They’re back! More “knowingly provocative” music (to quote Umberto Eco, once more providing the liner notes) from the great Italian duo that delighted many with the 1999 recording “In cerca di cibo”. This new recording finds Trovesi and Coscia taking a tangential approach to one of the most creative composers of the 20th century, still misunderstood after all these years: Kurt Weill (1900-1950).
Round About Weill
Gianluigi Trovesi, Gianni Coscia
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06:13 - 2Ach, bedenken Sie, Herr Jack O’Brien
02:05 - 3Tango Ballade
04:28 - 4Improvvisamente
04:18 - 5Divagazioni su “Youkali“
02:51 - 6Mahagonny, Scene 6
01:56 - 7Ein Taifun! ... Tifone? No, pioggerella!
02:09 - 8Lieben
03:33 - 9Boxen
02:06 - 10Round About Weill I / Denn wie man sich bettet, so liegt man
03:14 - 11Mahagonny, Scene 13
02:18 - 12Essen
03:36 - 13Round About Weill II
04:54 - 14Tief in Alaskas schneeweißen Wäldern
01:48 - 15Ach, bedenken sie, Herr Jack O’Brien, var.
02:38 - 16Mahagonny, Scene 4
02:19 - 17Aber dieses ganze Mahagonny
01:33 - 18Alabama Song
05:31 - 19Mahagonny, Scene 6, var.
01:13 - 20Alabama Song, var.
01:38 - Interludio „Ma che modi sono?...“
- 21Cumparsita Maggiorata
04:06 - 22Tristezze di Fra’ Martino
01:57 - 23Denn wie man sich bettet, so liegt man
02:16
Eco expresses surprise at this choice, but there’s a clear enough logic to it. Weill scholars still talk about the “problem of the ‘two Weills’”, the composer of the German years, once ranked alongside Hindemith, and the Broadway songwriter of the American years working inside the traditions of the musical, popular theatre, the cinema. For Trovesi/Coscia this ‘problem’ is no problem at all, since the Italian improvisers from Nembro and Alessandria share a similar disdain for artificial distinctions between supposedly highbrow and lowbrow art, know (like Weill) that great music can as easily be found on the street as in the conservatory and that all forms are valid vehicles to carry an argument or, simply, to have fun with. Factor in Weill’s status as a leftwing Jewish troublemaker and one of the very first composers to acknowledge the creative potential of jazz, and he stands as a natural anarcho-spiritual forebear. From their Italian perspective, Trovesi and Coscia also sees Weill as a musical-philosophical neighbour to their hero Fiorenzo Carpi, celebrated on “In Cerca”, whose music played a role in the political theatre of Dario Fo and Giorgio Strehler and who was also a poetic ironist, and a radical as well as a writer of enduring melodies.
So: here we find both Weill pieces and free meditations on Weill, plus new Trovesi/Coscia music in a Weillian spirit. The main inspirational source for the programme is “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny”, the three act opera that marked one of the highwater marks of Weill’s collaboration with playwright Bertolt Brecht. Its musical content was recently summed up by Paul Griffiths as “Bach meets the 1920s dance band, with canons and chorales brought into critical contact with popular rhythms and song styles.” “For us“, says Coscia, “Mahagonny is the starting point, the pretext for changing the material”. The duo also plays, in its own inimitable manner, the “Tango Ballade” from “The Threepenny Opera”.
Kurt Weill’s music was one of the subjects accordionist Gianni Coscia first focused on when finally devoting himself full time to music after 30 years as a practising lawyer. In 1991 he participated in performances of “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” with the RAI Radio Rome Symphony Orchestra.
Gianluigi Trovesi, almost unchallenged amongst clarinettists in Europe, has been one of the defining figures of Italian jazz, a multiple prize-winner in his homeland since the 1970s. Membership of Giorgio Gaslini’s groups helped raise his profile but it was not until the 1990s that Trovesi began to be widely known internationally, both as the outstanding soloistic star of the Italian Instabile Orchestra (ECM album “Skies of Europe”), and leader of his own bands, particularly the Octet, which would also record for ECM (“Fugace” by the Gianluigi Trovesi Ottetto, recorded in 2002, takes a very unorthodox look at some of the roots of early jazz).
But the duo with Gianna Coscia is a special and unique pleasure. The two old friends have a very advanced musical understanding and the humour that radiates from their music is underpinned by astonishingly quick-witted exchanges. The music has grown steadily from their debut disc for a small Italian label “Radici” in1995, through “In cerca di cibo” to the present disc. The duo is immensely resourceful and flexible in its approach, as it roves through the margins of a dozen idioms. Not only are Gianluigi Trovesi and Gianni Coscia the best at what they do, they are the only ones doing what they do!
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