Giusto Pio
Legione straniera

In the mid-70s, Franco Battiato decided to learn to play the violin and began taking lessons from a violinist named Giusto Pio. The Maestro from Castelfranco Veneto was highly active in the classical music field and had never ventured into pop, but their meeting sparked a friendship and an artistic partnership that would leave an indelible mark on the following decade. Shortly thereafter, Battiato would release a series of very important albums, "L'era del cinghiale bianco," "Patriots," up to the epochal success of "La voce del padrone." All signed with Pio. In those same years, the two also penned a series of highly successful songs for singers like Alice, Giuni Russo, Milva, producing a simply incredible amount of material in just a few years.

In this context, in 1982, Giusto Pio also ventured into a solo adventure (of modest commercial success) with this album, "Legione Straniera", a nearly entirely instrumental record obviously also written in collaboration with his Sicilian partner. To be honest, it was not the first album to be released under the violinist's name, as he had previously released an experimental music record, "Motore Immobile", for Cramps in 1978. But this time the focus was on a decidedly more pop format. The production does not stray too far from the stylistic elements of Battiato's era, and the collaborators are the same proven team, among whom Filippo Destrieri on keyboards deserves mention (here also as co-author of the album's title track) and a guitarist of great class like Alberto Radius.
The album is very enjoyable, it could be summarily described as an instrumental Battiato with the violin soloist instead of the voice, and it also achieved good sales results, especially thanks to the title track and "Ostinato", the two most successful pieces. Pio even allows himself pure diversions, such as the reinterpretation of Bach with Thai narration (!) in "Giardino Segreto", and generally alternates sunny and rarefied melodies ("Aria di un tempo") with darker themes ("Totem"). Not all pieces are equally successful and perhaps a couple may sound openly bizarre, but it was explicitly an album made for fun and overall it is an excellent listen, I would say indispensable for Battiato fans; three or four tracks are really very beautiful and ultimately it is a shame that this album (as well as its "pop" successors, "Restoration" and "Note") was never reissued on CD and thus is relegated to the vintage music market at vinyl fairs. We hope that EMI will decide to give its archives a well-deserved dusting.