•
Rating: There are times in life when being a son or a brother is not exactly considered a great stroke of luck.
This is true for Luigi Grechi, for Cristiano De André, for Julian Lennon. And it is especially true for Giorgio Conte.
All those mentioned are good, sometimes excellent, craftsmen of singer-songwriter music. Some have great ideas, others have evidently genetic talent and are out of the ordinary. Giorgio Conte grew up with his brother, and it's nice to think about that house in Asti. About those two boys, one at the piano and the other at the guitar. It's also nice to imagine those two parents. By the traditional principle that fruits don't fall too far from the tree, they evidently must have been quite a pair. Fact is, the Conte brothers wrote the beautiful “Una Giornata Al Mare” together and apparently nothing else. Paolo wrote for the great and the greatest, eventually stepping out into the limelight and managing, little by little, to conquer that segment of the world made of people with good taste.
Giorgio remained in the tavern, and did not stray far from Italy. A few escapes to France and Switzerland, and little else. You might hear him even in small provincial theaters, in the small former workers' societies that you find on the provincial roads cutting through the mists of the north. And his are convivial, cheerful, immediate songs. Tavern songs, indeed. And some are profoundly beautiful.
Irony, as mentioned, is at home with the Conte family. And if Paolo, a genius with words, plays with phrases like a true magician, Giorgio is more direct, more straightforward, more seemingly simple. But with a Piedmontese, one should not stop at surface impressions, nor with immediate or hasty judgments. Giorgio Conte's albums are (all) very beautiful, with moments of fun, emotion, pure musical enchantment. This album is perfect for those who have not yet approached the younger brother of the great Paolo, as much as it is for those who have Giorgio's entire production and want a particular, amused, and intensely experienced interpretation of his great classics, which are classic only for those who cultivate the minor Conte worship.
Here we have a concert. A quartet concert. Recorded in an environment as fascinating as it is singular for a pure Piedmontese. Undoubtedly a concert captured in an old cinema lost in the Bassa would have seemed more fitting. But it is not so..., and the result, in terms of fun and audience participation, is clearly felt. First of all, the form of the quartet, an idea just a few millimeters from jazz, is decidedly brilliant. Malnati and Mazza on bass and drums respectively are a unique and extremely cohesive machine. I am not fortunate enough to know their curriculum, but it hardly matters...: the thrill is there. The harmony is left entirely to the classical guitar, excellently plucked by the protagonist, one of those storytellers who seem born with the guitar between their fingers, while providing counterpoints, comments, embellishments, and solos is the excellent, albeit pleasantly overflowing, Guglielmo Pagnozzi, who dominates his saxes and clarinets with rare skill and with beautiful, immediate, and never banal phrasing. The songs, as mentioned before, are classics only for those who know and love Giorgio Conte's music; for others, they will be just (which is not little) delightful discoveries.
Pure irony in “Cannelloni” and “Gnè Gnè,” stories of loves—perhaps marital—that have ended, similar to fraternal ones, in “Te Lo Farei Notare,” and many other micro-stories in lovable micro-songs. Very delightful. Certainly, having appreciated the lesser-known brother from Asti for some time, I would have loved to hear some other gems from his previous albums. But the setlist is wisely chosen for an audience probably unfamiliar with those pieces. True...: sometimes being siblings and children may not be a great stroke of luck. With Piedmontese style, in an interview, Giorgio Conte recently said:
“at first it helps... then... well... it's a bit cumbersome.”
Brothers like Paolo or fathers like Faber are a great and pleasant burden which perhaps, in the eyes of many, inhibits evaluating—for what it is—the excellent craftsmanship created by those who have not, and should not feel, the obligation to be a genius like the giant benchmarks fate placed beside them.
Loading comments slowly
