On the 80th birthday of the great Austrian writer Peter Handke – Nobel Prize for Literature in 2019 and co-writer of the film Il Cielo Sopra Berlino by Wim Wenders – the original score as composed by the Italian maestro Remo Anzovino is released for the first time for the docu-film released in 2017 Canto alla Duration. Homage to Peter Handke, which was directed by Italian filmmaker and producer Didi Gnocchi, who’s other credits include : Hitler versus Picasso and the Others, Napoleon, In the name of Art, Van Gogh: of Wheat Fields and Clouded Skies, Hermitage, Gauguin in Tahiti. Paradise Lost, which stars Handke himself alongside the great actor Bruno Ganz. All of which were superbly scored by Remo Anzovino.
Canto alla Duration, is a poem in verse based on the concept of duration that was published in 1986. What is the duration? According to Handke, but also according to some mystics, it is a concrete and abstract entity. Concrete because the author sees it in the little things in life, in encounters, in people above all (the image of the child who is already an adult and perhaps old is admirable) and abstract because it cannot be defined for what it is, but only for what it is not. The text is linked to memories, locations, and the effort of living there each movement being linked to a change of habits, to the moments in which the poet, after greeting his friends, returns home alone. The places of the soul are the result of the journeys he makes, of certain situations, but the duration cannot be defined even based on experience: It is an achievement and presupposes pain and fatigue. Not everyone is allowed to understand it: it can be intuited through epiphanies in an object or a person, which are permeated with joy that warms the heart and makes us intuit a truth or an Illusion.
The exquisite music composed by Remo Anzovino translates Handke’s masterpiece into sound, restoring its deepest meaning, underlining, and supporting but also at the same time adding to the films content and becoming an integral and important component within it. The score is beautifully written and wonderfully performed, its delicate and fragile tone poems at times being haunting and infiltrating the listeners sub-conscious.
There is a fragility and an affecting air to this work, a work that is filled with emotive and touching musical interludes and scattered throughout there is a sound that is fragility personified. The music is totally consuming as it adds colour, creates textures and conveys moods and atmospheres. It is in my opinion probably one of the composers best works, subtle, affecting and mesmerizing. Recorded and mixed in the hills of Rimini by Cristian Bonato at Numeri Recording (Coriano) and mastered by Giovanni Versari.
The music is performed by the composer on piano who is accompanied by Federico Mecozzi (violin, viola) and Anselmo Pelliccioni (cello, double bass). The score also contains the vocal Across the duration, lyrics, music and arrangement by Remo Anzovino, sung by the violinist Federico Mecozzi. An absorbing documentary with a score that is expressive, effective and immersing. Available now on digital platforms.
MOVIE MUSIC INTERNATIONAL. (MMI) . 