Events

Eco logico [EcoLogical] is a new project created by the Duo Alterno. From Rossini to Nono, Cage, Morricone, up to living Italian composers such as Ada Gentile and Riccardo Piacentini – intends to raise awareness of ecological issues through the incomparable language of music, and especially the Italian music of the last decades. All the songs included in the program refer to ecology in different ways.

In a central position, on the centenary of the birth of the Venetian composer Luigi Nono and sixty years after its composition, there is La fabbrica illuminata [The illuminated factory] for voice and magnetic tape (1964), one of the unforgettable masterpieces of Italian music of the last decades which recalls, through historical recordings of the voices of the workers of the Ansaldo factory in Genoa and the impressive sounds of their working environment, the bad acoustic and social conditions in which they had to work, someone even to die, in the Sixties. The soprano Tiziana Scandaletti is one of the excellent and rare performers of this unic piece, which she also recorded in the CD “Musiche per Pellizza da Volpedo” edited by Nuova Era Records. We can say that the whole concert program revolves, due to assonances and dissonances, around this unforgettable work!

John Cage's two initial pieces (written between 1942 and 1950) contain vocalizations and nature sounds reproduced vocally, while the piano is played directly on the wood like a primordial “echological” percussion instrument; the result is surprising and really magical.

The third piece of the concert, Eco logico [Logical echo] by the Turin composer Riccardo Piacentini, professor of Composition at the Milan Conservatory, gives the title to the whole concert program and uses photo-sounds recorded along the canals of the city of Padua, near Venice, with early cuckoos and the squawking of a goose between happiness and desperation.

With a leap in time, after Nono's piece in central position, there is one of the great Gioachino Rossini's last evergreen masterpieces, Memento homo from Péchées de vieillesse (1857-65), which is similar to Nono's piece in its strength of reflection on the human condition: a masterpiece that can be at the same time light and profound, very pleasant to listen to but also very intense, like a warning to the future: Remember Man!

From here to Ennio Morricone's Tango un po' caricaturale [A slightly caricatured tango] (2017), an impressive piece dedicated to the Duo Alterno shortly before the author's death, the step is little; there is irony, there is drama, there is the strength of great music that takes the main theme of the famous soundtrack of the film A citizen above all suspicion and embroiders a completely new part written specifically for Tiziana’s voice: a so precious piece full of pathos, of which the Duo Alterno is happy and honored to be the dedicatee.

To conclude, a truly entertaining and not at all superficial piece by the Roman composer Ada Gentile on the smiling lyrics by Sandro Cappelletto, also dedicated to the Duo, Betty Boop’s daytime (2006); Betty Boop's ecological day is told together with her faithful dog Boby; needless to say that Betty is Tiziana and Boby Riccardo.

Sponsors and collaborations:
Italian Cultural Institute Zurich (www.iiczurigo.esteri.it)
Rive-Gauche Concerti Turin - Italy (www.rivegaucheconcerti.org)