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Having to confront and interpret a major work is not easy. A complete technical preparation is required from the musicians, together with a great maturity and capability to adhere to the composer's message.
In the case of Nino Rota's film score, the message is principally that of the story narrated with a cinematographic language, but at the same time containing the capability to detach and to reconnect itself with aesthetic refinement and autonomy.
In this proposed execution by Carmelo Crucitti and Vittorio Romeo, an articulated ray of sounds are highlighted and realised by the bassoon and the notable capability of the accordion to combine with total adhesion with the variety of the soloist's instrument, in an atmosphere of studied virtuoso enjoyment.
The particular technique executed by the bassoonist, through a researched breathing technique and emission of sound, retains a changing tone at times similar to those which brass instruments produce, thanks to the use of numerous mutes. In many other cases, this deep sound is reminiscent of that of the cello.
The great versatility of the accordion is noted in the choice of rhythms which alter, giving place to a succession of various vivacious figurations and captivations. The slow passages are realised with great accountability and researched phrasing, and are rich in fascination with a notable sense of the dynamics of the phrase.
Rota musical
Fagotto
Fisarmonica e Piano
Bassoon, accordion and piano to propose again the most
beautiful sound tracks
Rota as we have never heard him.
In Reggio the national first night of the recital dedicated
to the Master.
REGGIO CALABRIA- Reggio has been chosen as scenery for
the concert with the most beautiful sound tracks, result
of Master Nino Rota’s genius. The recital, in national
first night, that will offer to the audience Nino Rota’s
works executed by Carmelo Crucitti, bassoonist, Vittorio
Romeo, accordonist, and Fabio Miggiano, pianist and computer
music, is going to be staged on next Saturday in “Politeama
Siracusa Theatre”. The mix of bassoon, accordion,
piano and computer music is a novelty in the rendering
of Rota’s works.
In fact his pieces of music had been executed and reproduced
in record editions, symphonic versions, jazz versions,
sung versions, for abridged orchestra version, until few
years ago but never using two so difficult to mix instruments
as bassoon and accordion.
Reaching this wonderful effect it has been possible to
realize a very important event that is going to be inserted
in the programme of next year performances in the most
important US theatres, for example in New York’s
one.
Organized by “centro studi musica e danza Lorenzo
Calogero” in Reggio Calabria, chaired by Pier Paolo
Praticò, the recital is accompanying by the projection
of the imagines and playbills of films from which the
pieces have been taken out and by the acting of captions
,from the same films, pronounced by the students of Istituto
Magistrale “T. Gulli” in Reggio Calabria,
run by Mrs Carmelina Sicari.
The pieces in programme will be that works that accompanied
Federico Fellini’s masterpieces, with the choreographies
edited by the soloist Sandra Fuciarelli and the performance
of “Rome Accademia Nazionale di danza” ballet
dancers, run by Margherita Parilla.
From “Quanto mi piace la Gradisca” and “Mia
Malinconia” from “Amarcord” to “Passerella”
drawn from “Otto e mezzo” to “La dolce
vita” until “Pin Penin from Casanova”,
to “Marcia” drawn from “I Clowns”.
These are only few examples of the over 150 scores (operas,
ballets, chamber music, sacred music and sound tracks)
that Master Rota realized during his activity of creation.
His pieces of music were the unforgivable background of
contemporary movie best producers’ works.
Besides Fellini (for whom he wrote all the music, from
“Lo sceicco bianco” to “Amarcord”),
Nino Rota, a very creative but also modest person, accompanied
,with his works, international and Italian movie cults.
He worked with Luchino Visconti to realize some pieces
for “Rocco e i suoi fratelli” and “Il
Gattopardo”, with Nino Monicelli in “La Grande
Guerra”, with King Vidor for “Guerra e Pace”.
And more with Eduardo De Filippo in “Napoli Milionaria”
and “Filumena Marturano” until Francis Ford
Coppola for “Il Padrino I” and “Il Padrino
II” for which he won the Oscar in 1974
LA DOLCE
VITA
“La dolce vita” , among Fellini’s
films, is the most famous in the world, in cinematographic
domain.
“La dolce vita” is Italian Movie symbol film:
translated in several languages, subtitled not to be corrupted
in its form and contents, winner of the Palma d’Oro
Prize, in Cannes.
Fellini breaks with traditional narration structures and
inaugurates a film in which sentimentalism and strong,
pungent, some times wicked irony perfectly balance, there
is a so perfect balance also between scepticism and trust,
so providing a careful portrait of new Italy, divided
in two totally antithetical attitude: on one hand, war
ruins, on the other, the reviving world; Fellini has been
able to make this two opposite realities coexisted with
syncretism in the same film.
So, “la dolce vita” presents Marcello Mastroianni,
perfect in his rule, and Anita Ekberg, radiant and both
protagonist in the famous scene of a bath in Fontana di
Trevi water, that, together with other frames, has been
pointed out from criticism, moralist and conformist of
the age.
Marcello Mastroianni, a journalist that works for a scandal-mongering
magazine, represents the typical Italian man but at the
same time he shows a series of alter ego, awfully fascinating,
that drag him in the whirl of a fashionable hedonism typical
of his city, behaving nearly like a sort of Dorian Gray
that lives on via Veneto pavements.
Marcello’s surreal but perfectly realistic adventures
develop right from these remarks, among night clubs, squalid
orgies in rich villas in Ostia and secret love relations.
But quite at the end of the film we see Marcello that
sits on the beach ,while drawn was breaking in a still
dark sky behind his back; suddenly a little innocent girl,
that he knew in a small restaurant, says to him hello,
but he can’t remember her and can’t hear her
words
I CLOWN
“At night the arrival of the circus,
the first time I saw it, when I was a child, was like
an apparition.
Nothing preceded this kind of hot-air balloon; last night
it wasn’t there, in the morning it was there, in
front of my house.” So Fellini said.
“I Clown” arose, in fact, from childish reminiscences.
It has a strange documentary structure, composed by methodological
researches, inspections and interviews in order to give
the film a neorealistic characterization; in it imagines
are more important and meaningful than words, faces and
actions picturesque characteristic dominates over all
with omnipotence, words are only meaningless frames in
a picture of pure visual impressionism.
Inside the big circus tents Clowns, very odd characters,
march; Fellini gives them a psychological importance that
has been always hidden behind funny and mad gags in which
they are protagonists: here two big different typologies
of clowns are presented: on one hand, the “augusti”
ones, that embody the peculiar temperament of the clown
whose features are disproportion and atypicalness and
that tries to move with hyperbolism among big laughs but
also a sad look in his eyes; and then the white clown,
touchy, irascible, solemn, holder of an authoritarian
despotism, but at the same time covered by a veil of a
lunar purity , that we can glimpse among his baroques
pompous garments.
Just at the end of the film Rota ’s music, in particular
with “Marcia dei Clown”, represents a perfect
expressive instrument for Fellini that, in this way, stages
“Il funerale dei Clown”, in which contents
are antithetical to form, in which the tragicomic takes
on more and more exaggerated and touching characteristics,
accompanied by the time of music perfectly close to gestures,
but not covering the tender and languid feeling of melancholy
that is intimate and innate in every clown.
LA STRADA
It is probably the most intense, touching
and poetic film Fellini has ever shot.
It is about the story of Gelsomina, a girl with a funny
face and a pair of big sad eyes, a chaste girl, silent
and strange, of a deep, almost metaphysical, sensitivity,
that has been left to Zampanò, a gruff and rough
man, rude in his actions and way of thinking, unable to
understand Gelsomina’s interior world and his greatness.
It is the story about two incompatible world, far in time
and space but that travel in parallel on an old, rusty
van around small towns, earning some money with low circus
performances.
One day Gelsomina, desolate and intolerant because of
Zampanò’s intractable behaviour, opens her
heart with the funambulist of the circus company, nicknamed
“the mad”, that explains to her one of more
authentic ethic philosophy: -all has a rule and each man
is useful to do something- ha said- so you’ll be
useful staying next to Zampanò.-
Gelsomina, fascinated by this character, a little abstracted
and anachronistic, decides to remain next to Zampanò,
silently suffering because of his growing “shell”
attitude but at the same time with the consciousness,
in her heart, of that important mission.
But one day Zampanò, during a moment of big anger,
kills the mad, perhaps without wanting it.
Gelsomina, petrified, begins to take refuge in silence
and inexplicable tears, and at the end Zampanò,
afraid of being found out, decides to leave her while
she is sleeping on a grass, next to her beloved trumpet,
and so he goes away with his noisy jalopy.
With the passing of years Zampanò, engaged in some
circus shows, hears that Gelsomina died and thanks to
her death he has suddenly the revelation of a whole life,
and so he changes, from animal into conscientious man.
Never as now the music is an integral part of the film
and accompanies the poetry of the scene in a soft, sweet
and melancholy way.
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Presentation 
RISCOPRIRE FELLINI
FELLINI TO DISCOVER AGAIN
Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Barcellona
INAUGURAL CONCERT
Nino Rota AND FELLINI: THE MOST BEAUTIFUL SOUND TRACKS
03/11/2004 - at 09.30 pm
La Pedrera-Fundació Caixa Catalunya inaugural concert.
Duo Carmelo Crucitti e Vittorio Romeo (bassoon and accordion)
The presentation of Carmelo Crucitti
Jose Maria Latorre
I knew Carmelo Crucitti thanks to Silvia Blanchaert Rota,
cousin of the great Nino Rota.
The first thing I have known about him was that he was ready
to publish a CD with pieces of music by Rota for Federico
Fellini's and Luchino Visconti's films and that he, the
wonderful bassoonist, had cooperated with an other professional
man, the tuner Vittorio Romeo. Everybody knows that, until
that moment, a lot of Rota's works record editions have
appeared: original version, symphonic versions, jazz versions,
sung versions, for abridged orchestra versions, and so on;
but never in for two instruments versions, and never, at
first, for two instruments very difficult to join together
: bassoon and accordion.
With kindness Carmelo sent to me two examples of his CD,
that had been published, entitled “Nino Rota the most beautiful
music: Fellini and Visconti”. I heard the CD and I was pleasantly
upset because of the beauty, sincerity and, above all, love
for the interpretation and also because of the observance
of original scores.
Immediately I understood that the pieces of music overcame
the adaptation; they could be considered a love manifesto
of Rota's music “love is the first condition to get near
it and to interpret it” , his music was waiting for this
characteristic that I was worried to detach: the miracle
“that only Rota could achieve”, in which his music was enclosed
in a film and, at the same time, it was independently alive,
apart from images, settles ,in an indelible way; in the
XX century musical memory, then to be projected on future
years: his music will have a long life.
In Vittorio's and Carmelo's interpretations there is a continuous
virtuosity, detached from the clear phrasing of the bassoon,
supported with intelligence by the accordion, that creates
charming sounds. So, the music of Amarcord, I Clowns, Otto
e mezzo, Roma, il Casanova di Federico Fellini, la Dolce
Vita, Giulietta degli Spiriti and il Gattopardo cover a
new life, keeping a little of the original liveliness and
melancholy. After that it is easy to understand my happiness
when Carmelo said to me that they would like to publish
an other CD, together with “Accademia di Danza di Roma”,
with much music by Rota. I am waiting for it.
Filippo Praticò Rota
Musical
“Homage to Nino Rota, the most beautiful sound tracks
choreography” is a deep travel among emotions and
feelings, performed in Politeama Siracusa in reggio Calabria,
to celebrate a musician that has marked the movie universal
history with masterly skill.
A travel made possible thanks to a complete and mature technical
and artistic training, completely faithful to Rota’s
musical messages, of Carmelo Crucitti, bassoonist, Vittorio
Romeo, accordionist and Fabio Miggiano, pianist and computer
music, but also arranger of the pieces executed. The music,
together with dance and acting, linked on the scene as in
ancient Greece tragedies Fasti, create the atmosphere, the
feelings, the humour, the irony and the elegance of several
scenes by most famous Fellini’s, Visconti’s
and Coppola’s films, for which Nino Rota composed
as beautiful and for ever eternal sound tracks.
This is the result of the successful artistic performance
by Carmelo Crucitti, ancient greek music university teacher
and producer of the review show played in Reggio Calabria
and very pleased to the big and qualified Politeama Siracusa
audience.
A more sensational performance, after the first successful
choice of recalling Rota using to difficult to mix instruments,
bassoon and accordion, because now the piano and a graceful
choreography created by Sandra Fuciarelli, Dance National
Academy composition teacher, in Rome, have come on the scene
too.
It is important to underline that the choreography chef
attraction was the representation of Pin Penin, a Fellini’s
“Casanova” Venetian masker, among the audience
as soloist, played by Madam Fuciarelli herself, that also
made a new interpretation of the poetic of the chaste girl,
Fellini’s “la Strada” protagonist, and,
after an original solo by “Il Padrino”, she
closed the show with gaiety and liveliness playing “Marcia”
from “I Clowns”. Vitalba Cutrona, Francesca
Pellicioli, Flavia Rosa Schiavi, Stefania Toscano, Elena
Verdi and Naomi Valente, Rome Academy ballet dancers, directed
by Margherita Parrilla, very clever in the choreography,
showed feeling and sensuality.
Fiorella Rapisardo, one of the corp the ballet member, unable
to reach Reggio on medical grounds, at the last moment has
been replaced with the cleverest Naomi Valente, that, together
with Fuciarelli choreography, danced introducing a piece
of ballet at Palazzo Ponteleone.
All possible thanks to the perfect agreement between music
and movement created by Nino Rota for the producers for
which he worked so long. The intense cooperation between
Rota and Fellini is a good example of this agreement, according
to Fabiana Amodeo and Ermenilda Chiumiento, trustees of
the pieces: “imagines melt with music, in which notes
are not stuffed immediately on the screen but become part
of it finding the space to escape from screens and cinema
conditions of montage.
After music and dance , the third art presented was that
of the word. Texts as introduction of the film from which
the sound track played by the three musician had been taken,
have been played by the students of Istituto magistrale
“T.Gulli” artistic expressive lab, activity
commissioned by Madam Carmelina Sicari, headmistress of
the school. Writer and literary critic, and coordinated
by Madam Teresa Polimeni, teacher.
The Bassoon, not very popular as soloist instrument in the
XX century, has been performed by Carmelo Crucitti that,
without using sourdines or any particular object, but using
only the synergy action between body and reed, showed versatility
surely executively effective, recalling once an human voice,
once a trumpet with a mute, once a sax rather than a violoncello.
Vittorio Romeo, accordionist, whose contribution was notable,
proposed again the same improvisations that we already know
from the last CD , but in a more rhythmic version. He retook
the famous paraphrases that made masterly Nino Rota public
performances of his own sound tracks pieces.
What the two masters summarized for their bassoon and accordion,
collecting the orchestral voices of Rota full score in a
“pretty sounds bonbonnière”, finds a
quite natural evolution in the unpublished arrangements
by Fabio Miggiano. Motifs are characterized by an able and
balanced mixture among different genres and styles, apparently
incompatible, often linked by persistent rhythmical loop.
Inside the Mazurca, for example, dance music, with his typical
effects, is perfectly mixed together with a very particular
¾ kept by the battery and the typical accordion modulation.
So in the same piece there are different atmospheres and
acustics, often antithetical, that, as in “La Strada”
and “Pin Penin”, create a deep and touching
lyricity. All to make Nino Rota’s melodies cantabile,
characteristic unmodified by the arranger and sublimated
by the successful link among bassoon, accordion and piano.
Filippo Praticò, Journalist.
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