I grew up in a small village in the Italian Alps, in Trentino. Running through the woods by bicycle or writing on top of a tree in a hunting lodge that I converted into a thinking place, and many other beautiful things of childhood. Stefano Fogliardi gave me the first piano lessons, in Trento, a place that back then seemed to me to be a huge city—all of a sudden, one had to be careful to cross the street! Right away I was admitted to the town's Conservatory, entering the class of Antonella Costa, a passionate and very patient teacher. Particularly significant were the encounters with two other figures among the many who contributed to my formation: Franco Scala, first of all, inhibiting only up to a certain point with his words "you are a poet, here are the mastiffs..."; a long time later, Paul Badura-Skoda: it seemed to me to have next to me, at the other piano, Mozart or Beethoven or Schubert or Chopin in person. Particle accelerators.
My path had been a little eccentric. Rather soon, a voice inside me had erupted "you cannot spend your life playing for white hair!", besides generating a certain perplexity about the conventional understanding of what a classical music concert was becoming in the 1990s. And so, while my colleagues were trying their hand at international piano competitions, I enrolled, as a working student, at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bologna, graduating magna cum laude four years later. In the meantime, when I was deciding what to write my thesis on, came 9/11. From the plateau in Trentino, I wanted to fully descend into the world, live it, try to understand something more about its complexity. A scholarship allowed me to continue my studies in Political Theory at the famous London School of Economics. A lot of studying, and a lot of “placet experiri”, as Settembrini would have it. After London, I got into a doctoral program at the University of Trento, where I received my PhD in International Studies, and consequently was a"Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher" at Cambridge (2005-6), in the UK, and "Fulbright Visiting Researcher" at Princeton (2007), in the USA. The piano somewhat niched. But the Bildung I was acquiring was refracted through music. Thanks to the advice of a decisive figure for me, Professor Maurizio Viroli, I brought together the "human sciences"—to recall a novel (important for me, even too much) by Thomas Bernhard—and the world of sounds, firstly during a Post-Doc again at Princeton ("2009-10 Olin-Lehrman Postdoctoral Fellow") where I tried to apply my theories on patriotism, multiculturalism and postnationalism (the subjects of my doctoral dissertation) to the operas of Giuseppe Verdi. After that first rapprochement, various musicological publications have followed: today, the output includes four books, three edited volumes, translations, and many papers. One of the volumes, written together with the distinguished musicologist Lawrence Kramer, carries the significant title Classical Music in a Changing World: Crisis and Vital Signs. Now that I too have white hair, I have perhaps finally realized that classical music is not necessarily an elitist art that exists under mothballs. Classical music can be an expansive and redirective influence, under Hegelian Spirit. All this has brought me full-circle to give concerts and conferences in Italy, France (including at the Sorbonne), Germany, Austria, Greece, the Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Armenia, Nigeria, the UAE, Kuwait… Interesting places. “Alberto Nones is a remarkable man who leads a double life”, someone wrote in an American magazine. Just two lives? Nay, dear Pirandello: One, None and a Hundred-Thousand!
Music contains everything, politics and philosophy included. Even within a little mazurka by Chopin. In the scorching heat of a Sicilian summer, with only the refreshing touch of almond granitas, I embarked on a two-day recording session at the foot of Mount Etna, the result of which was my Complete Mazurkas by Chopin, a recording that, to my great surprise, was hailed as a revelation by some music critics: Halidon Music has now signed me for that album's digital reissue, which is reaching a lot of people through the digital platforms. The London-based Convivium Records too released a work of mine dedicated to Chopin, the Fantasies, and my (rather counterintuitive) reading of what "Fantasy" is in Chopin. The latter album, recorded at the Fazioli Concert Hall, has come out together with something that could hardly have been more different: an album recorded in a way-too-reverberant church on an old Bohemian piano, featuring music by Russian composer Rachmaninov and the living Ukrainian composer Silvestrov: the idea was that the sound, for once scabrous instead of polished as typical in most classical music albums (not to mention pop music albums), would take on its shoulders a little of the sorrow of the world we are feeling, and transform it into something else. With only Peace in mind. More recently, I've released Chopin's Complete Nocturnes and, lastly, the very first recording of the complete Waltzes by Chopin which includes the waltz newly discovered at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. My journey, discographic and existential, is ongoing.
If you write me through this website's contact form, I will gladly read you. I can also be found at the Conservatory: I have tenure in the History and Aesthetics of Music at the "G. Rossini" Conservatory of Music of Pesaro, although I am currently on leave there, teaching Piano at the "U. Giordano" Conservatory of Music of Foggia and Rodi Garganico. My teaching experience started back in 1999 and is at this point quite broad, multilingual and multidisciplinary. I have taught at the University of Lugano, the University of Trento, the Free University of Bolzano/Bozen, the University of the United Arab Emirates, the International High School of Rovereto, and the conservatories of Gallarate, Perugia, Como and Matera - a great array of disciplines ranging from music (Piano and History of Music) to the social sciences (Political Philosophy, Theory of International Politics, Political Communication, Ethics and Politics of Peabuilding, Critical Thinking and Creative Writing...), never sparing myself and always learning as much as I was teaching. I am also proud to have been appointed Honorary Visiting Teacher at the “E. Said” National Conservatory of Music, in Palestine, where I have met extraordinary youth, and hope to continue to do so. I stop here in this presentation, very personal but certainly not exhaustive. Listen to my music if you want to know more, about me... or maybe even about yourself, the collective. For in the music, there is everything.