Anthony Molinaro was a graduate student at Northwestern University two years ago when his performance at the Naumburg International Piano Competition, which included Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto no. 3 (the one that sent David Helfgott over the edge), wowed the judges and jump-started his career. It was a performance fueled by a passion for music that sprang from an improbably ordinary basketball-and-tennis boyhood in the south suburbs. Molinaro won the competition and was catapulted into the high-wire and hotel-room grind of the concert novice. Now he’s on the verge of another leap, a phone call away from a major-label record deal that he hopes will let him take control of his professional life. If it comes through, he’ll cut back on the classical bookings, play more of his own compositions, and launch the little jazz group that’s been riffing in his head.
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At 26, Molinaro is as bald as a peeled egg, a motormouth with a repertoire of irreverent opinions who’s been known to surprise orchestras by breaking into improvisation in the middle of a Gershwin or Mozart performance. What’s the difference between classical and other kinds of music? “None,” he says. “The only real distinctions in music are between good and bad.” Who’s to blame for the graying of symphony audiences? “Music teachers. They squander the chance to create audiences.” Whose fault is it that we don’t have great pianist-composers like Rachmaninoff nowadays? “The music schools’. They separate everything and make music academic.” Why is classical music in trouble? “It’s delivered as history.” Also, “Everyone’s playing the same things.”
The implication is clear: anything less than the best is unacceptable. Molinaro may seize control of his schedule, but he won’t be able to change this: in the end, he’s the instrument, a musician because “there never was and never will be another option,” playing the music that “demands to be played,” believing that when he plays it “it’s going to be better than it’s ever been performed,” and then going onstage with the intention of forgetting where he is. “It doesn’t always happen that you’re completely lost in the music,” he says, “but sometimes it does, and that’s fantastic. You live for those kind of nights.”
