VA - Domenico Famà: Fragments de temps (Flute, Guitar and Vocal Works. Chamber Music) (2021)

To speak about the music by Domenico Famà, a young but already well-known Sicilian musician, means to speak about a world of references which brings us closer to the great art of the early twentieth century. This composer’s sources of inspiration are manifold. Before becoming a composer, indeed, he began a felicitous path as an instrumentalist and performer (he is in fact an excellent guitarist and orchestra conductor). The matter of which sounds are made is therefore not alien to him. He is familiar with the actual “doing” of those who shape the sounds, beyond thinking them and turning them into language. His is therefore a multifaceted personality, and he thinks about music as constituting the crossroads of suggestions, a melting pot of horizons allowing different Times to meet beyond Time. His main source of inspiration is twentieth-century French music; almost all of the works recorded here are indebted to that cultural world. It is important, in this preliminary stage, to clarify that it is not a process of imitation. Being a true Sicilian, Famà preserves the deep ideals of Greek culture and philosophy in his consciousness as a man rooted in Magna Graecia. Art is channelled through the practice of poetry; as Plato and Aristotle teach us, it is mimesis, but it is also accompanied by mathesis, i.e. learning and knowledge. It is not, therefore, a model to re-propose, but rather an aesthetic affinity which becomes a personal possession, an ideal and stylistic signature to which one should refer. The music by Fauré, Debussy, Falla is the track, the suspended rope on which Domenico walks in balance. This path is indeed all but easy, because it is always threatened by the risk of clichés and déjà-vu. Only by totally adhering to this poetic dimension, one finds – as in fact happens – expressive originality and authenticity.
Getting to his writing, we find, from the very first piece in this programme, a backwards leap in time, declared already in its title and form, i.e. the Sonata per flauto e pianoforte “Fragments de temps”. The composer believes that he can recover time past and lost in a fragmentary form, which is never entirely present; however, it suffices to our emotionality for re-evoking the colours of that world. All this is nicely embodied since the inception of the Sonata’s very first movement, opening with an Introduction which is also used as the second movement’s cornerstone. The climate of mystery and waiting, grounded on a melodic fragment (E-F#-G-G#) on which the entire building is structured, dissolves itself into the diatonicism of the Allegro molto, quasi presto. It is impossible not to find, in this work, the elegance and lightness of certain textures by Poulenc and Ibert.
If possible, references become even more explicit in the two pieces by the title of Due impressioni parigine. Here, the composer expressly alludes, in the two titles, to the legendary figure of the Montmartre painter, Maurice Utrillo, as well as to two of his paintings. One of them, a youthful work, has a “fauve” inspiration (La porte Saint Martin), while the other is more intimate and complex (Métamorphose de la folie). These two movements are starkly contrasted, just as are the two paintings to which they are inspired. The piano’s continuous and flowing movement sustains and develops, in a coloristic sense, the flute’s melody in the former piece; in the latter, a more articulated, meditative and fragmented structure represents the introspective element proper to the style of the French painter’s last period.
In clear continuity with the Sonata’s atmosphere and with the use of the flute (an instrument evidently cherished by the composer), Famà takes on shorter and less structured forms, aiming at the impression’s efficacy, and letting the transparency of Vinteuil’s music resound, in an ideal which is reminiscent of Proust.
A Sonatina for flute and guitar – Lumières dans l’obscurité – represents the composer’s homage to Baudelaire’s poetry, and in particular to the famous Albatross in which the poet’s condition is metaphorically told. The composer’s writing is characterized, in the first section (after the introduction, Grave oscillando, quasi recitativo, with its metaphysical tone) by a dialectical relationship between rhythmical elements and a liquid scoring. This is interrupted by the powerful suspension of the Danse du Bourreau, a moment in which both instruments proceed homorhythmically, side by side, marking the passing of time. Yet another homage to Baudelaire’s poetry is found in the two works for soprano and piano, Petite chanson and Rêverie. These songs were conceived as a homage to Gabriel Fauré; their specificity lies in the fact that the composer wrote lyrics of his own, freely inspired precisely by the Fleurs du mal. Both works mirror the composer’s attention to the word, and the voice is accompanied in its lines by a static harmony, exalting its inflections.
In the last two pieces, Fragmentos and Metamorphosis, we find the composer paying homage to two figures he cherished, and who were his first sources of inspiration; this happened at a dawning stage of his art, when he was discovering his own instrument. These two figures’ names are connected to the guitar literature, and, in the latter case, also to the composer’s biography. The former is Manuel de Falla, who composed the famous Homenaje, evoked here through a work with a markedly introspective component. The latter is Angelo Gilardino, the composer’s teacher, who inspired a piece with a more extroverted character, one rich in contrasts, grounded on the alternation between meditative and more energetic moments.
Although this is the fruit of a decade-long activity, Famà’s palette is large, and includes different instrumental fields and diverse forms. In all stages of this first creative period, this young artist puts in play his extraordinary evocative ability, and authoritatively shows how deeply his poetic vein is nourished by art and history.

Album Notes by Luigi Attademo