Lusi: Sinfonia Abellana – Orchestra Filarmonica Campana

The monumental Abellana Symphony is a five-part symphonic poem for solos, choir and large orchestra that musically develops a poetic idea, inspired by historical places and ruins
of the Roman Amphitheater of Avella. A musical composition that wants to evoke some aspects and moments of ancient Avellan life repeatedly praised and known by Virgil. Through these notes, these themes, of Russian and French suggestion and inspiration of the twentieth century, the author figuratively renders moments and images by treating the material, depending on what he describes, with sudden changes of direction, timbre and sound intensity. It is a direct derivation of program music which was one of the favorite forms of romantic musicians, for example Hector Berlioz in his Sinfonia Fantastica and in Aroldo in Italy. The entire path of the Symphony can be interpreted as a great period of theatrical and dramaturgical apprenticeship that Lusi began with previous works such as Notes from a Logbook, the musical fable Il Nuvolo Innamorato up to the melologue Sul Sentiero degli Dei, in which the composer develops useful tools for the world favored by his nature. The author’s rich imagination thus comes to cover with images a symphonic torso, which is not already authentic musical theater, but only the poster of a play yet to be represented. It is easy to follow on the score, with an eye to the poetic program, the sequence of episodes: the faint pulsation of the heartbeat, the dream of an ancient smile, the onset of the crisis, the fight against death, the calming of pain, the vision of the transcendent ideal. The desire to create a repertoire of images with music corresponds to the search for an acceleration of dramaturgy. The style of Oderigi Lusi is always direct also in this new work, managing to model the scene in a few essential, quick-catching pictures, seeking with the orchestral palette and the refined harmonic conduct, the immediate plasticity of the gestures and the synthetic contrast of situations. As already mentioned before, there are numerous references to the Russians Tchaikovsky and Schostakovitch and to French sounds that refer to Ravel and Satie, but the rhythmic element is continually sought after and primary in the development and in the thematic variation (see Stravinsky and Bartok).