Pièce pour Guitare Sensible
Pièce pour Guitare Sensible was written in 2014, on the occasion of an event during which, on September 28th, 2014, Davide Anzaghi was awarded the Premio Chitarra d’Oro 2014 by the Permanent Committee of the International Classical Guitar Competition “Michele Pittaluga” of Alessandria, Italy. The composer wrote: “It so happened that I reached my seventieth birthday without having written anything for guitar. It was not due to a dislike for the six-stringed instrument, that I hitherto refrained from writing for it. Quite the opposite. Abut the guitar, I share the memorable definition transmitted to us by Claude Debussy: ‘La guitare est un clavecin mais expressive’, ‘The guitar is a harpsichord, but an expressive one’. ‘Expressive’ is a word which can trigger furious (and equally pointless) ideological debates. However, the way Debussy intended it testified to a composed, shareable and golden expressiveness. Why thus should one elude the meeting with this expressive instrument?”
Suite tritonica
The composer is convinced that the culture of the guitar is not inclined to the linguistic experiments of the twentieth century, which are more present in the case of other instruments. Davide Anzaghi pursued the double goal of composing guitar pieces combining a high compositional quality with an accessible linguistic code. His Suite Tritonica consisently demonstrates the composer’s standopoint. In the first two movements, the “tritone” appears frequently, lending stylistic coherence to the underlying idea. The third movement is given a compositional livelihood corresponding well to its role as a conclusion.
Corelliana
Guitarist Piero Bonaguri asked Anzaghi to write a piece inspired by Corelli. The composer abundantly drew from the famous theme of the Follia. Was it a folly, a follia, to recreate a remote style, time and musical aura? Anzaghi juxtaposed the past to what, of the past, is remembered. According to St. Augustine, Past consists of the Present which remembers.
Segoviana
Segoviana was written in 2011, upon a request by a disciple of Segovia. The occasion allowed D. Anzaghi to design a work in which the multifaceted suggestions created by Segovia’s guitar could merge. Anzaghi did not consciously elude the conspicuous tonal expectations of the guitarists’ milieu, a world disinclined to enjoy some of the avant-garde’s mystifications – mystifications that the composer of
Segoviana in turn considers as such. With this piece, Anzaghi demonstrates that he is not afraid of the past, while having shown that he is not merely replicating it.
Rossiniana I
Rossiniana I is made of a first part (faithful to the beginning of the Overture to Rossini’s Guglielmo Tell), and of a second part aiming at eradicating the Overture’s “storm” from it tonal roots. The composer’s imagination found, in the tonal obliquity he pursued in this second part, some stimuli for manifold inventions, both instrumental and compositional. This work was premiered at the Rossini Opera Festival (ROF) in Pesaro in 2013.
Chitarama (I – XII)
Chitarama is the title both of the collection and of each of the pieces constituting it. The individual durations of each of the twelve pieces are between two and four minutes. Since this is not a Suite, but rather a series of aphorism-like pieces, autonomous from each other, the performer is allowed to excerpt from them, privileging the contrast among the selected pieces. Composing for the guitar was something the composer arrived to late in his life. However, he applied himself eagerly to this task, led by the instrument’s acoustic fascination.
Storia d’un pioppo
Initially conceived for soprano and piano, on lyrics by Anzaghi himself, Storia d’un pioppo later found, in its more recent version for solo guitar, a different and congenial confluence. The story draws from an ancient legend transmitted by the fishers of the river Po. In this tragical and mythical story, infused with jealousy, on a river’s bed a man stabs the woman he loves, close to a dismayed poplar. The tune’s repetition, which is reinvented each time it reappears, fills this funereal story with pathos. The music flows from a guitar filled by the sadness which the woman’s martyrdom propagates on the bed of the great river.
(Translation by Chiara Bertoglio)