Record of the day: Carlo Galante, “Yeliel”

Carlo Galante, “Yeliel” (Cd Scatola Sonora SCC 010)

In these festive days, images of angels abound in shop windows and magazines, and although the undersigned does not belong to the group of those who are convinced of the existence of these supernatural presences, it seems right to recommend a music album to those who believe in them. new dedicated to one of the guardian angels of those who, like the composer Carlo Galante, were born under the sign of Aries.

Galante is one of the greatest representatives of postmodernism in music and belongs to that generation of composers who in the 1980s rebelled against the diktats of avant-garde composers to seek a dimension of greater musical communication, promptly being branded by regime critics with the idiotic and derogatory label of Neoromantics (as if seeking a different and conscious use of tonality or recovering parameters such as singability and rhythmic clarity were equivalent to imitating romanticism). Many years have passed and those who have not stubbornly held slices of salami to their ears have realized that Galante’s music has nothing to do with the nostalgic and simplistic currents that also infest the compositional panorama, but we find ourselves faced with a composer who has always kept in mind the lesson of constructive clarity and instrumental transparency typical of his master Niccolò Castiglioni, while adopting a very different language from him.

In 1995 Carlo composed this beautiful Concerto for violin and orchestra, “Yeliel”, which takes its name from his guardian angel, third of the seraphim, angel of the mountains, of reconciliation and solidity.

Galante’s music has nothing descriptive about it but this does not mean that it avoids narration, articulated on a very clever game of contrasts between two themes of different character that look at the tradition of the classical concert in an always oblique and surprising way, without any reference to the « good times gone” and using a curious interlocking shape that alternates sections of pronounced singing with others with a markedly rhythmic character. The music always maintains a level of immediate communication without condescension towards the listeners and Felice Cusano’s performance under the direction of Patrick Fournillier restores the dream world of Galante’s music as best as it could.

Carlo Boccadoro, composer and conductor, was born in Macerata in 1963. He lives and works in Milan. He collaborates with soloists and orchestras in different parts of the world. He is the author of numerous books on musical topics.

This text is taken from “Lunario della musica: A record for every day of the year” published by Einaudi, courtesy of the author and the publisher.