FAUSTO ROMITELLI (1963-2004): Dead City Radio. Audiodrome for Orchestra, EnTrance for Soprano, 16 Exectuants and Electronics, Flowing down too slow for Strings, Percussion and 2 Digital Samplers, The Nameless City for String Orchestra and Bell.
Catalogue Number: 10J122
Label: Stradivarius
Reference: STR 33723
Format: CD
Price: $17.98
Description: These works seem calculated to disturb; they are haunted by a sense of disintegration, even decay. This is not to suggest that they occupy some kind of formless, primal scream territory; they are constructed with an acute sensitivity to timbre and form, though in both cases of a fluid, organic type. influenced by spectralism, the composer's sound-world is charged with dissonant high harmonics, glissandi, microtones and bell sounds, both literal and implied. However, obsessive ostinati of a post-romantic, quasi-symphonic kind not infrequently emerge to propel the music forward, as in the central section of 'Flowing ' (which does indeed slow down like some vast machine coming to exhausted rest) or the opening gestures of 'Audiodrome' with their distorted R. Strauss quotation. This uneasy, neo-expressionistic canvas finally does devolve into electronic noise,and throughout there is a feeling of desolation, of structured cities and civilizations barely recognisable and without meaning in their final stages of disintegration; a nightmare-scape right out of William S. Burroughs. Donatienne Michel-Dansac (soprano), Scottish Chamber Orchestra; Peter Rundel.