Roberto Vecchioni
Samarcanda

The song that introduced Prof. Vecchioni to the wider public is one of the few commercial successes that correspond to a certain artistic value. And what value! "Samarcanda" is a jewel of Italian music, a beautiful and well-crafted text (just think of the consonance of R throughout the first verse). Not to mention Branduardi's violin, the shout "oh, oh cavallo!" and all the other things that can be said. "Samarcanda" is a piece of history.

"Samarcanda", the album, is equally a masterpiece. Poetic, but it’s a poetry that comes before pure Vecchioni style, meaning those songs dense with obsolete adjectives and hyper-literary quotations. It allows itself bursts of irony (the humorous "Vaudeville") and cinematic glimpses. "Due giornate fiorentine" is extraordinary, so much so that its text is featured in an anthology of contemporary Italian poets, and here too it plays between irony and melancholy ("Afternoon alone in a bit too much Tuscany/I thought bravo, well, I thought whore", "My pockets were full of various and possible/but my days with you were all the same") and that brilliant idea of the surreal stop at the Chevron station makes it a rare gem of song. The Pascoli-style divertissement by Prof. Vecchioni in "Blu(e) notte" is most commendable: a recited text (of admirable value) and a gospel choir singing over a blues "X agosto" by the poet of the "Myricae". The delightful "Per un vecchio bambino" and the beautiful yet victim of an out-of-place arrangement "Canzone per Sergio" serve as a prologue to what is best found in Vecchioni's songbook: "L'ultimo spettacolo", a poignant reflection on abandonment and separation, sung and orchestrated divinely. Seven minutes on the edge of emotional tension, with words that seem stifled by tears (without the pathos of the early records) and travel on very high tones.
"Samarcanda" lasts forty minutes or slightly less. They are among the most extraordinary forty minutes of Italian music.