Nati per la musicaOne feels like saying: the conductor, this person unknown. Yes sir. A great part of the worth of this new release is the worth of these Masters. Let’s start with the first title: “The second programme presents: Nati per la musica(Born for Music) –a music show by Gorni Kramer and Lelio Luttazzi. The Orchestra di Ritmi Moderni is conducted by Gorni Kramer, the Orchestra Ritmo Sinfonica conducted by Lelio Luttazzi”. The certitude of high artistic level and the assurance of high quality start here, with two names that, indeed twice, co-author the programme. There was a time in Italian melodic music – on radio, but also records and live exhibitions – in which the central importance of the conductor of the orchestra was absolute. Well before the advent of artistic directors, record companies, impresarios and producers, the dictate of the artist on the podium was law. Lord and master of the career of each and every singer, the monarch the depository of the secrets and dosage of the repertoire, the conductor heard no reason. The large orchestras, the popularity of the conductors and a taste for fruition at home of an ‘orchestral’ genre such as this (that then faded away in the course of time) became the ingredients of a formula that was to remain unchanged for many years. Here at Nati per la musica, two great personalities of radio gain the podium, Gorni Kramer e Lelio Luttazzi. The first, already very famous, is pure talent, an enthusiast, an inexorable exponent of swing, one could say a “modern-day Offenbach”, as a Paris newspaper indeed dubbed him in those very days. He chose to ignore the job of first contrabass player at the famous Regio di Parma concert hall in order to pursue his burning fixation, which he never abandoned throughout his life: swing. Already, in 1953, Kramer was spread across several fronts: accordionist, conductor, composer, arranger, the author of songs and musical comedies, radio programmes (TV came a year later) and, seeing as he didn’t like chuck money around, publisher of himself and owner of an enviable stock of songs. Kramer’s energy and enthusiasm have always been proverbial: aboard his splendid Maserati – in the Italy of the early fifties that for sure had no modern motorway network – the Master put himself through the ordeal of bouncing back and forth from Milan to Rome and back, so as to be able to meet his commitments as author-publisher in the Galleria del Corso and at the RAI radio studios. Lelio Luttazzi - who had left his birthplace Trieste when still very young, in answer to Teddy Reno’s invitation, who wanted him in Milan as artistic director for his new record label Cgd – found in Rome a much livelier jazz atmosphere, capable of stimulating him as author and performer but above all, thanks to Kramer (who wanted him alongside also because of his huge workload) an engagement with RAI as director and arranger with singers who would have collaborated with for a very long time. To entrust a radio programme that was a truly vast undertaking such as was Nati per la Musica to two composers, one of which already famous, the other well on his way to a fortunate career, constituted the clearest expression of that further process of enhancement and renewal of melodic music radio programmes that was already ongoing. A renewal both in terms of formula and language, tending at reaching that to that multitude of forms that was already the most salient characteristic of early radio. It was Gianni Giannantonio who, on the Radiocorriere of 29th November 1953, wrote: “... a programme, Nati per la musica, which will be nothing less than a great show, in a completely new style; a programme that for once will see agree the two opposing camps of eternal contenders: the lovers of waltz and tango and the fans of pure jazz, both traditional and modern. Two different forms of expression created by Kramer and Luttazzi in the name of the common denominator that is music”. This of the ‘opposing factions’ was probably an understandable fixation borrowed from the world of sport, but which in any case recorded cases in show business as well, not just between stars, primadonnas and conductors, but even among impresarios, players and simple fans. A post war weakness thanks to which the passion for music generated growing interest and quality. Via Asiago 10 for the first time presents a double CD, drawn from one of the most representative programmes of the fifties.
F. Puolenc, P. Fournier The whole CD constitutes an important occasion not only in which to listen to some pieces played by the selfsame author – and this should not surprise one, given that he is not the only musician (the case of Rachmaninov is instructive) to have benefited, as of the thirties, of the invention of the record – but also to get to know a repertoire not so frequented. The recordings were done at the RAI studios in March 1953 and sent on air in numerous occasions in the so called “National Programme” and “Third Programme”.The Trois Piecès for piano, written in 1928, are a clear message from the author that he had no intention of succumbing to the dodecaphonic system. The bright harmonies that wink to a dissonant note here and there are the fruit of a school more typical of his fellow nationals than of the radicalism of central Europe. The interpretation of the wonderful piece by Schumann Phantasiestücke op. 73, is instead marvellously surprising, full of a lyricism of which Fournier and Poulenc, albeit at times dissonant, make themselves excellent bards. The violoncello, decisive and impassioned, is indeed a sign of that very romanticism so detested at the start to the last century. So very contrasting instead are the Sonata by Debussy and Stravinskij’s Suite Italienne from Pulcinella that follow. Most modern the first, neoclassical – truly – the second. In Debussy the attention is drawn to the audacious brilliance of the piano but curious in the violoncello which goes back to being dark, a résumé of role and script in Starvinskij’s Pulcinella. In the same way the instrument becomes the protagonist of the lament of the heartrending Sérénade, in which that marked propensity to song that was the fortune and the damnation of Poulenc emerges in all its drama. With the choreographic concert Aubade, the portrait of the musician is completed and framed. Written in 1929 for piano and small orchestra, it was conceived as a ballet for a single ballerina who was to impersonate Diana the huntress, goddess of chastity, in which the pianist, incapable of facing his own homosexuality, reflected his alter ego. But it is a serene piece. In the splendour of the andante, with the theme entrusted to a sensual clarinet, all doubts are dissipated. Poulenc then applies modernity entrusting himself to the melody and harmonies frequented, so as to have us understand today the importance of rediscovering the known.