Dragon Fruit - December 2019

Quite a productive end of the year! I quickly wrote this piece during Christmas Holiday, as the last movement of a three-part piano composition with exotic fruit titles. The first one was Durian. The second one is going to be Buddha Hand (currently just started). I am not sure if there is going to be anything else in between, but the last one is Dragon Fruit, an exuberant Toccata with a late-romantic section in the middle. I am really happy about how this piece turned out, and also about the video itself! I put quite a lot of effort into getting the correct angles, lightning and sound, but they really paid off. Some people didn't like the title style but I think it's appropriate for the piece.

Durian - November 2019

Seems like I have not been updated this space about my compositions for about a year, but I have actually been quite productive (taking into account that I have a full-time job, that is!). I have composed 'A Golden Knife' (performed in public in Milano at PianoCity 2019, but not on YouTube yet), which I am really proud of, Miniature 4, simple but cute, another untitled piece with a lot of async patterns, and most recently this one, Durian. I am also getting better at recording myself, so now I can accompany this piece with some decent video.

Like the Durian fruit, it's is spiky and smelly on the outside, but with a rich and flavoured inside. It also has some Asian scent to it due to the byzantine scale used. This is the first of a 3 set piece, so more to come soon-ish.

Pianocity Milano 2019

I was lucky enough to play for Pianocity Milano 2019 in the session titled 'Wrong Notes' on the 19th of May. Due to the hectic time I was going through 6 months ago, I didn't have the chance to write anything about it. That's a shame, as that event was absolutely fantastic, very well organized, and a lot of good music was performed. I had the chance to play my own repertoire to a public mostly made of young interested people, and it was very well received. One comment I got which made me particularly proud:

It's fresh, new, but a bit like Bartok

The concert took taking place at the beautiful Fondazione Pini, which at the time was hosting an exhibition of the visionary artist Carlos Amorales: a swarm of thousands of black butterflies was filling the space, creating a surreal (and very fitting!) atmosphere.

I have recorded the whole concert so I will slowly drop the videos here. I also played 'A Golden Knife' which I still don't have on my youtube channel.

Math Piano Rock - December 2018

This piece was written in a few days, and it took much longer to master it technically. It is demanding and very tricky in the middle part, with the left-hand beating sometimes on the main beat, sometime in the split between beats. But, I believe, this *works* in creating an interesting effect of an ordered-yet-unstable rhythmic pattern. That was difficult, and that chromatic scale with both hands is also difficult to master at speed. But oh well, the piece overall is *very* fun to play and, I hope, very pleasant to listen to (but not more than a couple of time in a row, eh?). As said in the video, I am indebted to the Math Rock scene. Another partial inspiration is the music of S. Prokofiev. I don't think I have taken anything in particular from these sources, but they did give me so many interesting rhythmic patterns that I have to recognize their influence.

This piece won the 2nd Prize at the International Sorodha Competition in 2018.

The is the piece that people like the most, so I have several versions of it on my youtube channel.

This is the one with the score:

This is me playing it live in Bristol in a particularly successful performance:

And there is also this close-up version - not performed as good, but received many more views for some reason:

INTENSO - November 2018

I recently composed this new piano piece, called INTENSO. Here it is:

I am pretty happy about the result, but not so much about the performance. I noticed that after I finished composing a new piece, I really can't be bothered about studying it properly. I have spent so much with it, and generally the last days of working on it are so intense (eh), that when the last notes are written on the paper I just want it to be done. But, since I want people to listen to it, I also have to push it under my hands and do a decent recording.

Anyway, I plan to play this piece in a public performance in May at the Bristol Music Club, together with a couple of other pieces of mine.

The piece is rhythmically unstable, but not in the way some of Ligeti's piano pieces are rhythmically unstable. And I think the harmonies are interesting. I try to make it melodically compelling, and violent at times. I am not following any particular style, just trying to compose stuff that I like. I am particularly proud of the part at 3'40''.

Now that I am getting more confident with piano composition in terms of piano writing and harmonic progressions, I am realizing that the most difficult thing is the structure. In my previous longish piece, the Little Rhapsodic Waltz, the structure was completely missing. In this one, I tried to have something resembling a Chopin's Ballade form, but I can see that I haven't totally succeeded, and the piece still loses its thread at times. Nevermind, I'll do better next time.

Another word: this piece is really fun to play. It sounds quite difficult, but it's not really, and any pianists with some dexterity can do it without much fuss. It's fun because it requires some keys hammering and some head slamming, and how can that not be fun?

Little Rhapsodic Waltz - February 2018

Around the beginning of this year, I started composing at the piano. Before that, I composed a piano piece "away" from the piano (also on Youtube, for now) which does not represent my idea of composing properly modern classical music.  My first composition at the piano does. Even though it suffers from a lack of proper structure, I am still really happy about it.

After composing, I learnt to play it properly, and I performed it (reasonably good) in a concert in June. However, I am only an amateur pianist, and my execution would never be comparable to that of my friend Aldo Roberto Pessolano, a real pianist (better: a pianistic genius).

I consider this a piece of classical music. My definition of classical music is music that presents complex harmonic structures. I strongly believe that this is one of the best way of capturing the different between what people normally refer to "classical music" and other genre.

Anyway, here it is: my Valzerino Rapsodico (Little Rhapsodic Waltz). Enjoy.