Raffaele Gervasio - Carosello - Orchestral Works

Raffaele GERVASIO (1910-1994)

Florilegio '83, Op. 130

Triple Concerto, Op. 131, "Degli oleandri"

Doppio Concerto, Op. 114

In modo spirillo, Op. 93

Invitation au violon, Op. 83

Preludio ed Allegro Concertante, Op. 66

Mario Carbotta (Flute) 

Teresa Laera (Viola) 

Carmelo Andriani (Violin) 

Pier Francesco Forlenza (Piano) 

Ciro Longobardi (Piano)

Nando Di Modugno (Guitar)

 

Orchestra Sinfonica Lucana

Vito Clemente 

Many stories exist, both cheerful and sad, where the protagonist is a musical instrument. There are theories about what Beethoven heard from his piano, or how Bach played the organ; we pity Coltrane or Django, forced to sell their instruments in exchange for a rented one; we attempt to resuscitate the spirit of Paganini by putting his violin into the hands of a young virtuoso: every composer has an instrument which ignites his imagination. For Raffaele Gervasio, there were always at least two musical instruments: the piano and the pencil. The piano could even be a bit out of tune, but the pencil always had to be perfectly sharpened, and a pencil without a little eraser at the end was useless. All Gervasio needed was a pencil and a piece of paper to make music because, like a musical instrument, a score either “plays” or it doesn’t play, it either “works” or it doesn’t.Despite its elegance and technical mastery, Gervasio’s music conceals no great secrets. By the time the pencil wrote the notes on the page, musical thought had already overcome numerous obstacles and traps; though the writing process was not immediate, it appeared to be absolutely spontaneous and completely worked out in both form and sound. It would be a waste of time to search for cryptic meanings in Gervasio’s scores, or some sort of numerology or connection among structural planes. The composer was concerned exclusively with the pure flow of sound, a point of arrival after metabolizing those musical experiences which for him were the most authentic.

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Raffaele Gervasio (Bari 1910 - Rome 1994) was a composer of the twentieth century active in multiple fields of pure and applied music.

After studying Violin and Composition, in the cities of Bari, Pesaro, Florence and Rome, Gervasio settled in the capital in 1940. Whilst here he began to collaborate, firstly as composer and general consultant, then as a music director with INCOM - Industries Short Films of Milan, for whom he wrote original and repertoire music for hundreds of documentaries and newsreels. At the same time he wrote music for theatrical performances and feature films, including the show Carosello Napoletano (that later became a movie), cultural radio segments, repertoire music and tunes for RAI - Radiotelevisione Italiana SpA. In 1961, for the centenary celebrations of the Unification of Italy, he composed an album with two LPs entitled I Canti che hanno fatto l’Italia, with original music, transcriptions and reworkings directed by Franco Ferrara, including a piece of work chosen by RAI for the inauguration of the broadcasts of their second television channel.

In the second half of the 1950s, he resumed his commitment to symphonic music with two Symphonies and in 1960 he ultimately left INCOM to devote himself to music, gradually reducing his other commitments in the field of applied music.

The Sixties were a productive music period with important creative works, including Concerto spirituale (1961) for choir, viola, organ and harps, in memory of his father and the triptych whose protagonist is violin, constituted byPreludio e Allegro Concertante (1962) for strings, piano and percussion, Concerto per violino e orchestra (1966) and the subsequent Composizione in la (1974) for violin and piano. At the end of this period are Logos(1969) for orchestra and Fantasia(1970) for piano, written at the request of Rudolf Firkušný.

In 1967, at the request of Nino Rota, he accepted the Chair of Composition at the Piccinni Conservatory of Bari. Two years later, he took over the direction of the new Duni Conservatory of Matera, which was a detached section of the Bari Conservatory, that in just a few years became independent, fully operational, and also a point of reference in Italy for its teaching. A series of original works and re-elaborations specifically written for the young students of the Conservatory of Matera are from this period.

In 1978 he was elected Academician of Santa Cecilia.