Flavio Villani - Crossing Rachmaninoff

Flavio Villani

My list of greatest pianists of all time continues to grow. I’ve divided it into several categories. The top category consists of the best pianists of all time, and that group is different from the rest in that I have people on it I have never heard play, people like Liszt and Chopin, people I take other people’s word on. After them I have listed Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubenstein, whom I have heard play, and can vouch for the fact that nobody can match them. The third list consists of others no longer living who might match them, depending on how you rate talent so astonishing that it seems tacky to be making comparisons at all, people like Van Cliburn and Glenn Gould, and Svatislav Richter.

At some point, though, I have to stop and ask myself, “What the hell are you doing, pretending that musical talent is a zero sum game, and a contest where everybody has to be lined up and graded, with the implication that world-class talent is about winners and losers?

So let me stop that game right here. I have my favorites. Currently Yuja Wang and Martha Argerich are on that list, both mature talents, and a whole bunch of young up-and-coming talents I’ve gushed over at some point, like Alexander Malofeev and the Jussen Brothers. But I don’t want to rate them. I know who they are and am inevitably excited when I take note that a new performance of theirs has been made available, usually by YouTube, since we are at the moment confined to isolation and dependent on others to let us know what’s happening out there in the world.

I came across a documentary the other day that reminded me I needed to create yet another category. This one I’d have to call the “very very talented not yet ready for the genius label” if indeed they will ever meet that high standard. The documentary is called Crossing Rachmaninoff. It’s about Flavio Villani, a gentle soft-spoken Italian man who has made his home in New Zealand. He works in IT to make a living, but has for years asked himself if he has the talent to become a serious concert pianist. He works, at present, as a piano teacher and occasional performer.

The film begins with his return to Italy to play Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with the Orchestra Filarmonica in Calabria. The orchestra’s director, Filippo Arlia, heard him play somewhere and started up a correspondence with him. These exchanges led Arlia to conclude it was worth giving Flavio the chance he needed to play with an orchestra for the first time.

Most films of this genre feature the lives of prodigies and other world class performers known for their ability to win competitions and outshine their peers. This is the story of a more ordinary man, talented enough to make it to the concert stage, but it focuses not on his superhuman proficiency but on the effort he has had to make to get there. You can find any number of world class musicians who can perform Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto in C-minor as well as or better than Flavio can, but this is more than anything the story of a man with the desire to succeed who is willing to make the commitment to put in the effort to make it happen, to make a concert-level pianist of himself. 

So the story is not about an “ordinary” man, exactly - he’s too talented to be reduced to “ordinary.” But he serves as an example of the old saying that genius, talent, success is one-tenth inspiration and nine-tenths perspiration. 

Much of the film is intensely personal. Flavio’s mother says he was a child who had secrets, who kept pretty much to himself. He is gay, and when he came out to his family, his father gave him two hundred euros to make his way in the world and told him not to come home again. Hence his decision to make his way to New Zealand.

This is not a gay coming-out story. That chapter is behind him when the film begins, as is whatever difficulty he had connecting with his father. When he returns in the film, a week before the upcoming concert, what you see is a soft-spoken, very loving young man being warmly embraced and welcomed home by his family - all of them, brother, mother and father. The goal of the filmmaker is not to present a tension-filled drama, but an affection-filled tale of a young man who sets his goals high, and then goes out and meets them. There is tension in the film, but it’s not found among the characters - there are no bad guys - but in the trial Flavio has set for himself, the quest for the answer to the nagging question, “Am I good enough?”

If you go to YouTube and type in Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 2, you’ll find at least twenty entries by many of the greats I mentioned above.
And after watching Crossing Rachmaninoff, I had to pick one just to hear that piece - which may be my favorite piano piece of all time - but there I go with the comparisons again! - in its entirety, uninterrupted.

But I’ve added Flavio Villani to my list of “sixty favorite concert pianists.”

Crossing Rachmaninoff is available on Amazon Prime.

Photo is from a video interview Flavio gave at a film festival in Mendocino, where Crossing Rachmaninoff was presented.