Color Italian Pianist Pedroni Gold : The Van Cliburn Winner Finds Inspiration in Cinema Music

When Simone Pedroni played Rachmaninoff’s Second Concerto at the Ninth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition here recently, he saw red. And a lot of blue.

“I see music in colors,” Pedroni said in an interview just hours before learning he had won the prestigious gold medal.

“The Rachmaninoff has two symbols, bells and water. The water is blue. A sensation of death pervades the work. It’s very tragic, very sad.”

Colors. Sensations. Flights of fantasy. This 24-year-old Italian pianist gets his inspiration from a somewhat unusual source for a seriously trained classical musician: the cinema--and its music. His favorite director is Steven Spielberg, whom he dubs “a poet who likes to speak to the hearts of all bambini ,” and his favorite film composer remains John Williams (“Jurassic Park,” “Far and Away,” “Empire of the Sun,” among others).

“Cinema music is very important now and Williams is its leader,” said Pedroni, who understands English, but speaks mostly via an interpreter.

“Williams’ music always has a multitude of colorations. To listen to this music alone, without the images, stimulates the imagination. I also know the music to all the TV shows that come to Italy.”

As winner of the Cliburn, Pedroni has been guaranteed approximately 35-40 concerts in the upcoming year. His first appearance is Thursday night at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, where he’ll perform a program of works by Haydn, Wagner-Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Mussorgsky. This is in keeping with Ambassador’s “agreement” with the Cliburn to present gold medalists within 10-15 days after their triumph.

Pedroni said he became interested in music “late in life” (at age 9), after hearing a work for organ by J.S. Bach. At first he wanted to be an organist, but settled for the piano, enrolling at the Verdi Conservatory of Milan. His parents never pushed their only child, and Pedroni believes that’s why music to him “seems so natural, almost like breathing and drinking water.”

Two years ago, he was accepted at the innovative Accademia Pianistica in Imola, near Bologna, where students work with several top teachers at a given time. His greatest influence there has been Russian pianist Lazar Berman.

The demands are tough: Each year students prepare two new concerti and two new recitals. Pedroni, who practices about five hours a day, has at his fingertips “much” Mozart, the five Beethoven concertos and the Choral Fantasy. He will soon ready an all-Brahms recital and Brahms’ First Concerto.

It was Pedroni’s choice of repertory that helped propel him to the finals of the Cliburn. (For the first time since its founding in 1962, the quadrennial competition permitted participants--26 men and nine women--to plan their own programs.)

Pianist Menahem Pressler, a member of the jury of 12 men and two women, said that Pedroni, in his American debut, largely appealed because of his fine selections in the earlier rounds:

“He played the Bach (Sixth) English Suite marvelously, his Hindemith Suite ‘1922’ was very unusual and he played a strong ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ (Mussorgsky),” Pressler said.

As the contest entered the home stretch, Pedroni emerged as a favorite. Not a hot favorite. Just a front-runner. But then there was little heat at this event.

“Pedroni played chamber music beautifully and showed that he is a motivated musician,” said Pressler. “He has many great attributes--wonderful proportion, technical command and sonority--and may turn out to be one of the fine pianists of our time. But to say we were there at the emergence of the one great one was simply not the case.”

Pedroni also shared the $1,000 Steven De Groote Memorial Chamber Music Award for his performance of Franck’s Piano Quintet in F minor with the American String Quartet. In addition to the gold medal, he receives a silver cup, $15,000 in cash, participation in a Philips recording and two years of career management and concert tours, including a November, 1994, date at Carnegie Hall.

Pedroni is, however, keeping July 18 open. That’s when he’ll marry music critic Elisa Petrarulo in their hometown Novara. His fiancee, who was working, could not accompany the pianist to Texas. Nor could his parents get leave from their jobs at their local post office. They were, nonetheless, jubilant at hearing their son yell on the phone, “I won.”

“It is the only time I have ever heard my mother cry,” the cherubic Pedroni said at a gala after the awards ceremony, looking as though he might just start crying himself.