PERSPECTIVE — Two festivals on opposite sides of the Mediterranean lit up July 2025 with chamber music that felt intimate, daring, and profoundly collaborative.
In Lecce, Italy, pianist Beatrice Rana brought her Classiche Forme festival into its ninth season, curating leisurely intermission-less evenings. In these performances, the piano became a heartbeat rather than a spotlight amid a flurry of new music and Schumann, and concertgoers got the opportunity to hear a brilliant young quartet. A week later in Lisbon, Portugal, Filipe Pinto‑Ribeiro’s Verão Clássico & Academia celebrated its 11th year, turning the Centro Cultural de Belém into a laboratory where world‑renowned mentors and emerging artists created performances that blurred the line between masterclass and student recital. As a bonus, a cello star of the future may have been sighted.
Though the contexts differed — Lecce’s cloisters and olive‑fringed farm estates versus Lisbon’s sleek modern halls near the Tagus River — the parallels were striking. Both festivals were built by pianists who prefer partnership to dominance, both featured important young artists, and both thrilled sold-out audiences across a wide demographic, offering ticket prices that were no higher than 25 euros.
The opening Classiche Forme concert July 13 took place in the festival’s main venue, the open courtyard of the 15th-century Chiostro del Rettorato, in Rana’s hometown city of Lecce. She and violinist Alexandra Conunova played Clara Schumann’s three Romances with a tenderness that wove together past and present. From the first bar, their playing delivered intimacy rather than showy display. Even in the quietest passages, Rana’s tone glowed, always shaping the piano’s role as an equal in dialogue with Conunova’s sweet-toned voice.
Ravel’s transcendently difficult Sonata for Violin and Cello followed. On just one rehearsal earlier in the day, Brannon Cho and Conunova painted the whirring clockwork of the composer’s response to Debussy’s death and the musical influences of Kodaly and Stravinsky in pastel shades that matched the still night air.
Rana joined Conunova and Cho for Robert Schumann’s Trio in F major. Even with the challenging outdoor acoustics, this was a revelation – the chance to hear how the pianist listened, responded, and shaped chamber exchanges with colleagues who gave generously of themselves in return. It was the kind of authentic music-making that connects superbly with audiences.
A few days later, the festival moved to Masseria Le Stanzie, a 17th‑century agricultural farmstead where the Vienna-based Chaos String Quartet opened with a comprehensive performance of Haydn’s Quartet in D major, Op. 20, No. 4, played as a conversation rich in rhythmic energy. They followed with the world premiere of Riccardo Panfili’s String Quartet No. 3, commissioned by the festival. Its four movements evoke Edvard Munch, war memories, and political chaos. When the cellist broke a string halfway through the finale, the pause only heightened the sense of music teetering, as the world is, between order and collapse.
When Rana joined Chaos for Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E‑flat major, Op. 44, she entered without ceremony, gave a brief glance to the cellist just back from restringing, who gave her a quick thumbs up, and they were off into the opening statement with luminous precision. Her ability to step forward when needed — propelling the scherzo’s pulse, weaving seamlessly into the slow movement’s inner textures — showed a mastery of chamber collaboration that places listening above virtuosity. The hay‑bale‑seated audience responded with rapturous applause.
The week culminated in a “Maratona Finale” (final marathon) program (July 20) in Lecce that was broadcast live on Rai Radio 3. Clarinetist Kevin Spagnolo, violinist Andrea Obiso, and pianist Massimo Spada played Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes with a bit of classical pride and then, after donning Damon Runyon-esque hats and threads, riffed into a trio by Paul Schoenfeld. The Chaos String Quartet returned with Schubert’s Quartet in E-flat, D. 87, and Francesca Verunelli’s seriously difficult Secondo Quartetto.
Rana gave her last performances of the night with Spada — a magically evocative Ravel Ma mère l’Oye and Fazıl Say’s mischievous Night. Then she sat back and listened to a lovely, unhurried Brahms’ Sextet in G major with the Chaos ensemble joined by violist Georgy Kovalev and the pianist’s sister, cellist Ludovica Rana.
Lisbon’s Verão Clássico is part academy and part concert series, presenting MasterFests for the faculty and TalentFests for the students. More than 1,500 young musicians have passed through its programs over the years, many on the way to pursuing professional careers. The academy’s more than 200 students this year averaged 22 years old and came from some of the world’s most demanding institutions: Juilliard, Curtis, and Eastman in the U.S.; the Mozarteum in Salzburg; the Paris Conservatory; the Royal Academy in London; and leading universities in Germany, Switzerland, and beyond. They brought with them the energy of a generation eager to absorb and just as eager to take risks.
The opening MasterFest concert on July 23 ranged from three of Bruch’s Eight Pieces to Beethoven’s Ghost Piano Trio. In the Bruch, violist Muriel Razavi played with a dreamy, smoky warmth while violinist Lena Neudauer added wistful intensity, and pianist Filipe Pinto‑Ribeiro anchored the ensemble without ever taking over. In Mozart’s Sonata in B-flat, K. 454, violinist Stephan Picard and pianist Milana Chernyavska brought elegance and wit to the composer’s conversational tone.
The evening deepened with Dvořák’s rarely heard Nocturne, Op. 40, and a luminous “Song to the Moon” (from Rusalka) sung by soprano Anna Samuil, her voice combining Slavic warmth with theatrical clarity. Beethoven’s Piano Trio in D, Op. 70, No. 1 (Ghost) closed the program in hushed tension: Neudauer and cellist Gary Hoffman whispered the slow movement, and Pinto‑Ribeiro provided an undercurrent of quiet propulsion in the last. It was not just a concert but also a model for students to see pedagogy turned into performance and to evaluate themselves
Three nights later came the Schubert Fest. Neudauer and Chernyavska explored the conflicted emotions and sudden beauties of Schubert’s Sonatina in D major, youthful and tentative yet already filled with desire. Samuil’s set of three Lieder with Pinto‑Ribeiro captured the composer’s fusion of beauty and sadness. Their “Die Forelle” sparkled, its scales glittering like sunlight on water. And when cellist Hoffman joined Pinto‑Ribeiro in the Élégie by Schubert’s great admirer Fauré, it was fragile and heartbreakingly tender.
The inevitable Trout Quintet became a celebration. Razavi’s viola sang with a ravishing, serene glow. Picard played as if he had invited the audience to start dancing. Hoffman demonstrated the power of understatement, and Pinto‑Ribeiro’s ornaments in the variations movement reminded the listeners why chamber music exists — to share spontaneous joy in real time.
The performance level exhibited at three TalentFest concerts, in which young players risked everything in performances ranging from poised Beethoven to searing Corigliano, was very high. The breakout star was cellist Matteo Fabi, whose finale of Kodály’s Solo Sonata changed the festival’s temperature. His strummed chords snapped like firecrackers, his shifts between rustic vigor and lyrical reflection seamless. When applause erupted before the final ascent, he only smiled — and then finished with awesome drive and power. I’ve never heard a better performance of this work. The message was clear: The future is not on its way, it is here.
The attention now turns to the recording studio. In October, Pinto‑Ribeiro will record Schubert’s Trout Quintet and Dvořák’s Piano Quartet No. 1 with Esther Hoppe, Lars Anders Tomter, and Christian Poltéra for the Norwegian label LAWO.
And a spokesperson for Rana’s label confirmed: “We do have some plans in that sense [for chamber music] in the future!” For those who heard her in Lecce this summer, the prospect is electrifying.
Together, these two pianists — from different countries but with the same ethos — remind us that chamber music matters.
