Fabio Vacchi (1949-)
Quintette nocturne concertant pour guitare et quatuor à cordes
"Plynn", pour guitare seule
Suite pour flûte et guitare amplifiée
"Flow my Dowland", pour contralto et ensemble

Daniele Ruggieri, flûte
Alberto Mesirca, guitare
Quartetto Manfredi
Flow My Dowland Ensemble
Francesco Di Giorgio, direction

Né à Bologne en 1949, le compositeur Fabio Vacchi étudie au conservatoire de la ville puis à Tanglewood. Il remporte successivement deux prix de composition Koussevitzky et Gaudeamus (Pays-bas) et sa musique est représentée à la Biennale de Venise en 1979 et 1981. Si une grande partie de son œuvre s'inspire de la littérature. Il est aussi l'auteur d'un large corpus instrumental dont quelques pages orchestrales commandées et créées par Claudio Abbado. Son langage musical est tout à fait abordable, "notamment par sa qualité sonore : fluide, raffinée et chatoyante, subtilement nuancée et évocatrice d'échos et de réverbérations" (Jean Jacques Nattiez). Les œuvres pour guitare et petit ensemble, enregistrées ici témoignent d'une écriture raréfiée, délicate, dépourvue de toute ostentation. Le Quintetto Notturno Concertante comporte des réminiscences de Bartok. Deux œuvres pour guitare seule : "Plynn" (séduisante combinaison d'harmoniques) et "Apocrifo" (danse latine traditionnelle émaillée de dissonance). Atonalité que l'on retrouve complètement assumée dans la Suite pour guitare électrique et flûte (1971). Enfin, "Flow my Dowland" (1994) pour voix et un insolite consort (vibraphone, harpe, clarinette, basson et cordes) est une transcription alla Stokowski du cycle de Dowland. Respect du texte mais orchestration amphigourique. Pour amateur de curiosités. (Jérôme Angouillant)

Born in 1949, Fabio Vacchi stands among the pre-eminent Italian composers of his generation. Working primarily in the operatic field, he has had pieces staged at the Teatro alla Scala and by the Opéra Comique in Paris, the Opera de Lyon, the Maggio Musicale in Florence and the Teato Comunale in his home city of Bologna. Vacchi’s instrumental pieces have attracted similar high-profile performances. His chamber cycle Luoghi Immaginari (1987-1992), has been given across the world, including at the Salzburg Mozarteum conducted by Daniel Harding. Other pieces were commissioned by Claudio Abbado and by the Tokyo Quartet. The most substantial piece on this new collection of his chamber pieces was commissioned by the Swedish guitarist Magnus Andersson and first performed by him in 1997 as a guitar concerto; this Quintetto Notturno Concertante dates from 2012 and is a masterful condensation of the complexities of the original, rich instrumental texture, while preserving its fleeing moods and subtly shifting changes of harmony. At the other end of this collection, Livia Rado sings Flow my Dowland, a rapturous transformation of five songs by the Elizabethan lutenist, in which the original vocal part is richly embroidered by Vacchi’s own modern reimagination of the accompanying part, scored for a small ensemble of winds, strings, vibraphone and harp, to melting and magical effect. In between come a pair of solo works, though in fact Plynn quotes Britten’s Nocturnal after John Dowland as a study of harmonics on the guitar, evoking its most dreamlike and insubstantial timbres. The earliest piece here is a Suite for flute and guitar, dating from 1971. Here, the 22-year-old Vacchi is at his most experimental in terms of both form and harmony, employing extraneous elements such as pen and paper and sending both instruments to the extremes of their register, though always with an intrinsically idiomatic sympathy. Any listener with an ear for the Italian postwar avant-garde will find this newly recorded album full of delight and discovery.