Search - Giovanni Fusco :: Music for Michelangelo Antonioni

Moodscape : An Unexpected Aural Treat

Cabir Davis | 04/23/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Giovanni Fusco may not be the first name to come to mind when discussing the music scores of age-old art films, but he is the most underrated and unappreciated film musician who worked within the Italian film fraternity. He is perhaps best known for scoring the music for most of the films of Michaelangelo Antonioni (except "La Notte"), and he also worked on the entire score for Alain Resnais' masterpiece "Hiroshima Mon Amour".



This timely CD gives us passages from all of these films (those by Antonioni that is), with extensive notes on where each track is from. My absolute favorites would have to be the musical pieces from "Cronaca di un Amore", and of course the sparse instrumentation of "L'Avventura". On a side note, his work on these two films won him the Silver Ribbon (TWICE!) from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists back in 1951 and 1961.



Of special note are the inclusions from "L'Eclisse", which I still consider Antonioni's greatest cinematic achievement. While most Italian scores of the era were brash and often used operatic strings to convey emotion (try listening to the music of Italian epic "Rocco and his Brothers" to understand what I mean), Fusco traded in these loud sounds for a more eclectic, yet straight-forward theme that often sounded repetitive. The score for "L'Avventura" and "L'Eclisse" actually often overlap, but you can tell that they do have their distinct personalities.



A record of this sort will never be a huge seller, even within the art-film loving community. But taken as it is, it works as musical document of great historical significance. It is listenable even without the visuals, and compared to modern day composers such as Lisa Gerrard, its obvious that Giovanni Fusco had a gift that was well beyond its' time.



For those interested in further details, this CD collects all the important musical passages that Fusco created for Antonioni, from 1948 to 1964. This includes the obscure sounds from "N.U", as well as the final scores from "Il Deserto Rosso".



Four well-deserved Stars."