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Margherita Berlanda

Walker

Walker

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The Highlands, Scotland.
I would like to share a video of one of my favourite accordion players. Margherita Berlanda is a marvellous accordionist who plays the most sublime baroque and classical music as well as ultra-contemporary accordion music with unbelievable style!

Accordion and Cello is a truly magnetic combination...



@Margherita Berlanda - I just noticed you have joined the Accordionists Forum. A very warm welcome to you!

Best Regards,

Stewart
 
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Walker said:
I would like to share a video of one of my favourite accordion players. Margherita Berlanda is a marvellous accordionist who plays the most sublime baroque and classical music as well as ultra-contemporary accordion music with unbelievable style!

Accordion and Cello is a truly magnetic combination...



@Margherita Berlanda - I just noticed you have joined the Accordionists Forum. A very warm welcome to you!

Best Regards,

Stewart
Click to expand...

Thank you very much Stewart!!!!
 
Music is music...

but I was thinking about the idea of contrasts in musical styles on the accordion - like the differences between the baroque and the contemporary. There are vast contrasts and also great spans of time that separate their musical philosophies. And, you know, I got to thinking about what lies between these two musical periods... surely a great ocean of music fills that three century space.

I guess any one of hundreds of composers could have come to me, and yet the name that popped into my mind immediately was Louis Vierne. As I listened to the different styles of music that you play Ms. Berlanda I thought, wouldn't it be great if the music of Vierne was explored too, especially the hazy, antique sounds of his harmonium (and organ) works. Perhaps you will forgive me for making this suggestion, a little presumptuously.

I was first introduced to Vierne's music by hearing my friend @saundersbp playing the piece Berceuse on accordion. It was really super.

Here's a harmonium/reed organ version for anyone interested.

​
 
Walker said:
I was first introduced to Vierne's music by hearing my friend @saundersbp playing the piece Berceuse on accordion. It was really super.

Here's a harmonium/reed organ version for anyone interested
Click to expand...

That's very kind of you.
If anyone else is interested the Vierne Berceuse (played on harmonium in the Youtube video above) it is here on the accordion at 3min18 on the link below. Sorry I don't have the tech to chop up the recording made on my phone to extract a single piece. It's a practice session by an amateur (me) so don't expect perfection!

 
This is beautiful playing. I know how hard it is and how much practice it takes to perform at that level and it is impressive.

Personally, my playing style is 180 degrees different from this! If you were to hear us each play back to back you would not assume we play the same instrument!
 
The accordion seems to suit old music - the older the better. Despite the accordion's germination in the early 19th century and subsequent growth to today where it is, more or less, the finished article - a multi-voice, converter-clad portable organ, it is right at home in early music. From old folk tunes, baroque Bach or even older Purcell... or lets go back to earlier times of William Byrd in the mid 1500s, or further still, to Antonio de Cabezón of Spain in the early 1500s... the accordion sounds just right. But lets not stop there... Josquin des Prez is 'sweet' on accordion, and that's back to the 1400s.

And yet there is new music today written for the accordion that is modern but inspired by the past. Here's a highly contemporary rêverie inspired by Guillaume de Machaut's "De toutes flours", a work written in the 1300s. The rêverie is performed here by the great accordionist @Margherita Berlanda in duet with portative organ player Catalina Vicens. I think the medieval portative organ and the modern converter accordion blend so well together...​

 
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Walker said:
The accordion seems to suit old music - the older the better. Despite the accordion's germination in the early 19th century and subsequent growth to today where it is, more or less, the finished article - a multi-voice, converter-clad portable organ, it is right at home in early music. From old folk tunes, baroque Bach or even older Purcell... or lets go back to earlier times of William Byrd in the mid 1500s, or further still, to Antonio de Cabezón of Spain in the early 1500s... the accordion sounds just right. But lets not stop there... Josquin des Prez is 'sweet' on accordion, and that's back to the 1400s.

And yet there is new music today written for the accordion that is modern but inspired by the past. Here's a highly contemporary rêverie inspired by Guillaume de Machaut's "De toutes flours", a work written in the 1300s. The rêverie is performed here by the great accordionist @Margherita Berlanda in duet with portative organ player Catalina Vicens. I think the medieval portative organ and the modern converter accordion blend so well together...​

Click to expand...

Very cool and “hauntingly beautiful.” Every day here is a new education, I love it!
 
Tom said:
Very cool and “hauntingly beautiful.” Every day here is a new education, I love it!
Click to expand...
So true Tom... the medieval organ seems to howl while the accordion growls, each calling together with an intensity that ebbs and flows, with the control that only bellows instruments, and wolves, can muster. And the contrasts... ancient and modern... reed and pipe... haunting indeed.
 
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