Marino Formenti is no ordinary pianist, and this conversation will try to adhere to this premise. Through questions and sub-questions, Formenti reveals moments from his life. From this conversation, which took place in the courtyard of the Ideal Prison, we learn about the embedded memories of an 8-year-old, to the artist's beginnings as a pianist, to the unraveling of freedom and limitation, in principle, and beyond.
Interviewed: Donjeta Abazi
The world-renowned classical and contemporary pianist, Marino Formenti, (“Best of New York Times”, “Best of The New Yorker”), is staying in Pristina for 4 days and 4 nights at the “Prison of the Ideal” in Pristina. During this time, he is living in prison, sleeping, eating and welcoming guests with whom he will play the piano.
Visitors were invited to have drinks and listen to music, spend time with the pianist, or ignore him, go and stay for a few moments and come back again, read, write, draw, and come back again the next day.
Gazeta Express: So, Mr. Formenti, why did you choose to bring this performance to an abandoned prison? What meaning does music take on in such a space?
Marino Formenti: The idea was brought by my friend Alban Beqiraj and the people who are taking care of the “Ideal Prison”, trying to make this also a place of art and reflection. But I must say that I have been interested in the issue of prison for years. That is why I was very happy to be given this opportunity. Also, I have been reflecting all this time and I am trying, it is not easy. My goal is really to work with prisoners, with today's prisoners. And I believe that I will be able to do this, I want to achieve it, I want to realize it. This is also a plan that we have for next year. We are trying to realize this and other projects, a second larger project, even including cooperation with current prisoners.
GE: How does your way of performing change when you are in an isolated place like this compared to a concert hall?
MF: This place is not really isolated, because it's a museum. It was a prison, yes. So we're trying to reflect what I've been talking about, as you can see, with the former prisoners. There are two things here. There are different types of imprisonment. One is that you're imprisoned because you've done something that's really wrong, like killing someone or stealing (in any culture, killing and stealing are not good things to do), then you have the imprisonment of people who do something that's wrong for a certain society but not necessarily wrong for a general morality. For example, if you're a woman in Iran, you won't be allowed by men to drive a car and for that you go to prison. That's something that can be questioned. Also people who have been in prison for their sexuality, for example, for many years, homosexuals and others. And then there's a third category, which is patriots, of course. People who have fought for a country and their children are allowed to say, was it necessary to do this? As I say as an Italian child, who was born in peace.
So, I say, why defend Italy? I am not Italian. I am a citizen of the world. But when you are born in a lack of freedom or you think you were born in a lack of freedom, it is different. This also happens in the world today. Then you are a political prisoner in this case and this is the case of this space.
In general, I have either great respect for prisoners or at least interest, even in criminals. First-degree criminals. Those who have done very wrong things, like a serial killer for example - I would actually like to meet a serial killer. Just to know what happens.
I like meeting nuns. I like meeting people whose lives are very different from mine. I think my role is not to judge. Anyway, I'm a musician. I'm an artist. Maybe the job of an artist is more to understand or try to understand than to judge, for sure. To judge, we have religion and laws. And art is not about judging. Art is about living and understanding in a way.
So, prison is the perfect place for a musician to try to understand. After that, it's very difficult to do a performance here. On the other hand, I think it's stupid to come here and play music in such a place, because I'm not interested in monumental mourning. Like, ah, now we have to preserve this place. First of all, I'm Italian. I was wondering if it's a good idea to do art and musical performances in this space.
Before, I started thinking, after the second day of this short stay, that it's a good idea. I think you have to find another way, or a freer, deeper way to respect the place. Today we're doing an interactive performance. So people come and play with me, play in my place.
I told the men here: if you fall in love with a woman who was previously incarcerated, you shouldn't talk about prison all the time. What was it like in prison? Maybe, sometimes she should forget about it. Maybe sometimes she would like to talk about it but not always.
For example, like they do in the Holocaust, in the concentration camps. They do it and they go on and on and they make mourning music. I hate mourning music. We're trying to understand this place maybe...
When I was born we were, in a democracy, that's what they called it, but it was also a very dangerous moment in Italy because there was a lot of terrorism and bombs and so on. I felt that my society, at least the society I come from and the village where I grew up, didn't enjoy the freedom that we think about more deeply. Then I became rebellious, I started playing music, strange music, contemporary music, and doing things that were forbidden. So, I didn't have the feeling that I was growing up in freedom.
GE: During these days of performance, do you see this as an act of art, a kind of meditation, or a ritual?
MF: I came here intentionally. The themes here are many and very political, in a way very connected to society. So I didn't want to come with a finished work of art, like a carefully conceived performance, like I do in other situations. I do very radical performances where, let's say, I move around in a space, I don't talk to anyone, I don't look at anyone, and I just play the piano for 16 hours, for three weeks, four weeks. Here I didn't want to do that because it would be careless of the place. It's not a matter of, oh, Marino Formenti going to jail and locking himself in a prison because I'm not that person. That would be an act of arrogance and artistic stupidity to do something like that. So I said to myself, let's open up the space for other people.
Let's talk to young and old and listen to different stories. Let's play with people because that's part of my musical work. Part of it is focusing on myself and the other part is communication, so playing with people is something I like and that's what I'm doing here too.
So, if I were to define it, I would say it's a collective, interactive performance, it's not a radical work of art. Maybe it's more radical, because in the contemporary world, maybe someone wants to come here and play strange music, because Kosovo needs Western modernity, I'm not at all interested in Western modernity, I'm not at all interested in modernity in general. I'm old enough to say I'm a traditionalist, if I want to. But there are categories that don't interest me.
I'm not interested in experimentation, in being ahead of my time, nor in being behind my time. I'm here to meet people and I'm lucky to have been here before, I fell in love, I fell in love with this place and these people. I did a project at the National Theater of Pristina, I worked on the music with Alban Beqiraj and some others, and the most beautiful thing about that project was not even the result, but the communication and the process. I'm afraid, because now art is moving towards being fashionable or not, I think we invented music to come together, to unite.
Now, I'm old enough to see the negative development of social media, Instagram, isolation, lockdowns, big technology. So, people in rich cities don't look at each other anymore. I live in Vienna, in a very quiet residential area, and when we go out on the street we don't look at each other. We pass very close, two centimeters apart, and we don't look at each other. So, at this point in my life I think we make music to start looking each other in the eye again and maybe playing together.
GE: What do you expect to happen with the audience these days? Are you looking for a transformation in them or in yourself?
MF: Transformation is a key word, because for me, the reason why I made music and continue to make it, is precisely this idea that I can say for myself that during my life I have had some experiences that have been transformative and some that have been less transformative. They were all in some way connected to music. But I also say that even a meeting between two people can be music for me. It is like transformation. I can't speak for others. It would be foolish and arrogant towards others to say that they are transformed by this.
It's like when you give someone money. Are you really doing it… Are you doing it for them or for yourself? If you observe animals for example, there are two principles. One is struggle and the other is empathy. But empathy is a two-way win. It's a win for both sides. So yes, you can call art "Win-win" win-win. You should call it art win-win…
When I play for an audience, when I do a normal concert, not like this, on stage, in that moment when everyone is silent and is under the spell of the music. I never think, how well am I playing. It's always like: what an audience, damn it. It's always like that. It's like when you make love and after it you ask, did you like it? Was it beautiful? Was it good or not? Then you can forget it. I've always been someone who tries to understand the reasons of others. It's like the reason of my people, like "The Pianist". All I don't understand today is modern people, they tend to be part of a group.
You have blacks, immigrants, whites, whatever. And I never wanted to be limited to one group. Maybe I'm too narcissistic to think I'm not Italian. I'm not Italian. There are 60 million Italians. I'm Rino...
There is an episode that has stuck in my mind since I was a child. There were some friends, like friends of my parents, and they both had extramarital affairs. The husband was having an extramarital affair and the wife was having an extramarital affair. When my mother discovered this, my mother, not my father, that man became a hero and a friend. He would come and go to our house every time, and the wife, from one day to the next, became a “witch”. My mother would change the route when they met, because we were also in the village. She would tell me and my sister that she was a “witch”. These are things that… I felt very bad. I was eight or ten years old. I can’t say exactly. All these things were done just because she was a woman and everything happened that way, even her sex life.
The ideas were very money-centric. It was like: you have to make money if you want to be… You have to be somebody. Society is divided into people who are somebody.
So if there are people who are somebody, that means everyone else is nobody. And that's how I discovered the piano. It was like: where the hell am I? It's like... maybe aliens exist, and they put me here to punish me. I don't know. So this was a prison for me. It was a kind of imprisonment, yes.
But as I said, here, of course, since it was a real prison, I tried to be respectful of the place, to listen to the people, to play with them, to play joyful music.
GE: Do you believe that music can serve as a form of liberation, even when performed in a space built for restriction? How do you personally experience the tension between freedom and restrictions?
MF: Yes, music can certainly be a form of liberation. At least I say that as a feeling. There is a moment when you really feel freedom and liberation. Freedom is a very short concept. My problem has been and always is (I'm a bit of an anarchist), that I don't like it whenever I feel that people are trying to force me to do things. I'm still a pubescent rebel, in a way. This also means that whenever I feel that in a group of people, let's say artists, or when there are some rules, I don't like it.
And that, I think, is one of the rules of art, to question the rules. But that doesn't mean that art is based on anarchy. I do what I feel. It's like the freedom of a worm, or a butterfly. The worm can say, I want to go left, I want to go right, I do it, I'm a worm, I can do whatever I want. So it's freedom, but from a very narrow perspective.
I'm thinking again about love, as a relationship; it's also a struggle. You build something and you go through challenges. People today, they're not necessarily very individualistic, but they're just... they're very lazy in a way. People who don't achieve a lot are very lazy or don't think long enough.
I know that if I sit down for these five weeks and play the piano, I will eventually reach a level of happiness and freedom, because I have worked, happiness comes from this freedom, and freedom comes from this happiness, that I would never reach if I just drank cocktails with my friends every night. It's a kind of self-imprisonment, because you have experienced that it takes you somewhere.
And when you're there, you're deeply happy and in a way freer. It's like when you build a relationship and you say, well, maybe instead of breaking up after three years, you have to go through the challenges, and after 30 years what you feel doesn't compare to the taste of a cocktail.
Artist biography:
Marino Formenti is one of the most distinguished pianists and conductors on the international contemporary scene. Born in 1965 in Merate, near Milan, he initially trained at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory, where he studied piano, composition and conducting. He continued his studies at the University of Music in Vienna with pianist Oleg Maisenberg and conductor Uroš Lajović. Since the 90s, he has lived and worked in Vienna, where for a decade he was part of the renowned ensemble Klangforum Wien, one of the most important European groups for the interpretation of new music.
Formentor's career is unusual and transcends traditional forms of performance. He is known as a radical and experimental artist, often described by critics as the "Glenn Gould of the 24st century." One of his most famous projects is "Kurtág's Ghosts," a musical journey that brings together fragments from different composers into a single narrative, creating an emotional experience that transcends time and style. In "Liszt Inspections," a project that was listed by The New Yorker and The New York Times among the best performances of the year, Formentor revisits Liszt's work in an intimate and new way. But his projects go even further, including week-long musical marathons, where he lives and performs in the same space for XNUMX hours a day, as in "Nowhere," or unique experiences with only one spectator present, as in "One to One."
For Formentin, music is a social act and often a way to challenge the boundaries between art and everyday life. He sees himself not only as a performer, but as a creator of shared experience – a process that puts the audience at the center and invites them to co-create. He has implemented this approach in numerous projects, such as in his collaboration with the National Theater of Prishtina or in performances related to unusual spaces, such as abandoned prisons or places filled with painful history.
As a conductor and pianist, Marino Formenti has collaborated with the world's most prestigious orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, and the Munich Philharmonic. He has worked under the direction of distinguished conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Kent Nagano, and Daniel Harding. In addition to traditional concert halls, he has performed in venues such as La Scala in Milan, Salle Pleyel in Paris, the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna and Berlin.
In his artistic journey, Formenti has won prestigious awards such as the Belmont Prize for contemporary music and several Diapason d'Or for his recordings, including "Kurtág's Ghosts", "Notturni" and "Liszt Inspections". His film "Schubert und Ich" has been nominated for the Austrian Film Award, while his projects are often part of important festivals and institutions such as Lincoln Center in New York, Wigmore Hall in London, BeethovenFest in Bonn, Onassis Foundation and Berliner Festspiele.
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Rino (as he calls himself) will stay in Pristina and, on Sunday, will perform a concert prepared during the days of his stay here. This experience, which the artist is experiencing himself and is making others experience, goes beyond the ordinary, starting from the fact that everything around him is special. This atmosphere he is creating, the closeness he is conveying to others, like a true Italian, is teaching the public and others that a pianist is not untouchable and is destroying the myth that classical music is only played in famous halls. Against all this, Marino Fermenti teaches us that musical pieces by: JS Bach, Philip Glass, Nirvana, Brian Eno, Morton Feldman, Frédéric Chopin and Erik Satie, can be played very simply, in Burg, without the need for bourgeois exaggerations, just with a wine in a plastic bowl and an empathetic artist.
Ideal Prison is under the management of "Molla e Kuqe NGO", within the framework of the project for the functionalization of cultural heritage sites. Mentor Berisha as director of "Molla e Kuqe" together with Alban Beqiraj manage cultural activities until the end of 2026. Project supported by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports.
/Express newspaper
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