Sinfonia Tascabile

The “Sinfonia Tascabile", commissioned by Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa in 2016, was composed for the same orchestra as "Pierino e il lupo" by Prokofiev, with the precise purpose of being combined with this masterpiece of the Russian composer to complete the program of a short concert for young people. The brevity of the work, necessary not to bore an audience that perhaps attends a concert for the first time, and that waits above all to listen to the "highlight", namely precisely "Pierino and the wolf" (the recommended location for the Pocket Symphony is "before" the fairy tale in music) 

Despite its brevity, necessary not to bore an audience that perhaps attends a concert for the first time and that waits to listen to "Pierino and the wolf" as the highlight of the event (I recommend the Pocket Symphony to be played before Prokofiev’s fable), the composition has all the most basic characteristics of a true symphony. The movements are the four canonical: an initial "Allegro molto" in which a lively theme in 7/8 alternates with a lyrical narrative parenthesis, an "Andante dolcissimo", entrusted above all to the woods and the bows, a Scherzo (Allegro) and another Allegro finale as the fourth movement.

The musical language tries to be at the same time captivating and not trivial. It also does not deny, especially in the two final movements, to have some small educational purpose. I tried in a few minutes to create for the young audience a sort of "sample" of what they can hear in a concert hall, from the romantic to the circus, even with trespasses in the field of opera music.

 The whole thing is seasoned with a good dose of irony. In the final movement, moreover, in some moments, the "families" of the orchestra work separately, winds and woods alone, strings alone both plucking and with the bow, brass and percussion in a game of back and forth. All this may perhaps create a certain curiosity about the timbre of the instruments.