Corde Oblique
Respiri

Once there were the Lupercalia, with their beautiful mix of folk and ethnic music, Mediterranean and ancestral, the first creation of Riccardo Prencipe, a virtuoso classical guitarist who released two albums under this moniker: the instrumental debut “Soehrimnir” (2000), with violinist Pierangelo Fevola, and the beautiful “Florilegium” (2002), in collaboration with soprano Claudia Florio, published by the label Equilibrium Music, a longstanding quality icon and cornerstone of the neo-folk scene.

In 2005, the names changed, but the desire to compose excellent music is still alive, the flame of inspiration burns more ardently than ever in the heart of Riccardo. Lupercalia are pleasantly stored away in the drawers of memory, and the project Corde Oblique, its natural evolution, sees the light.

The album “Respiri”, published by the equally prestigious Italian label Ark Records, boasts a disarming intimacy, entirely acoustic, warm, and Mediterranean. The project is defined by its creator as the “Little workshop of sound artists”, thus emphasizing its sincerity and the “artisanal” quality of the work, to which various guests contributed, chosen by the guitarist himself to give his creation the most heterogeneous tones, flavors of different lands. An intimacy made up of landscapes, ethereal yes, but real at the same time. Hence the idea of embedding images in the music itself, which attempts to recreate the voices, noises, and sounds of enchantingly beautiful lands in a temporal journey between antiquity and present. The auditory and visual path embarked upon in this album takes us through the walls of Assisi, leads us to the medieval village of Caserta Vecchia, or onto a boat moored in the port of Miseno where we allow ourselves to be rocked by the waves, or again through narrow streets illuminated by moonlight, among fields of wheat and sunflowers, on the fragrant beaches of the Mediterranean Sea to enjoy the spectacle of a sunset.

We travel accompanied by the magnificent and omnipresent acoustic guitar, the sparse synths, and the percussion (which are played by the master of the house), on the melancholic waves of the violin of the always inspired Alfredo Notarolberti (Ashram, Argine) and the clarinet of Francesco Perreca. We weep while being caressed by the ivory keys of Francesco Villani, a talented pianist with a classical background. We dream as the voice of Caterina Pontrandolfo (also engaged in a project studying traditional Lucanian music) expands into the air, a soprano possessing extreme versatility that allows her to vary her style from purely operatic parts to ethnic cadences and the interpretation of ancient melodies. We are captivated when Catarina Raposo from the Portuguese group Dwelling enters the scene with her warm, mysterious, irresistible tone; when the angelic Alessandra Santovito (ex-Gothica, Hexperos) envelops us in infinite candor. We feel ourselves melting and seem to see nature suddenly bloom when Corrado Videtta, the mind behind the historic Argine, enters the scene, perfectly blending through his fairy-like voice with the soul of this music. Riccardo Prencipe does not forgo moments of pure poetry; brief narrated interludes recount the harmonious sensations that accompanied the artist through his journey, emotions that have given much to the heart and soul, emotions that have become music.

After the captivating intro “Captatio benevolentiae”, among the Mediterranean tribal dances of “My promise” and “Waves”, built around engaging ethnic percussion and magnetic vocalizations, interrupted or enveloped by twilight bursts of disarming intensity where guitar and violin masterfully blend, passing through the fusion of recitation and Italian folk in “Eventi” (boasting a poetic text that is not enough to call sophisticated), we arrive at “… di Parigi”, a masterpiece of visual music entwined in the fingers of Luigi Rubino from Ashram (another national artist to be proud of), and Riccardo's guitar, capable of taking us to the banks of the Seine on a spring day, before the rain comes to refresh a joyful walk under the sun. When from simplicity one can create a masterpiece. We are then transported to the calm shores of “Ascesi”, an evocative track with a cadence almost dark and hypnotic, made even more intriguing by the clarinet that blends with the violin and the dense female vocalizations of Pontrandolfo reminiscent of one of the multiple styles adopted over the years by the fabulous Francesca Nicoli of compatriots (and very talented) Ataraxia. Lulled by the voice of Santovito, soft as a feather in “Orme” (a song of medieval reminiscence), we land on “Fantasia sui tasti bianchi”, which expresses its ethereal and enchanted essence only through its title; the world of fairy tales has never been so close.

And then, alone, like sitting in front of a fire that stands in the courtyard of a small village farmhouse, among the noises of nature that at dusk cast its shadows on the earth, a lone guitarist gives us a moving and melodious acoustic solo (“A guitar sounded like a lute”). The subsequent “Dentro”, yet another masterpiece, is perhaps the track that most closely resembles Lupercalia, if only for the use of a powerful soprano voice weaving elegiac melodic threads and reciting poignant and melancholic verses in the native language. Passing through the acoustic interlude (supported by the usual, beautiful guitar) of "Progressive,” we finally drown in the sorrowful Portuguese song of “Winds of fortune”, which splendidly closes one of the most intense albums the national scene has ever offered, thanks to the work of a sincere artist, Riccardo Prencipe, who perhaps does not yet reach the compositional genius of the divine Ataraxia, but certainly surpasses them in intensity, through simple songs of disarming beauty.

Often, we Italians who love dark music seek depth and authentic feelings in Nordic popular traditions, but we do not realize that Italy is a country where certain values are still alive, where the scene is strong and flourishing, like a rose that never withers and exudes a delicate and unforgettable fragrance, like a flower endowed with innumerable petals, each more fragrant than the last, each of which is proud of its origins and its name. Corde Oblique is one of them.