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Antonio Pompa Baldi artistic director of TIMM, his life in a cloud of notes

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Taking lessons, studying all day, performing in the evening on the stage of the Teatro Comunale di Todi was the routine of the talented young pianists.

Every day they studied with Edoardo Delgado, Vivian Li, Andreas Frölich, Pierre Rèach, internationally renowned pianists and of course with Maestro Antonio Pompa Baldi. Many flew 10 hours to get to Todi, in the middle of a torrid summer, but they didn’t notice it because their desire was to perfect their piano studies.
For 15 days Palazzo Vignola was a musical box from which the joyful notes of the pianos of the eighth edition of Todi International Music Master – Timm came out.
This year too it was a success and the musical program has been further enriched. Registrations for next year will open soon, which, like in previous years, will be very strict and demanding. Once the festival is over, the time has come to take stock and get to know the founder and artistic director of TIMM, Maestro Antonio Pompa Baldi, better.

 

Antonio Pompa Baldi

Pleasantries are in order and so we talk about the growth of TIMM. He tells me that: “The Master has become a point of reference for emerging pianists and is expanding in various directions, collaborating with different entities. This year the collaboration with the Gioventù Musicale Italiana brought to Todi the young pianist Arsenij Moon, who won the prestigious Busoni prize and has collected numerous awards around the world.” I was also present at the concert. It was magnificent and the young MOON interpreted Pictures at an Exhibition by M. Musorgskij in a sublime manner. The next day Arsenij Moon was studying at Palazzo Vignola, in Pompa Baldi’s studio, to the delight of the TIMM kids. The Maestro, after months of teaching and responsibility – he is Head of the Piano Department in Cleveland – after the concerts in China and South East Asia, after the Master here in Todi, when do you think you will take a vacation? After Todi he tells me that he will give concerts in Düsseldorf and South Korea, then the academic year begins and we start again in Cleveland. And rest? A few days at home, in peace reading scores. I imagined it. In fact, Maestro Pompa Baldi moves inside a cloud of notes that only he hears. He has never had doubts or hesitations about his life choice. For him, music is life and life is music.

After talking about the Olympics, which he didn’t have time to see, the conversation turned to the story of this globetrotting pianist, who lives and works in Cleveland and who plays on every continent. He has lived in the United States for over twenty years but hasn’t lost his Italian accent, while the Apulian accent has faded, the land where he was born and where he studied at the Umberto Giordano Conservatory in Foggia, where he graduated two years early and with top marks. He was a precocious talent like Mozart, and at four years old he was already ecstatic if he heard a concert. Like those artists who learn art before learning to write, he played on a small piano even before going to school. Perhaps he resembled the Schroeder from the Charlie Brown comic strip. A talent that developed in a family where there was no knowledge of music. After graduating he perfected his interpretative skills and musical knowledge in Naples with Annamaria Pennella called the Lady and then in Bari with Aldo Ciccolini. The Maestro tells me that they were fundamental teachers for his preparation and his introduction to international competitions. In fact, he won several: in Monza the Rina Sala Gallo, in Paris the Marguerite Long competition, in Texas the Van Cliburn, in Cleveland the International Piano Competition that opened the way for him to teach at the Cleveland Piano Department.

The piano was also a matchmaker. At a Master he met the pianist Emanuela Friscioni and it was love, a spiritual and pianistic understanding. The maestro admires her a lot because she is not only an excellent pianist, she taught for 15 years at the Conservatory, but she is also the head of a foundation that helps the poor kids of Cleveland. Every form of art is offered for free, from every type of music, to photography and painting. It is the updated version of the El Sistema orchestra created by Josè Antonio Abreu in 1975 to get the kids of Caracas off the streets. Antonio Pompa Baldi never leaves music. He told me that at home they have two grand pianos where husband and wife play together, while in the cellar a recording room has been set up with a baby grand piano; he told me about his daughter Eleanor, also a musician but who preferred the cello. Maybe because it is portable? Eleanor Pompa played with her father, in a world premiere, the Sonata for cello and piano by Roberto Piana. I was also at the Teatro Comunale together with the kids of the Master and we attended a beautiful concert and an excellent duo. Probably next year we will also see and hear the Pompa-Baldi couple playing the piano on that same stage.

 

I ragazzi del master col diploma

All that remains is to ask what the plans are for the future. I admit, I was just thinking about the sea or the mountains. Instead, what the Maestro is preparing is a challenging musical project. He is about to publish with Music Press the last movement – allegro assai for piano and orchestra – of Mozart’s sonata in F major K 459, which Busoni had modified for two pianos and he transcribed for a single piano.
To return to the TIMM, this year the concerts moved from the small hall of Palazzo Vignola, which had dull acoustics, to the Teatro Comunale di Todi which, as Pompa Baldi says – has good acoustics and has the space to accommodate a larger audience. In fact, at the final concert the hall was full. Five talented students took turns on stage, including an Italian, and they played their piece with the TIMM YOUNG ARTISTS ORCHESTRA conducted by Maestro Francesco D’Ovidio. Everyone was applauded a lot. At the time of the diplomas, a student came on stage wearing shorts and a t-shirt and happily held the diploma that was bigger than him. He is an artist of only eight years.
Now we wait 12 months and then we will discover the news and the guests who will participate in the Todi International Music Master IX edition and we will be surprised by seeing talented young and very young artists playing, already on the road to becoming concert artists.

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