Four Seasons Four Hands – Luca Colombo

The seasons have accompanied the history of our world since the beginning, offering almost continuous artistic inspiration and, like the sentiment of love, true protagonists of an innumerable quantity of works of the spirit. The piano duo composed of Luca Colombo and Sugiko Chinen examine two compositions of this nature and place them in close comparison, on the one hand the now well-known four seasons of Buenos Aires by Astor Piazzolla (in the 4 hands piano version by Kyoko Yamamoto) , on the other, the Four Seasons of Japan by Japanese composer Yoshinao Nakada. A very fascinating comparison, which shows not only two styles compared, but also how different compositional processes can lead to the same and intense result of unexpected beauty and unity. In fact, both composers take full hands from their tradition, Piazzolla from his beloved Argentina and using the tango as a mere pretext to tell his vision of the seasons and the world, Nakada instead focuses more on popular themes recurring in the Japanese tradition, dressing them and expanding them with harmonies now poignant now harsh that in turn return a vivid and vibrant description of their land that boasts some of the most poetic landscapes in the world. Both therefore offer a vision of their personal sound world filtered by the four periods of the year in a continuous succession of colors, masterfully suggested by the piano duo who are very careful to underline every aspect of these two magnificent works and which ideally bring together two worlds distant only. geographically.