Olivia Belli - Intermundia

A Closer Listen

Olivia Belli‘s albums are always a highlight of the contemporary piano landscape, and Intermundia is no exception.

A deep thinker, a sophisticated composer, and an exquisite pianist, Belli can effortlessly switch between electrifying virtuoso playing and tender lyricism. Her albums are always profoundly coherent, whether it be the childhood memories of Where Night Never Comes, the flow of a river from source to sea of River Path, or the way our behaviour threatens Mother Earth in MATER. As the topics explored in her albums illustrate, place and landscape is often important to her and, reading between the lines of her biography, it seems like a major contribution to this was her decision to leave the overpowering bustle of London:

“we turned our life around completely: we bought a derelict house in the open countryside of the Marche, a region no less beautiful but less famous than the nearby Tuscany. We restored it, during which time our children, Elena and Alessandro, were born and we have lived there since 2012. Finally, I found the right atmosphere to focus on my creativity, following the natural rhythm of nature that’s a strong inspiration for me.”

Intermundia deepens her interest in place and landscape, connecting it to an investigation of human spirituality. Most of us have been lucky enough to visit places that feel special, where we become aware of our connection to the universe (or to God, if you prefer). Intermundia is about these places, locations where the gap between our world and the spiritual world is thin. Many of these have become places of worship. “Amber Maze”, for example, is inspired by Le Grotte del Cantinone in Osimo, Italy, a set of caves below the marketplace of the city, where monks would descend to pray in silence, featured in the gorgeous video below.

It is well worth subscribing to Belli’s YouTube channel, which is filled with such gorgous videos. One particularly poignant one is for “Pian Perduto”. Belli writes that it is inspired by

“Castelluccio di Norcia, a small village on top of the only hill on the Sibillini mountains plateau, completely devastated by the 2016 earthquake and of which only the ruins remain. It is surrounded by nature of breathtaking beauty in which we still find hope and comfort: beauty is a tangible thing but in it, we see the ideal that has been embodied within and taken physical form.”

The album intersperses these pieces of place with pieces of breath. Every few tracks or so there is a track titled “Respiro”, in which we are invited to breathe deeply and become aware of ourselves, of our dependence on the air we breathe, of the way it moves in and out of our bodies, of the incredible lifeforce we so often take for granted. Each of these is beautiful, but “Respiro 1” stands out as one of the most gorgeous things I have heard for a long time.

One of the joys of discovering new piano music when you are a pianist is that you can not only enjoy listening to it but also playing it. Olivia Belli has always been generous in this regard and her sheet music books are often beautiful (I have a few on my shelf) but in this case she has really outdone herself, creating a limited edition 124-page book of sheet music, photos, and mini-essays that elaborate on the theme. It is stunning.

The album is a journey from dark to light, from depths to heights, and it ends at the top of the mountain Monte Sibilla, in the Marche near where she has made her home. The mini-essay in the book explains it perfectly:

“The mountain has always embodied the symbol that creates the union between heaven and earth, a religious symbol both as a place of asceticism, where to find divinity, where rising to heaven means detaching oneself from earthly things.

In their silence, we can grasp the sense of our smallness and the infinite dimension of our soul.”

Olivia Belli’s Intermundia is a perfect illustration of what makes her such a great musician: subtle, delicate, and profound. (Garreth Brooke)