Marco Betta - The Ancient Breath of the Mediterranean

Hecuba and Iphigenia. Two key figures of Greek mythology, different yet united by their femininity and by a journey through change: the first through her contested genealogy and motherhood, the second through the complexity of her transition into adulthood, almost a symbol of rites of passage. It all seems to align with the "metamorphic" idea that characterizes the Almendra Music catalogue…

Metamorphosis is what most influences our path as artists, a process suspended between research, study, imagination and creation, always changing in order to find ourselves, so as not to get lost in the ambiguities of convenient choices. Metamorphosis is also the vision of what we could be, of what we would like to be, of what our thought might become once it leaves us and turns into a work, only to return inside us again, changing us anew with every listen, because we've managed to listen to ourselves from within and from without. Every metamorphosis within our world confirms change, understood as a deepening and a breathed-in vision of one's own human and artistic essence, in the constant search for a direction to take, knowing that what matters is not arriving but living the journey that transforms us. We can change because we are alive: Almendra is alive.

On one side the piano, on the other the "rework". How does a composer with your history and experience feel when facing the "adventurous" reworking of his own pieces by younger colleagues?

It was wonderful to meet within sounds, through sounds, through sounds that are shared between us. I'm bound to Giovanni Di Giandomenico and Luca Rinaudo (known as Naiupoche) by a deep friendship and esteem, which is the shared mark with which this adventure was born, now inaugurated with this first release. It's extraordinary to be able to reread oneself, and even more so to be reread and recomposed, to be able to add other, inner gazes to one's own. Being reworked, in a way, means having extra ears, possessing a deeper gaze that expands, that goes beyond the boundaries of shared horizons. Moreover, being reworked is confirmation, for a musician, that one's own marks can also live within the sound worlds of colleagues and friends, and that thought, besides being beautiful, is thrilling, because it's the certainty that one's human and artistic experience is fully shared.

Hecuba's genealogy is a well-known issue for scholars of classical antiquity, and she herself bore nineteen children. In homage to Priam's wife, one is tempted to think that Naiupoche's rework is just one of the many possible offspring of the piece…

Naiupoche generated musical ideas and figures like the generative river that Hecuba represents. A free, intense river, which took in everything invisible in my music and made it visible-audible, in an extraordinary way. It's moving how Naiupoche managed to recompose my dream of Hecuba and invent an extraordinary journey starting from the shadows of my music.

Euripides, Goethe, Tiepolo, Scarlatti, Gluck. In the world of theatre, art and music, Iphigenia has always been held in great regard: has the metaphor of her sacrifice also been a source of inspiration for you?

I've always loved the fragility and the strength of Iphigenia, her being suspended, poised on the edge, her not being placed within any heroic or epic sphere, her being crystallized inside a tragic cage built by the events of fate. Giovanni Di Giandomenico responded to this with depth and energy: he rewrote and composed an intensely profound music, full of nuances and sea-like mottling. His vision is incredibly strong; his Iphigenia changes continuously without being subjected to the sound events I had planned within the web of my suspended chords. Giovanni elaborates and builds landscapes, unusual sound pictures, bringing out sudden, unplanned states, with a wonderful sense of sound.

Marco Betta has written a great deal for cinema: could Hecuba and Iphigenia lend themselves to a filmic context?

I think and imagine so, yes. I'm not a director, nor a screenwriter, so I can't imagine physical stories beyond Euripides, nor how these characters might come to life on screen, but I imagine that their power, even with these same pieces of music, could also find an outlet in cinema, as elusive characters who remain in the background.

This album is part of a new Almendra path dedicated to the piano. Before you came two young yet related and distinct personalities, Giovanni Di Giandomenico himself and Valentina Casesa, followed by Marcello Bonanno's album. In your view, what are the distinctive features of the "Almendra piano solo" idea?

For me, Almendra's piano productions confirm the new identity that music can find today within the paths of composers of our time. A composer at the piano is as expressive, intense and inward-looking as one can imagine. The piano is in fact often the first private landing point that gives physical form to a musician's sonic idea. Almendra's piano albums are a form of observation, a way of materializing imagination just as the sonic idea is about to become sheet music, recorded frequency; each one of them is a rainbow-bridge of musical thoughts. To me, every Almendra piano solo feels like an intimate diary, both for whoever composes it and for whoever listens to it.

Speaking of piano: behind us lies an immense body of piano literature, ahead of us the new paths that Almendra is trying to explore. In your opinion, what should the Palermo-based factory avoid, and what should it instead emphasize, in order to keep moving forward in a credible and constructive way?

I don't think there's anything to avoid from the past, nor anything to chase after when looking to the future. I think, instead, that there's a lot to be felt, inside us and around us, right now. I think it's important to naturally imagine and breathe in one's own world in this moment, without borders, without barriers, without limits that confine us to what has been and what will be; perhaps we simply need to embrace and invent what we can be now, and that's exactly what Almendra is already doing.

Often the choice of free download stems from an artist's renunciation, from accepting a kind of defeat. “Ecuba | Ifigenia”, however, is offered to listeners on Bandcamp with a “name your price” model for different reasons, coming from a different kind of path. And yet there's a risk that “giving it away”, or letting the listener decide the price, might be perceived as “devaluing” the work, or that the absence of a physical object to own might make the music seem “not worth serious consideration”. What's your position on this?

I think music today should be shared as widely as possible, and that this model is civically and ethically strong: it restores to the artist a necessary sense of responsibility, allowing them to rediscover their own thinking in conceiving the relationship with listening as a civic relationship. I don't believe this approach devalues the music or the musicians' work — quite the opposite, I think it reinforces the meaning that the spread of new music should have, and does have, in a free and responsible world, where everyone is given the chance to enjoy music according to their own means.

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