Marco Giacintucci

The music of Nicolas Tzortzis, Athens-born (in 1978) and now a resident of Paris, often involves other art-forms, not least video and elements of theatre. Two of the works on this album, part of a trilogy inspired by surrealist films by Man Ray, are intended to mirror the unsettling discontinuities of Ray’s films in musical surrealism of their own. Another, ‘… de ce qui est en lutte’, has its starting point in an aphorism of Heraclitus, and seeks coherence in extremes of contrast, throwing ideas against one another like images in a kaleidoscope. And What the wave meant – the title comes from a song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers – processes the stages of grief.

Giovanni Battista Gervasio was a significant personality in the musical scene of 'stile galante' of the second half of 18th century; composer, virtuoso and teacher, he studied and improved the four-courses mandolin, which was first built in Naples in that period. Thanks to him this instrument became popular and technically refined as it is nowadays. The mandolinist Marco Giacintucci, after the production of the sonatas for solo mandolin (Tactus TC720702), faces the repertoire dedicated to the six duets for two mandolins published in Amsterdam in 1786, in this world premiere recording.