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An album released a few months ago, dedicated to the memory of Pino Daniele and Massimo Troisi, and almost entirely overlooked, as unfortunately happens with all those artists who - even if they are great - are no longer in vogue, or perhaps never really were.
Such is the case of Pietra Montecorvino, aka Barbara D'Alessandro, an interpreter who calling "extraordinary" might be an understatement: she is certainly one of the strongest we have, as well as among the very few true "greats" left on the scene.
Pietra Montecorvino would need no introduction, if only it were easier to be an artist in a small and further impoverished market like the Italian music scene of recent (now) decades.
Like all great performers, Pietra is endowed with an unmistakable vocal timbre: energetic and mournful, deeply visceral, at times raw, at times moving, often both.
Such a voice doesn't need lavish orchestras, nor stellar post-productions, and indeed the result achieved in this album with the arrangements (essential but incredibly evocative) by Erasmo Petringa is excellent. A Mediterranean sound, a sound where folk (guitars), rock (voice), chamber music (cellos) blend together: it's the sound of Pietra.
"Bella 'mbriana", "Mal di te", "Sicily", "Notte che se ne va". "Io vivo come te", "'O ssaje comme fa 'o core": it's impossible to rank the best tracks of this work, they are all indissolubly linked to each other, like inseparable parts of the same mosaic, fragments of the same portrait, of the same soul.
A special mention goes to what is so far the best interpretation of "Anna verrà", one of the most beautiful songs of the last thirty years, which in this album becomes in all respects a Pietra Montecorvino song, perhaps the only interpreter capable of giving it such a perfect fit.
If Magnani - the immense figure to whom the piece is inspired and dedicated - had been born in Naples instead of Rome, she would certainly have sung it this way: she would have recounted herself with the same voice and passion as Pietra Montecorvino.
When you watch and listen to her it’s impossible not to compare her to Berté. Loredana's art and voice always sublimated something provocative, exaggerated, angry; in Pietra all this emerges, survives, but softens into an enveloping bitterness, into a warm and fascinating melancholy. Two different ways in which the suffering of two strong and sweet-tempered souls is expressed, both wounded by something dark, indeterminate, and perhaps “irreplaceable.” Both so damn instinctive and alien to compromise.
In this latest musical endeavor, like all respectful tributes, nothing is planned, rather everything is the result of rather sudden inspiration: Pietra recorded the album in just one day, after laying out the tracklist "on the spur of the moment," drawing from the best production of the late Pino Daniele.
The dedication is also extended to Massimo Troisi, dearly loved by the singer (well beyond mere artistic admiration) and inevitably linked to Pino Daniele’s memory thanks also to their historic friendship.
«The CD is dedicated to both, I dreamed of being the third part of a triangle, and I say dream because I never even met Pino, only once, in Rome, realizing he was eating at a trattoria, I went in and gave him a rose, without even introducing myself».
Yet it was Pino Daniele himself, in a certain sense, the unwitting architect of her debut on the scene with the participation in the film "FF.SS.", where many will remember her performing the song "Sud". «At Arbore's film auditions, I sang three of Pino's songs, I felt them inside, it didn't seem like I was taking an exam, they were parts of me as they are now. And I was chosen...»
It was 1983, a lifetime ago, a long span of time that saw Pietra being born and reborn artistically again and again, splitting her time among cinema, theater, and especially music, albums, and concerts. A career - by choice - certainly not easy, expertly guided by Eugenio Bennato (former partner and father of her two children) and sometimes punctuated by dark moments, such as the depression that struck her some years ago, and which she mentions in her personal and dreamy writings contained in the autobiographical book "Malamusik" (2013).
With this sort of return to the origins, namely to Pino's songs, a circle is closed, hoping this may represent for her the prelude to yet another new beginning.
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