Nelle settimane subito dopo il lavoro di revisione della inedita Danza Argentina di Carlos Pedrell (1878 – 1941) ho avuto il piacere di ricevere la dedica dal compositore newyorkese Thomas Schuttenhelm “RECHORDATIO – Homage to Angelo Gilardino”. La composizione per chitarra sola è adesso pubblicata dall’editore canadese Les Productions d’OZ con cui mi pregio collaborare dal 2019.
Meglio delle dirette parole dell’autore non potremmo chiedere:
“Rechordatio is both an act of remembrance and a gesture of gratitude. The piece grows from two musical relationships that have been deeply meaningful to me: my encounters with the Italian composer Angelo Gilardino and my long-standing admiration for the Sardinian guitarist Cristiano Porqueddu. I first met both artists in 2009 at the Guitar Foundation of America summer festival in Ithaca, New York, where Gilardino was inducted into the Hall of Fame. I had traveled there specifically to meet him, already aware of his importance as a central figure in modern guitar composition. At that same festival, I heard Porqueddu perform selections from Gilardino’s extensive catalogue. His playing made an immediate impression: an extraordinary command of color, timbre, and dynamic nuance, combined with an interpretive clarity that seemed to reveal the inner life of the music.
In the years that followed, I corresponded with Gilardino and was fortunate to visit him at his home in Vercelli. Our conversations centered on composition. At the time, he was working on his Sette Preludi, and I remember listening with him as he described his process in detail.
Porqueddu has since become one of the most important advocates for Gilardino’s music, both in performance and on record. His recordings—particularly his landmark interpretation of Gilardino’s Studi di virtuosità e di trascendenza set an exceptional standard. In live performance, his playing takes on an almost otherworldly quality, where precision and imagination are held in rare balance.
The immediate impetus for Rechordatio came after hearing Porqueddu perform at Carnegie Hall in October 2022. That concert, and our time together afterward, remained vivid in my memory. The following morning, I began sketching this piece as a way of bringing these two figures: composer and performer, into a single musical space.
At the core of the work is a simple but generative idea: the pitches A–G–E, derived from Angelo’s name and realized here as A♭–G–E. This three-note cell functions as both harmonic and motivic seed. It is first heard as a chord in the opening measure: the “Angelo chord”, and returns throughout the piece in varied forms, acting almost as a refrain. In this way, the music continually recalls its origin, much as memory itself returns, reshaped but persistent.
The title Rechordatio reflects this idea of remembrance. While recordatio (Latin: recollection) would be the conventional form, the added “h” foregrounds the chord, the sounding object through which memory becomes audible. The piece thus becomes not only a memorial, but an ongoing act of recollection in sound.
More broadly, the work reflects my engagement with Gilardino’s musical language, especially his approach to polyphony. His writing expands the expressive possibilities of the guitar through finely controlled layers of line and color, often shaped by subtle changes of string and position. In Rechordatio, these ideas are not imitated but absorbed and reimagined.
The piece is offered in homage to Gilardino, whose legacy continues to resonate, and to Porqueddu, whose artistry ensures that this legacy remains vividly alive in sound.” – Thomas Schuttenhelm, May 2026
La composizione è distribuita in formato cartaceo e digitale dal sito dell’editore. 👉🏻 Link diretto.
La composizione va ad arricchire la collana di opere del XX e del XXI secolo che sto curando per l’editore e che è visionabile da qui.
