Review of Clementi Works with Guitar di Geoffrey Morris ELISION Ensemble, Mode Records 2007

Italian Translation

We talked about the Australian guitarist Geoffrey Morris during the interview with Maurizio Pisati as involved in his Teathre of a Dawn’s project, now we meet him again in this monographic CD released on Mode Records in 2007, entirely devoted to the music for guitar by Aldo Clementi, Genoese composer born in 1925, pupil of Goffredo Petrassi and friend of Bruno Maderna. The compositions recorded here cover a span of 25 years, from 1978's Fantasia su frammenti di Michelangelo Galilei, originally for lute and revived here for guitar by permission of Clementi, to the Otto Variazioni of 2002, written and dedicated to the same Morris. Only those here cited, along with Twelve Variations composed in 1992, are for solo guitar while the others on the disc like Serenade of 1988, Albumblatt of 1995, CAG 1993 and The Plaint of 1992 are provide for mixed ensemble.

Musically, listening to this record is not the simplest thing and it’s necessari to approach it step by step, slowly letting that the delicate structures of the music of Clementi and the skills of the musicians conquer us, little by little, then their poetry and their spatiality will speak clearly outlining a new world of sound, made of calm interwoven sound and subtle dynamics. Mode Records to be congratulated for the fine quality of the recording and the handsome 24-page booklet that accompanies it, beautiful and intense the black and white photo on the cover of Clementi.