Art page

My Artistic page

Classical music

The first time I decided to listen to classical music LP it was just after I began to study piano, when I was about 9 years old. I remember my family had that LP by chance, more precisely my uncle Peppe gave it to my father essentially because he did not know what to do with it. In that LP there was Schubert's last symphony the one in C major (or DO maggiore). At first I could not understand that music. Some parts were even sounding a little bit painful to my ears...

But I was thinking: “Well, Schubert is pretty famous, he is considered to be a genius in classical music... there should be a reason...” It took maybe some months to begin to understand that reason. Afterwards I could not stop listening to that LP. Still now, when I listen to the secondo tempo of that symphony I feel something strange inside.

After that, the era of CD's came and I began to buy lots of CD's about classical music. Fortunately they were much less expensive even than some trash pop music CD...

The second love I had was Bach. I loved Bach without even knowing it. It happened, quite luckily indeed, that I could also easily play Bach on piano. This of course helped me like this genius' music. Probably the elaborated though natural architecture of his music reminds me somehow General Relativity.

Also Schumann changed my horizon in classical music, especially from a pianistic point of view. I enjoyed playing that music on piano. I tried to play almost everything he wrote for piano solo, but I had time to specialize just on some of his masterpieces.

Since I went to the USA, my taste has changed. First of all I began to appreciate THE genius, Mozart. His music is special and different. Up to now this is the composer I like the most. I will spend some years of my life to try to understand better the simplicity and complexity of his music.

Opera

Of course Mozart led me to love operas. Mozart's operas are just fantastic. “Le Nozze di Figaro,” “Il Don Giovanni” and “Così fan tutte” represent a jewel in the opera repertoire. By the way also the libretti (written by Lorenzo Del Ponte) are a masterpiece.

Maybe also because I moved to a different country, I needed to find and keep my Italian roots, anyway I began to really appreciate opera. First of all Rossini's “Il barbiere di Siviglia” (whose libretto is strictly related to the one of “Le Nozze di Figaro”) is a wonderful opera. That opera, in my opinion, is an almost perfect picture of Italian culture (let's forget for a moment about the mafia plague).

Middle Age and Science fiction

I like reading about these two subjects. I do not know why but these are the topics about which I can read tons of books. It is not clear to me why this happens: maybe this is the right reason to finally go to a psycho-doctor...

As for the Middle Age... I like almost everything: recipes (please try some of them), mystics, politics (for example politicians, if they were not doing a good job, could be executed... I wonder what could have happened to Berlusconi if he lived in those times), literature (Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio)...

I like a lot Robert Sheckley, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein... I love any kind of science fiction even the Mars movies of the sixties... think about how crazy I am...

And with this I think I can conclude this personal page. By the way I like Sandro Filipepi, called Botticelli, as you could imagine.

So nothing else?

Only classical music and middle age stuff? So boring...

Well things change, don't they? So as my taste in music and reading. I like disco dance, I do a lot. Reading is such a pleasure as much as listening to music. Certainly, I find myself in many possible outcomes in books and music... Ehm... I do listen to music my daughter likes with lots of pleasure...