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There are times when experience demonstrates how living intensely corresponds to the momentous abandonment of our ability to pigeonhole, control and judge ability: namely not thinking.
To live life or write it, to take part in it or think it: these are the existential alternatives artists and philosophers have to deal with every day.
But the secret lies in not thinking.
The pianist looks for sounds. To be able to do so, he also must not think. Every infinitesimal calculation he does precedes and follows his performance, when he's studying, memorizing and practicing. When he rationally manages the time at his disposal, when he's working on the comprehension of the text laid on the music stand. But when the pianist surrenders to the sweet caress of the keys, he experiences total solitude and can carry the listener to the dimension of not thinking, of silence, of the revitalization of the self. The pianist himself realizes that the concert has passed in an instant, and marvels at it. For a short arc of time he was able to drink the nectar of life. He was so intoxicated by it as to forget everything else. Just like everybody else who does the acts he loves with passion.
Not thinking is related to any kind of ritual, to the repetition of acts or words that helps every one of us to escape the cold grey cage of thought.
When a man doesn't think, his principle noise becomes that of his heart and breath joined together in an extraordinary ancestral polyrhythm. Two jarring cycles interact, creating new and irregular curves, vertiginous and flat parabolas that feed the fire of emotion. It is an engine with two different pistons: a rubber band that continuously stretches in many directions and assumes strange shapes, and a badly-balanced spinning top that invents, as long as it has equilibrium, circus vaulting.
Every man, when he's not thinking, plays, dreams, smells, warms up, makes things damp, looks for physical contact with vibrating things, with things that stay moist, that intoxicate, that fill the air with their perfume, that burn.
I like water enveloping me. It makes every thing distant and opaque, negating our experience of measured time. It is water that brings you to the surface with strength and grace or silently engulfs the body which has lost its space.
A person has to return to being the absolute subject of his own existence, to the true beginning of his self. How do you reconcile such a vision with the act of abandoning thought?
I believe that the major discovery of this strange era is that abandonment of thought and being active are not in conflict. In reality, we must avoid stopping the rushing torrent within every one of us. We must avoid our inhibitions preventing us from diving into the dance of life or even the city traffic.
Our inhibition stems from a lonesome thought: our little minds cannot contain a dancing universe, and so they invent the concepts of inaccessibility, of the impossible, of deference to the strengths of others.
By contrast, not thinking is openness and, paradoxically, deep communication with others: now that we face each other, let's forget about our roles, our names. Let's recognize each other as human beings, as miracles. A human being, whoever he may be, is the culmination of nature's efforts. Yet a human being is different from nature, because of his extreme unpredictability and his mysterious and prodigious presence. It may be possible that more than one human universe can communicate, if they can abandon every conventional construct, the residue of thought. Perhaps communicating means being present for each other, using all the channels that humans, with their multi-faceted personalities, have at their disposal from actions to body warmth.

It is difficult to carry out any given action if it's not well clear in our minds beforehand.
To be able to be completely executed, an idea initially has to comply with one fundamental condition: even before being realistically feasible, it has to be clear and lucid, even if it seemingly crazy.
The reasoning that stops at the sheer feasibility of an idea is dangerous because the majority of great human understandings are folly. If we think only about feasibility, we end up being inhibited by a serious sense of helplessness, which comes from immediately comparing an idea with the material obstacles that prevent its fulfillment.
Why don't we return our thoughts to a simpler state? A state protected from frustration, much nearer to the emotional drive that produced the idea? Out of the solitude of our minds, inflamed by aspirations and dreams, the idea takes form, perfect in its own way. The stronger the idea is, the more it will be able to seduce reality, to shape the material world in its favor.
This happened to my idea of making a living by playing my compositions at a piano. I couldn't have done anything else, even if this has meant at times living a life of hardship.
My dream was there, waiting for me: clear, foolish and inevitable.
Now I can say that everything can begin, because the opening move is up to us: we must conceive an idea that is supported by emotion. The idea will be launched into the world, it will sweep away every wall. It will have supporters and detractors, it will be on the receiving end of riches and disappointments. But, take heed, blind luck doesn't exist. Only the luck of having a strong idea and believing in it to the very end.

I am always alone.
Prey to a subtle anxiety.
To overcome it I dreamt up a strategy: I look into drawers. There are many of them in my house. I open them, rifling through them one by one. I am already aware of what they conceal, and yet I keep going back. Inside of the drawers, besides other objects, there are small boxes: I open them too and linger on their contents. Drawers are an experience for the senses. Not only for the sense of touch and sight, but especially for the sense of smell. There is the smell of pencils, of stave paper, of the eraser and ink my father uses to write his musical notes.
Opening and sieving through all those drawers is a way to avoid thinking.
The same thing happens in the bathroom where I smell my mother’s perfumes. I try to blend them, maybe with bubble bath, in the hope of obtaining who knows what new fragrance.
Then I put everything back in order, erasing every trace I might have left.
I have been tempted to do the same at some school friends' houses, but I have always managed to hold back.
I also know that, at the top of a closet, there is a small chest with my grandmother’s jewels: in this case too, I’m scared and don’t touch it. My parents work full-time as schoolteachers, so in the afternoons I’m always alone at home so I have the run of the house. As the days go by, in the drawers, whose content I already know by heart, I notice that some things have been moved. One day, in my favorite drawer, the one in my father’s writing desk in the living room, I see a little yellow plastic box I had never seen before. I open it and find a big silver key; it is engraved, polished and shining.
Just beyond the table, in front of my eyes, there is the beautiful Bachstein upright piano, which is always locked with a key. My father bought it when he was young, after, as he always says, making many great sacrifices. Only my older sister is allowed practice and play it, with the living room closed so that she will not be disturbed. I can listen to her behind the frosted glass door.
I still don’t understand why my father keeps the piano locked. Maybe he is overprotective of such a precious instrument: it has ivory keys and it’s German, that is to say, it comes from the mother country of classical music. Or maybe my father is worried about bothering our neighbors by playing it too often. Or maybe it is because once he saw me playing with the keys, banging down on many of them all at once, even with my fists, as every child would do. “The piano is a serious thing.” He loves repeating this phrase.
I don’t have many restrictions, I can freely move around the house, I can venture by myself into the countryside behind the house. I am a good boy, religious, always obedient and silent. But I can’t touch the piano. And for a child a father's veto is as big as a mountain. I put the key back into the little plastic box, suddenly struck by guilt.
The following day I am there again, with the key between my fingers.
I know nobody will come, but the panic is too great.
I feel an irresistible force, which impels me to open it. So I decide to do so. After the lock clicks open, there appears the shining vision of the keyboard. I become aware of the smell of the piano, the smell of ancient wood, of oils and dust, and a slight scent of the alcohol that my father often uses to clean the keys, by soaking a cotton ball with it.
I sit on the stool and my feet don’t touch the ground.
With my heart in my throat, I place my little fingers on the cool keyboard and slowly caress the ivory. Under my fingers I can also feel some little rubber crumbs, the remains of the erasure of my sister’s notes.
A shiver shoots down my spine, my ears prick up… someone is coming up the stairs.
I hastily close the lid and put everything back in order, as if nothing had happened. From this time on, I have a daily appointment in the afternoon, with the transgression of the only insurmountable rule that has been imposed on me.
One day I bring my head towards the keyboard and notice I can see myself mirrored in the glossy lid. My ringlets are light brown, almost blond, and I'm convinced that I'm ugly. That’s why I never want to see anybody. I try to take a leap in the dark and hit a key. In that moment I am overcome by a very strong light, a single note invades my perception of the world. Something powerful breaks through the repeated silence of my motions, a single sound bursts into my heart and I would no longer be the same.
A single sound. I’m not pounding the keyboard with my fists as my father fears, but through the exaggerated sensitivity of a five year-old, I’m receiving the electrical, luminous and definitive vibrations of a single sound, with my torso outstretched, eyes closed, ringlets mirrored on the lid and my ears almost touching the keys.
Time no longer exists, and the compulsive afternoon sequence of my meaningless acts among the drawers is sharply interrupted by a sound as clear and bright as the morning light. I often hear from my family that music is “an extraordinary combination of sounds”. They keep repeating that making music is not a game but a very tough practice that forces you to study long hours and to make enormous sacrifices. And you don’t make money with it. You can’t even have a family: only rigorous work and study. As my father did, who used to play so many hours that his very lips would bleed onto his clarinet. Luckily his work enabled him to win a competitive exam to be a high school teacher, so that now he can afford not to play anymore. The same thing happened to my mother when she was a young girl and a great opera singer. She was able to win the competition to become an elementary teacher so that now she can afford not to sing anymore. My sister too studies many hours a day, but the time will come for her to find a serious job. Perhaps, by locking the piano with a key, they want to protect me from the “dangers” of music!
If music, as they say, is a combination of sounds, why do I only need to listen to a single one?
No matter what I’m doing, whether I’m having a snack or drawing the first letters of the alphabet at school, my thoughts incessantly take me back to those keys.
I discover chords. I’m not interested in melodies - too indistinct - but by hitting every other key, I can put together a combination of notes that, if played at the same time, turns out to be very pleasant. I even stay for months on the chord of Do, Me, Sol, La. It creates a syrupy serenity, almost sickening and embarrassing. I decide I won’t use it ever again. (Even nowadays, I intentionally avoid it).
As the months go by I understand, but most of all feel, that those keys hide a garden of wonders.
I also start to listen to classical music records, the only type of music present in the house, and I am thunderstruck by Chopin’s Preludes played by Maurizio Pollini. In particular, I’m struck by the Prelude in A major, with its clear and simple melody. While that record plays in the sitting room, my little fingers look for the melody and also begin venturing into the mysterious world of the black keys.
During the months and years that follow, still concealed from my parents, I also start using my left hand. I understand, or rather feel, that every chord can be played starting from any of the twelve keys of the octave, till I reach a conscious awareness of tonality.
But as soon as I hear voices approaching the front door, I close everything, leaving the volume of the record player loud so as to cover my hasty movements.
I listen to the whole of Turandot by Puccini every day, sitting cross-legged on the sofa, and then, when homework allows me, I also listen to the Concerto in F for piano and orchestra by Gershwin. And I take in and absorb music like a sponge: timbres, melodies, harmonic sequences and orchestral instrumentation.
I also notice I can distinguish the notes I listen to as easily as I distinguish colors.
I never say a single word about any of this to my father. I cannot reveal my secret. What if he wanted to hide the key of the piano from me? I start to spend as little time as possible at home when my parents are there, and I sit closed in a big cardboard box in the garage to feel protected from my anxieties. In total freedom, I direct the symphony orchestra that has started to play incessantly in my head. I can even decide to make it perform the pieces I want: from the Concerto in G by Prokofiev to the Thus Spake Zarathustra by Richard Strauss. And I remain defenseless, listening, for hours.
My daily relationship with the immensity of music turns me into a child who is in complete awe of everything: I live closed in my world of imagined notes. That’s why my schoolmates often tease me and I can’t even lift a finger in my own defense. At times, while we eat in the kitchen, a sound is produced accidentally, perhaps by hitting a glass. Then my father says: “That is a B flat.” But I answer in my mind: “I think it’s an A flat…it’s an A flat.”
Then the day of my elementary school final exam comes, and the day after there is a play in the small theatre of the school. I play the role of a little bird. I make only one appearance and I say one single line: “I’m the little bird, tweet tweet!” my voice in falsetto as I make a leap forward.
My parents come to see me.
When it’s my turn to enter the stage, I notice that on the other side of the stage there is an old upright piano.
For the entire performance, I can’t stop thinking about it and I can't take my eyes off it even for a moment. When we are called back for the final applause, in order of importance, I am the last one. I cross the stage without even looking at the audience. I go straight to the piano, riddled with the feeling of having been up to a mischief but getting away with it.
I can feel that everybody’s attention is drawn to my actions, and for a moment, I imagine a puzzled look on my father’s face.
I choose Chopin, the Prelude in A major to be precise.
I can feel the general amazement that in a few seconds turns into absolute silence, while my tiny fingers grapple with those sweet notes learned by ear, with a sole great regret: the piano is very out of tune and the keys are yellow and coarse.
I don’t play it all, just what’s essential for the melody to accomplish its spectacular arc.
At the end a thunderous applause bursts out.
But I immediately feel ashamed of what I’ve done and decide to flee, to pretend I’ve never played. I’ve revealed my secret to everybody. Why did I do it? My father will punish me. How could I betray my parents’ trust so blatantly? They’ll deny me access to music and that key forever! I only want to flee from my father’s angry shouts. I know he’s looking for me. In the end he finds me. He ruffles my ringlets with his strong hand, but I don’t have the courage to look at his face.
While we’re at lunch we don't say anything, and I speak of the play, only of the play.
In the afternoon they take me to a strange school, to introduce me to a sweet lady. She too looks at me and ruffles my hair. In the light that floods in from the big window in the large hall, finding my eyes, she greets me smiling: “I’m happy to train a musician!”
She is my future piano teacher.

At Villa Arconati outside Milan, there is a marvelous park with an outdoor theater used for performances. I am invited to give my concert at noon on a very hot summer Sunday, just when summer explodes with all its torrid dryness.
Despite the heat, many people come to listen to my live performance of the album No Concept, which is broadcast live on Radio Popolare. The audience sits under the marquee, but the stage is located close to the where the countryside begins. Direct sunlight reaches the keyboard of the piano.
The concert goes ahead as normal until a pleasant little incident occurs.
Just as I begin to play the first measures of the piece, Qui danza, a cicada hidden in a bush a few meters from me starts shrilling very loudly. In a moment I remember that once the great pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli ran into the same problem. He stopped playing. By contrast, I decide to keep going. My concentration breaks and I immediately start panicking about missing some passages or about having the usual memory lapse. Live on radio too! And the most annoying thing is not the noise, but the fact that the cicada is shrilling with a different rhythm from that of the piece, and I could be diverted by her pulsations.
I have an idea. Since I have absolutely no intention of interrupting my performance, I try to catch the cicada's rhythm and adapt my piece to hers. Michelangeli probably didn't think of this.
The result is exhilarating: Qui danza sounds as if it were accompanied by festive maracas. What a pity that the audience present at the concert and those listening to the radio cannot share the beauty my ears are experiencing. For them, the cicada is too far away! I smile, thinking that in the past few years I've always avoided any kind of musical collaboration. What a strange new debut as a duet!
I find the time to think, to abandon my thoughts to the memories of my university studies on the relationship between Man and Nature. I'm the Man, the "Self" of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, while the cicada is the Nature, the "non-Self". The frontier Man continuously clashes with. Perhaps the victory of Man over Nature is never meant to be, and their life in common consists in the continuous adaptation of the first to the second, just as I'm doing by adapting my rhythm to that of the cicada. The history of humanity consists in the progressive movement of the frontier, a little further each time.
Then I have a doubt. Can the cicada hear me? Does she realize she's playing with Giovanni Allevi? Is she enjoying the piece Qui danza as a duet?
I keep thinking, always at the speed of light, while I'm performing. I remember when at the age of twenty I volunteered as a music teacher in a center for the disabled. I had tried to establish contact with an autistic girl for months without succeeding. But one day she took a drum and started beating out a rhythm. I followed her rhythm with another drum for a while. Then I started varying the volume of my strokes and she began to imitate me, to follow me. That afternoon she gave me a string bracelet, and my colleagues said they had never seen anything like that before. Here we are, cicada: I'll try to slow down the rhythm to see if you'll follow me, if you'll listen to me.
I slow down a little.
But nothing doing. Unperturbed, the cicada continues her rhythm regardless.
Either she doesn't have an ear for music or she just ignores me. I fear that the right hypothesis would be the second. If the cicada had followed me, showing awareness and musical intelligence, I would have taken it on a world tour! In spite of all this, the cicada continued by herself even after the end of Qui danza, because ultimately, Nature with its perfect pride, goes on heedless of human affairs.

IN VIAGGIO CON LA STREGA (Travelling with the Witch)

Positioned halfway between a memoir and a collection of reflections, this is the story of the human and artistic maturing which led a young musician to become the best-loved pianist-composer in Italy.

The book is enriched with suggestive photographic archives, exclusive to Rizzoli, which document the entire tour, from the fervour of performing to more solitary moments offstage.