Christian Salerno: “Resto In Silenzio” – poignantly minimal!
Pianist Christian Salerno, comes from a musical family and is proud to be able to consider himself part of the eighties generation – being born in 89. Christian fell in love with the piano at 11 at has been studying the instrument all throughout his academic years, until finally graduating from the ISSM “G.Puccini” in Gallarate, Italy, with full honors. The talented young Italian pianist has two albums, the self-titled “Christian Salerno” in 2011, as well as “Verità Nascoste”, released in 2014. Salerno, a music teacher, is also a successful YouTuber where he runs two channels that have garnered almost 14 million views and thousands of subscribers.
Christian Salerno has currently published the live concert video of his composition, “Resto In Silenzio”, which in English would directly translate to, “I remain silent”. The track is as breathtakingly beautiful and poignantly polarized as one would expect from one of this generation’s up and coming young musical talents.
Salerno’s ability to create intricate and emotive musical narratives, with the minimum amount of notes necessary, is a rare gift to be admired. Though I hate to make comparisons between musicians, this truly is a gift he shares with his popular, and elder peer, Ludovico Einaudi.
There’s a deeply satisfying emotional logic to Salerno’s piano progressions in “Resto In Silenzio” that makes him an inheritor of a minimalism which exudes delicacy and dynamism. The musical piece consciously stays away from a harsh melody and almost always employs elegant musical articulation.
Although he does pay attention to dynamic diversity, Salerno keeps dynamics from ever becoming exceedingly soft, which might veer into boring territory, or too loud, which could bring about a feeling of abrasion.
As with all popular music that depends on the strength of its primary melody (almost always in the form of the right hand), variation and depth are necessary for the song to succeed, and these definitely exist here.
Piano music, and indeed the entire genre of the sort of instrumental music referred to as classical, does not differ much from contemporary pop, rock, and hip-hop based albums, in that the music, depending on the artist, can be appreciated from a melodic standpoint or from a technical standpoint. Understanding this is key to enjoying Christian Salerno’s music.
In the context of music, the word classical is tossed around nowadays as though any singular piano piece falls under this category. In reality, however, music, from a classical musician’s point of view falls into various time-dependent subdivisions, one of which is classical. Of these subdivisions, Christian Salerno and other modern musicians should be classified as contemporary.
Listening to “Resto In Silenzio”, your first impression could be that classical composers like Mozart or Haydn may have added more embellishments, pushed the tempo, and perhaps exhibited the dexterity of their fingers more, but that’s not what Salerno seems to strive towards in his music. And definitely not in this musical piece, which perfectly sticks to the theme that the song title implores – “Resto In Silenzio”. Christian Salerno for all intents and purposes, is a contemporary pianist and composer!
