A work by DANIELE ROCCATO (double bass)
Fabrizio Ottaviucci, piano
Massimiliano Pitocco, bajan
I first
approached Sofia Gubaidulina's work as a student at the conservatory of my
hometown toward the end of the 1980's.
The
originality, the elan and, most of all, the vision of her work struck a chord
and moved me deeply.
When I found
out that her work catalogue listed no fewer than two compositions for double
bass, I was delighted.
Unfortunately,
it was not until several years later that I was able to lay my hands on those
scores, in which Gubaidulina shows to have an exceptional mastery of the
technical and expressive potentialities of the double bass at a time when they
had not yet been revealed by any other composer.
Nowadays, in
the history of the double bass, Pantomime can be considered a split from
the past: it marks the birth of the contemporary repertoire for double bass.
A few years
ago, on a book cover reporting the composer's catalogue, I saw that Ten
Preludes for solo cello came with a side bracketed sentence saying “double
bass”.
I
immediately wrote to Sikorski Publishers in order to investigate the matter
further. They answered that nine out of the ten original preludes had been
transcribed by the composer and that they would send me the scores at once.
Then, the
demon of transcription got hold of me and after a close examination of the
scores, I decided that I would have made a new version of In Croce, one
of my most beloved Sofia Gubaidulina's pieces.
I turned to
Sikorski once again, providing a detailed description of my project and how I
intended to work on the score. To my great astonishment, they answered that the
composer had already done a transcription of In Croce for double bass,
which she personally invited me to use.
It was at
that point that I conceived the idea of making a CD entirely devoted to Sofia
Gubaidulina's work for solo double bass.
Regarding
the Preludes and In Croce, we cannot indeed talk of mere
transcriptions, but of actual new versions containing different sequences of
notes, and new sections that had been entirely rewritten.
In my
opinion, the compositions in this CD are among the highest points ever reached
in the double bass literature: four gems of outstanding value every double bass
player should attempt.
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