Nino Rota

Only months after ASV's selection of chamber music by Nino Rota, which I reviewed in the May issue, here is another disc to prove that his output was not restricted to his highly effective film scores. This one is by an expert Milanese group, newly formed by the pianist Massimo Palumbo. Its programme overlaps with ASV's in the two postwar trios; at slightly slower speeds, Chandos's Ensemble Nino Rota gets rather more out of these essays in very mild modernism than ASV's Ex Novo Ensemble.

This disc pays homage to the concert and symphonic work of Nino Rota, a composer who is mostly known for his outstanding film scores including the unforgettable music of the “Godfather” movies. It features a piano concerto and a symphony based around a love song.

Inspired by the works of Italian medieval writer/poet Boccaccio (the Decameron), Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, and Vittorio de Sica each directed a short starring Anita Ekberg, Romy Schneider, and Sophia Loren, respectively; Italian soundtrack heavyweights Nino Rota and Armando Trovajoli provided the necessary musical accompaniment. The result was the film Boccaccio 70 and music that frames a kaleidoscope of styles with dramatic panache. Trovajoli, in particular, mixes it up with cha-cha-chas, march pieces, waltzes, circus themes, and jazz – the highlight, though, is his Latin vocal feature, "Soldi! Soldi! Soldi!," sung by a surprisingly effective Loren. Unlike Trovajoli, Rota doesn't focus on one style per piece, but instead fills his symphonic-worthy sides with a seamless blend of many of the same styles, peppering the landscape with trademark doses of pipe-organ moodiness, can-can rhythms, and dusky string passages. And as far as jazz goes, Rota furnishes the Visconti segment with some very worthy combo ballads redolent of Miles Davis' own soundtrack venture, Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud.