Mario Totaro: Ex Oedipo, Mélodrame for Reciters & Chamber Ensemble
Same artist
Da Vinci Classics
Angioletta Iannucci, ATEM QUARTET, Daniela Ferrati, Elena Giri, Giacomo Dominici, Ivan Gambini, Laura Avanzolini, Marco Messa, Margherita Scafidi, Mario Totaro, Valentina Vanini, Vito Maraula
Physical and Digital Release: 27 January 2023
Mario Totaro’s chamber works bring a varied group of voices and instruments into dialogue, offering a portrait of his musical imagination through contrasting ensembles, textures and expressive characters.
13.55€
Digital programme · 15 tracks
Track timings refer to the digital edition.
Angioletta Iannucci is a violinist featured on Mario Totaro: Chamber Works. On this recording, Angioletta plays the violin part in The Raven, Totaro’s melologue on Edgar Allan Poe, alongside narrator Vito Maraula and pianist Daniela Ferrati.
David Brutti, Soprano Saxophone
Matteo Villa, Alto Saxophone
Davide Bartelucci, Tenor Saxophone
Massimo Valentini, Baritone Saxophone
Daniela Ferrati is a pianist featured on Mario Totaro: Chamber Works. On this recording, Daniela performs The Raven with violinist Angioletta Iannucci and narrator Vito Maraula.
Elena Giri is a flautist featured on Mario Totaro: Chamber Works. On this recording, Elena joins Valentina Vanini, Marco Messa and Margherita Scafidi in Folk Medley, scored for mezzo-soprano, flute, clarinet and harp.
Giacomo Dominici is a bassist featured on Mario Totaro: Chamber Works. On this recording, Giacomo plays electric bass and double bass in Lots of Thence, Totaro’s piece for jazz-rock band.
Ivan Gambini is a percussionist featured on Mario Totaro: Chamber Works. On this recording, Ivan performs Vivo for marimba and piano, the solo percussion work Ba’atti, and Lots of Thence, in which his instruments include clarinet, vibraphone and drums.
Laura Avanzolini is a vocalist featured on Mario Totaro: Chamber Works. On this recording, Laura performs the vocal part in Lots of Thence, Totaro’s work for jazz-rock band.
Marco Messa is a clarinettist featured on Mario Totaro: Chamber Works. On this recording, Marco performs Folk Medley with Valentina Vanini, Elena Giri and Margherita Scafidi.
Margherita Scafidi is a harpist featured on Mario Totaro: Chamber Works. On this recording, Margherita performs the harp part in Folk Medley with mezzo-soprano Valentina Vanini, flautist Elena Giri and clarinettist Marco Messa.
Mario Totaro graduated in piano from the Conservatory “G. Rossini” in Pesaro with honours and in composition from the Conservatory “G. Verdi” in Milan with top marks. He studied piano with Franco Scala and composition with Mario Garuti. Mario Totaro initially devoted himself to piano and continued his studies at the "Mozarteum" in Salzburg under Carlo Zecchi and in Imola ("Incontri col Maestro") under Gyorgy Sandor, Alexander Lonquich, Aldo Ciccolini, Nikita Magaloff and Bruno Canino. At nineteen Totaro became a Professor at the Conservatory of Pesaro, where he’s still teaching. He has been awarded prizes in several piano competitions both national and international. Totaro has given several concerts in Italy and abroad where he presented programs based on improvisation and “contamination” between musical genres. In 1992, he was one of the founders of the Trio Diaghilev (two pianos and percussion). With the Trio Diaghilev Totaro proposed some of the most relevant 20th century masterpieces as well as his own original compositions in prestigious concerts seasons in Italy and abroad, some of which being the "Rossini Opera Festival", "Ente Concerti" - Pesaro, "Istituzione Universitaria dei Concerti" and "Cidim - Musica Duemila" - Rome, "Sagra Musicale Malatestiana" - Rimini, "Associazione A. Scarlatti" - Naples, "Società Filarmonica" - Trento, "Autunno Musicale" - Como, Bologna Philarmonic Orchestra, Filarmonica A. Toscanini, Orchestra Nazionale RAI, Haydn Orchester, and in important radio programs. As a Professor Totaro has held courses of instrumental specialization and musical analysis based on original and innovative formulas, which exploit the connections between the brain, the Central Nervous System and the movements required in musical execution. Totaro has been awarded in international competitions for some of his works ("Ennio Porrino" - Cagliari) that have been broadcast on different occasions during RAI Radio productions (“Radiotre Suite”, “Il brivido della classica”, "Piazza Verdi"). He has been commissioned by important artistic institutions (“Rossini Opera Festival”, “Feste Musicali di Bologna”, "Sagra Musicale Malatestiana”,“Accademia Pianistica Incontri col Maestro”,"Rassegna Lirica Torelliana”, "Centro Astor Piazzolla" etc.). Totaro has directed the “Laboratory of 20th Century and Contemporary Music” at the Conservatory of Pesaro, whose aim is to study last-century masterpieces, to stimulate new musical proposals and to promote the music of the latest generations.
Valentina Vanini is a mezzo-soprano featured on Mario Totaro: Chamber Works. On this recording, Valentina sings Five Esoteric Poems on texts by Fernando Pessoa and the four songs of Folk Medley.
Vito Maraula is a narrator featured on Mario Totaro: Chamber Works. On this recording, Vito recites Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven in Totaro’s melologue with violinist Angioletta Iannucci and pianist Daniela Ferrati.
Mario Totaro graduated in piano from the Conservatory “G. Rossini” in Pesaro with honours and in composition from the Conservatory “G. Verdi” in Milan with top marks. He studied piano with Franco Scala and composition with Mario Garuti. Mario Totaro initially devoted himself to piano and continued his studies at the "Mozarteum" in Salzburg under Carlo Zecchi and in Imola ("Incontri col Maestro") under Gyorgy Sandor, Alexander Lonquich, Aldo Ciccolini, Nikita Magaloff and Bruno Canino. At nineteen Totaro became a Professor at the Conservatory of Pesaro, where he’s still teaching. He has been awarded prizes in several piano competitions both national and international. Totaro has given several concerts in Italy and abroad where he presented programs based on improvisation and “contamination” between musical genres. In 1992, he was one of the founders of the Trio Diaghilev (two pianos and percussion). With the Trio Diaghilev Totaro proposed some of the most relevant 20th century masterpieces as well as his own original compositions in prestigious concerts seasons in Italy and abroad, some of which being the "Rossini Opera Festival", "Ente Concerti" - Pesaro, "Istituzione Universitaria dei Concerti" and "Cidim - Musica Duemila" - Rome, "Sagra Musicale Malatestiana" - Rimini, "Associazione A. Scarlatti" - Naples, "Società Filarmonica" - Trento, "Autunno Musicale" - Como, Bologna Philarmonic Orchestra, Filarmonica A. Toscanini, Orchestra Nazionale RAI, Haydn Orchester, and in important radio programs. As a Professor Totaro has held courses of instrumental specialization and musical analysis based on original and innovative formulas, which exploit the connections between the brain, the Central Nervous System and the movements required in musical execution. Totaro has been awarded in international competitions for some of his works ("Ennio Porrino" - Cagliari) that have been broadcast on different occasions during RAI Radio productions (“Radiotre Suite”, “Il brivido della classica”, "Piazza Verdi"). He has been commissioned by important artistic institutions (“Rossini Opera Festival”, “Feste Musicali di Bologna”, "Sagra Musicale Malatestiana”,“Accademia Pianistica Incontri col Maestro”,"Rassegna Lirica Torelliana”, "Centro Astor Piazzolla" etc.). Totaro has directed the “Laboratory of 20th Century and Contemporary Music” at the Conservatory of Pesaro, whose aim is to study last-century masterpieces, to stimulate new musical proposals and to promote the music of the latest generations.
The aesthetics of Mario Totaro’s oeuvre tends to subsume the great Western musical tradition, in its actual manifestations and in its structures; however, this tradition is not passively and uncritically adopted, but rather appropriated and reshaped for personal expressive purposes. Totaro aims at finding a balance between conceptual complexity and immediacy, between a rigorous compositional process and a communicative attitude; he is proudly distant from both constructivism and neo-Romanticism. Critics have appreciated his “surprising musicality”, which “amazes for its inventiveness, originality and spontaneity”; the music seems to flow freely and…
The aesthetics of Mario Totaro’s oeuvre tends to subsume the great Western musical tradition, in its actual manifestations and in its structures; however, this tradition is not passively and uncritically adopted, but rather appropriated and reshaped for personal expressive purposes.
Totaro aims at finding a balance between conceptual complexity and immediacy, between a rigorous compositional process and a communicative attitude; he is proudly distant from both constructivism and neo-Romanticism.
Critics have appreciated his “surprising musicality”, which “amazes for its inventiveness, originality and spontaneity”; the music seems to flow freely and effortlessly, and his complex technique tends to efface itself rather than displaying its achievements.
For him, artistic research is never an end in itself; it is always functional to a higher, aesthetic and communicative experience.
Totaro frequently adopts a playful attitude, with plenty of irony, and refusing to consider music history as a one-way trajectory. This leads him to incorporate various styles (such as modality, tonality, atonality) within a single piece, to experiment with such diverse angles as esotericism and popular music, but always with a fundamental consistency and a deep artistic awareness.
When asked to define his style, in fact, Totaro hesitates, in his dislike for labels in art. His music cannot be defined as “neo-tonal”, since, as we just saw, he admits the copresence of various musical languages within a same piece; structuralism is no more adequate, even though, as a composer, Totaro aims at constructional consistency; “post-modern” is in turn an imprecise term, being employed, in music, in order to indicate an omnivorous attitude toward the musical past.
Indeed, he does adopt some individual stances of postmodernism, such as, for instance, its connection with history, its irony, its eclecticism, its refusal of the diktats of the modernist and avant-gardist “orthodoxy”, and its rejection of an aesthetic model based on the belief that musical language must constantly renew itself. Still, in spite of these points in common, Totaro does not wish to be classified as a simply postmodernist composer.
His working procedures are rather structured. He begins by a skeleton, which may be more or less rigid, but is always on the complex side. However, he believes that the logical and rational elaboration at the foundation of the piece should not be discernible by the listener; music should maintain its crucially communicative dimension.
Totaro wonders at one of today’s beliefs in the musical field: for him, it is not at all straightforward that a painstakingly constructed piece cannot also be a piece with a pronounced expressive dimension, and a style capable of conquering a vast audience, including not only specialists. The avant-garde’s attitude can be summarized as a systematic suspicion against all musical works which could be “liked” by nonprofessionals; of course, such an attitude automatically denies aesthetical validity to numerous masterpieces of the past, where both complexity and immediacy happily coexist.
In his view, today’s composers enjoy an unprecedented creative freedom, where a virtually infinite number of aesthetic attitudes, styles and stances concur. However, this rich panorama is somewhat limited by one of the avant-garde’s unquestioned beliefs, i.e. that art must speak about the present and anticipate the future. Twentieth-century composers therefore had the self-imposed task of always creating something new, by employing constantly new compositional means and systems.
However, Totaro believes that new techniques and systems cannot be infinitely created; possibly, after such a century as the twentieth, all possible experimentations have already been tried. In the eyes of many, indeed, it is impossible, today, to write a musical piece entirely devoid of links and connections with the past.
This impasse, however, is only seeming. Indeed, it is an impasse only if the twentieth-century attitude is passively adopted. Many composers, by way of contrast, have chosen a different perspective. Finding new means and systems is not as important as another purpose: to shed new light on the past, to move within pre-existing systems and techniques but enriching them through one’s personality. It all depends, therefore, on the strength of the composer’s personality: a weak personality will result in passive imitation and reproduction, whereas a powerful personality will make history. As Totaro puts it, “in the twenty-first century, what ultimately counts is to have excellent ideas within pre-existing, given systems”.
In spite of this, Totaro realizes that the twentieth-century musician’s mentality is not easily abandoned, though – if one considers history’s habits – each century should naturally be inclined to position itself on a different stance from the one which preceded it. For Totaro, the moment has come to leave behind the twentieth century, to historicize and to objectively evaluate it. “In other words”, as he maintains, “we must be post-ideological”.
For him, this means to overcome the dialectic between tonal and non-tonal music, between simple and complex music, between music perceived as “up-to-date” and music perceived as outdated. This also implies being afraid no more of the past, and give priority to ideas and narratives with respect to the demonstration of “new” techniques and systems. Both excellency and communication must be actively and contemporaneously pursued, overcoming the artificial dichotomy between tradition and avant-garde. Still, Totaro wishes to complement this manifesto in order to avoid misunderstandings: a need for communication does not imply an acceptance of trivial, amateurish, or banal kinds of music. Music of a high quality, with depth and profundity, with conceptual complexity and structural rigour can be created while maintaining an “audience-friendly” attitude. As he believes, “the twenty-first century is by now ready for a ‘new’ music, with respect to what was ‘new’ in the past century”.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2022
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