I remember with great pleasure my dear friend Maestro Armando Renzi, in my opinion one of the greatest musicians worldwide.
I will share three stories out of the many, which I went through with my composition teacher.
On one occasion, during a Counterpoint and Fugue class at the Conservatory “Alfredo Casella” at L’Aquila, so he could to better explain to me the concepts related to the fugue, he asked me for a theme. Knowing the Maestro’s virtuosity in these disciplines, I offered a syncopated theme. He played it and began the exposition going on in incredible way by improvising at the piano a complex fugue, without any error at all. How great you are, Maestro Renzi!
On another occasion, at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, I submitted a first sonata movement for his correction, which, in my opinion, would have deserved the Maestro’s approval. He played it, with his typical attitude (shaking lightly his head, and with a cigarette in his mouth) and, as usual, took his red pencil and wrote: “I suggest you throw it in the fire!”
One day, after the lesson at the Institute, he asked me to accompany him to an ice cream parlor, in the Trastevere neighborhood in Rome. Io ordered my ice cream, instead he told me “Do not go around telling people, my dear Urban, that Renzi loves “granitas”!” Therefore, each in his own way, we enjoyed one another.
Gerardo Urbán Velasco
Director Scuola Diocesana di Musica
Toluca (Messico)
