shared fragility. And that the highest beauty is not the one that dashes, but the one that crosses the shadow without fearing it.
The Symphony No 102 by Franz Joseph Haydn, one of the great Londoners, brought the speech to completion.
Haydn is often called the father of the symphony, but this paternity is not dominion: it is constructive intelligence. Its architectures are clear, but always crossed by irony and surprise. In 102, each theme is a promise that develops with logic and grace.
Allegrini, evoking in the interview the image of the mountain and putting the "just steps", to reach its peaks, had anticipated its approach. No reverential fear, but vigilant respect. No monumental emphasis, but structural clarity.
The FORM responded with a light compactness. The joints were sharp, the dynamics calibrated with finesse, the final possessed an energy that was not exhibiting, but ordered joy. A sense of balance was perceived, not imposed.
And so, as in a well-built novel, each element of the program found its place.
The earth evoked by Piombo was not simple opening: it was root.
Mozart's dialogue was not mere virtuosity: it was cohabitation.
The form of Haydn was not tradition: it was maturity.
And in the center, an artist who chose fidelity as a revolutionary gesture.
When the last agreement dissolved, there was no need for emphasis. The silence that preceded the applause was already answered. There is a Greek word that we should not forget: ἦθος (êthos). It doesn't just mean "character." It means interior dwelling. The place we really live in. In Jesi, the music was this: a shared athos.
From the earth evoked by Piombo — root and memory — to Mozart’s vulnerable dialogue, to Haydn’s luminous architecture, everything has competition to build not a program, but a home. A sound house where every gesture made sense because it was faithful. True to the score. Faithful to the community. True to itself.
Allegrini said he would not betray the composer. He said he was running like it was the last time. And in that attitude there was something that went beyond music. There was a lesson of responsibility.
Because if it is true that the Greek term "symphony" means "sounding together", then we realized that playing together is not just an acoustic fact. It's a moral act. It's the choice to settle.
The silence, after the closing, was not simple pause. It was katharsis — not in the theatrical sense of spectacular purification, but in the most intimate sense of clarification. Something had become clearer in each one.
Beauty, when lived as a responsibility, not only comforts. Reorient.
And coming out of the theater, in the night that had resumed its indifferent course, there was a subtle but very powerful feeling: that music, when it is faithful, is not evasion from the world. It is the highest way of living it. And maybe — in that silence that still vibrated — we have understood that true greatness is not in the exceptional, but in being at the height of what is needed.
That evening, the music was up to itself.
And we, for a moment, stayed with her.
Ancona 21 February 2026
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