Post modernism in Set7 by Maurizio Pisati, Kairos, 2018
https://www.kairos-music.com/cds/0015052kai
http://www.mauriziopisati.com/
https://www.rubenmattiasantorsa.com/
The music of Maurizo Pisati has a substantial defect, it’s not sufficiently recorded and fixed on records. A defect common to many other good contemporary composers, a defect which in the case of Pisati translates into a sort of “delay in the signal” about his stylistic evolution. This cd, “Set7”, released at the end of 2018, is an excellent example: it represents a point in Pisati’s compositional map, a quick summary of his compositional characteristics and at the same time the exaltation of one of his greatest successes: the Sette Studi for classical guitar, which are finally shown here in their first complete recording.
Yes, it’s true. There are other editions, for example the refined double cd split with Franco Cerri and Elena Casoli “Franco Cerri – Elena Casoli: la chitarra tra il jazz e il ‘900 eurocolto” (http://limenmusic.info/wordpress/?page_id=3284), where Casoli performed Studio nro 2 and nro 5, but a complete collection was missing.
The interesting aspect of this CD is the “outline”, the “environment” that Maurizio Pisati wanted to create around the Sette Studi, making seven other compositions directly connected to and inspired to them that involve the interaction of the classical guitar with another instrument. Without bothering Deridda and his idea of ”dérive”, this is a decidedly interesting idea that starts from the presence of an existing, consolidated and tested compositional material, which forms the creative basis for one of its possible evolution and derivation.
In this way the Sette Studi undergo a sort of identifying “overlap”, on one side they are the starting “module”, on the other a point of arrival and variation in which the guitar is no longer alone but interacts directly with another instrument : a paetzold recorder, percussion, the bass clarinet, the tenor saxophone, the voice, the double bass and the viola.
Perhaps this way of working can recall post-modernist aesthetic methodologies, and it would not sound so strange. Because if it’s true that the Sette Studi are, in addition to music, a complex set of tropes, signs and metalinguistic paths, then from them can be generated, alongside Sette Duo, another generation of paths, able to operate autonomously at the search for new possible interactions between different instruments, different timbres.
Deus ex machina of this complex project is the Italian guitarist Ruben Mattia Santorsa, here at his first solo record. A truly brilliant debut that already shows a high artistic maturity, Santorsa is not alone but on the record is accompanied by the presence of other musicians: Marie Delprat, João Carlos Pacheco, Hugo Queirós, Kevin Juillerat, Céline Wasmer, Lino Mendoza, Anne-Laure Dottrens . All musicians formed within the Hochschule of Bern, which over the years seems to increasingly assert itself as a true breeding ground for talents in all that is contemporary and experimental.
Is there something missing? Maybe I feel missing the piece “Elettrico” for electric guitar, presented and performed at the 2009 Venice Biennale by Elena Casoli. But I understand that this record lives on the duality between Sette Studi and Sette Duo, mirroring themselves inside Pisati’s music.
NeuGuitars 