“So I had a crazy idea: to compose a work starting from these seven notes that I would have directed only if I had survived”. The crowd (visionary and alive as ever) is Giovanni Allevi. The seven notes are those that correspond to the word “myeloma” according to the mathematical method that Bach uses to transform his name into counterpoint 14 of “The art of escape”. The work is the MM22 concert for cello and orchestra, that on July 5 (together with all its infinite successes, to the effects on the stage and affection of the thousands of people who will illuminate him from below, that stage) the master will bring to Taormina in a show entitled “Music of the soul”.
The summer of 2025 marks the return of Giovanni Allevi with four concert concerts: each evening will be enriched by a universal theme and the presence of an exceptional guest, creating a dialogue between sound and thought, between emotion and reflection (in Rome, June 20, at the spa of Caracalla the theme will be “the heresy”, and on stage with Allevi there will be Professor Alessandro Barbero; in Taormina, on July 5 at the Antico Theater will be ” Sacred », with the theologian Vito Mancuso; in Venice on 8 July at the Gran Teatro La Fenice the theme will be” La Foliaia “, introduced by the philosopher Luciano Floridi, in Florence, on July 19 at the Medici Park of PratoLino the key word will be” beauty “, with a guest Amalia Finzi, aerospace engineer).
“It is yes of my return with the orchestra, but the fundamental nucleus of this event is precisely the first execution of the MM22 concert”. MM stands for multiple myeloma (“which has a sweet voice while it is absolutely disturbing”), the 22 is the year of the composition. «He was born in the hospital during the long and painful hospitalization for the disease. After the initial despair, after despair at the time of diagnosis, I wondered how that word played and I discovered a melody of surprising beauty. Do, the bemolle, mi, yes, re, do, do ».
Associating sweetness and beauty with the word myeloma generates a great contrast.
«Contrasto is a particularly important term. In my story, human and inner, I experienced it. The darkness and light, fear and trust, the closure in myself and the total opening towards the world are all contrasts that represent the sacred, the main theme of Taormina ».
Where you will invite the theologian Vito Mancuso.
«And we will dialogue on this concept. We will be at the Antico Theater in Taormina. We will have Etna in the background, the sea around. They are earthly dimensions, they are dimensions of the spirit. We will reflect on the sacred in a Sicily that is imbued with it ».
The earth, the water, the fire that contrast. Which then in Sicilian means that they talk …
«In addition, I now feel close to the volcano as an image, as archetype would say Jung, because it is the destruction and also the construction of a new world, that what happened to my body. I could not fail to dedicate the Taormina concert to the sacred ».
Also compose music has to do with the sacred, the Christian faith begins with a creation …
«The feeling that accompanied me during the composition of the MM22 concert was the sacred sense of what was happening to me. As if I wanted to give an interpretation, a meaning to pain. Suffering, fragility, are the deepest nucleus of the human being. I wanted to tell, as in a diary made of notes, darkness and fear. The anguish, the wait, but also the hope of the future, the opening towards metaphysical scenarios, the return to a faith (I am traditionally Christian) and the movement towards light. I am convinced that these notes will have a healing power over me from two points of view: that of the body, because music will cross me and dream that my cells can be reinvigorated by this energy, and the spirit, because mine is a type of disease that puts you in front of the possibility of despair “.
Yours was a very little western way of facing pain.
“I inhabited the pain, I accepted it, I tried to welcome him because when he welcomes him the pain hurts.”
After Tomorrow (the single presented in Sanremo 74) who looked at tomorrow, on June 2, nostalgia was released (previewed at the Ossaka Expo with the Japanese Kizuna Chamber Orchestra, on the occasion of the celebrations of the Italian Republic Day) which turns back …
«Nostalgia is the one I tried in the hardest phase, for the distance from my family, for life that seemed to escape from me. A feeling that, in the 25 minutes of the MM22 concert, has embodied in the form of adage and which I wanted to extract as those pieces that today are called individuals. Here, here the contrast is also terminological ».
Very pop, transversal. Avant -garde!
«I struggle to put together the single word with the adage of the concert. But it is so. This is the beauty of the contemporary world, which has gone on and you have to stay inside it ».
But with Bach’s mathematical method have you already tried to hear how the word peace sounds?
«My Bemolle-to -re-re natural. Beautiful, beautiful! It starts in minor, then sad and then there is an opening. But it’s incredible, I never thought about it! You see that this method used Bach, and also has something Pythagoreic. In everything, in all words, in every concept there is a musical structure inside. Everything is music ».