Michele Marco Rossi - Canzoniere (2024)

Songs express sensitivities. They tell us about love and pain, about success or failure, give expression to forms of protest, are “serious” or “entertaining”, folkloric or a pop-cultural phenomenon. In late medieval and Renaissance Italy, the so-called “Canzonieri” spread. They mostly contain sonnets, canzoni, or ballads and – since they deal with love in all its facets – are accompanied by sheet music. Michele Marco Rossi makes use of this literary-musical genre and presents eight pieces by Georges Aperghis, Noriko Baba, Francesco Filidei, Bernhard Gander, Filippo Perocco and Enno Poppe in his “Canzoniere”, some pieces were composed for Rossi and all of them are approaches to the art form of the song. However, these are songs in which the focus is not on vocals qua vocals, but rather on the unique soundscape created by the violoncello and the interaction of the instrumentalist. However, these are songs in which the focus lies not upon singing, but rather on the tonal similarity of the cello and the human voice. The interaction between the artist’s virtuosity and the tonal diversity of the instrument truly creates “music as if already in the future” (Ivano Fossati).