“George Crumb, disco esaltante per i suoi 90 anni. Registrazione esaltante con il soprano Maria Elena Romanazzi e la pianista Raffaella Ronchi, di due raccolte vocali, “Three Early Songs” (1947), “Apparition” su testi di Walt Whitman (1979) e di una per tastiera “Macrokosmos II”, sui segni zodiacali (1973).”
Gregorio Moppi, La Repubblica
SUGGESTIONS IN PROGRESS
The Idea
George Crumb, with his visionary and imaginative, mystical and contemplative music, has always fascinated us. CRUMB PORTRAIT recording project started as a collaboration, a singer and a pianist, two music performers. In July 2018 we recorded for Ema Records a monographic CD by the American composer, which contains three of his most important works: Makrokosmos II, Apparition e Three Early Songs.
The study, together with his writings, and the discovery of the infinite shadings of timbre contained in it led us to think that this music is a very rich source of suggestions. Geroge Crumb’s music is wonderfully transcribed and spatialised on paper, it is a work of visual art. Thanks to the friendship with the action painter Cinzia Fiaschi his project is enriched by the encounter of his music with pictorial art. Cinzia agrees to paint a canvas inspired by the Appartition cycle and it is from her pictorial inspiration that the cover of the CD comes.
Simultaneously, in summer we got to know the Ottopiuotto Creative Studio, an agency specialised in graphics and videomaking. They liked our project and produced an animated video clip, highlighting once more the visionary potential that Crumb’s music generates.
The graphic design has been carefully designed by Nino Cannatà and Progetti Digitali multimedia.
During the 2020 look down Raffaella Ronchi shares her thoughts on Makrokosmos II with Rossella Calella and Francesco Abbrescia. Crumb in Makrokosmos II explores all the sonic possibilities of the piano, amplifying it, preparing it in the tailpiece, in parallel requiring the performer to sing, whistle, shout during the performance. Although written in 1973, this work has not lost its innovative flair and is ductile enough to be combined with other artistic languages. From this consideration takes shape the idea of fusing the eclecticism of Makrokosmos II with electronic compositional art and video art. Thus was born a new 50-minute multidisciplinary video work in which the 12 pieces of the cycle are interspersed with electronic music works in all wrapped in a refined real-time video frame. video
CRUMB PORTRAIT is a dialogue with the music of George Crumb, begun in the loneliness of the studio and gradually involving a growing number of artists. A dialogue in absence of gravitational force. It remains an open project, indeed we do not know what else it will reserve us. However, we hope that our work can contribute to the spread of music and poetry of this great master of our time.