Daniele Roccato / Ludus Gravis Ensemble STEFANO SCODANIBBIO Alisei

The highly creative bass player Stefano Scodanibbio (1956-2012) also composed extraordinary music for double bass. Alisei (Trade Winds) features his compositions for solo bass, for two basses, and for bass ensemble. Among them is a world premiere recording of Ottetto, an often breath-taking thirty-minute compendium of all the extended techniques he invented or developed throughout his life. “It is his great spiritual legacy”, says Daniele Roccato, who co-founded the Ludus Gravis bass ensemble with Scodanibbio. As solo performer, Roccato rises to the challenges of Due pezzi brillanti, a piece which pushes virtuosity to its limits, and “makes the bass sing in its own true voice” on the title composition. Da una certa nebbia, for two basses, also a premiere recording, pays implicit tribute to the work of Morton Feldman.

Daniele Roccato first heard Stefano Scodanibbio in Paris in 2008: “I listened, thrilled as he unleashed that immense energy of sound, shaping it all the while.” The following year, Roccato invited Scodanibbio to a bass festival in Perugia and it was there that the Ludus Gravis ensemble was founded. The two bassist/composers came to share a deep friendship, although active collaboration as performers was cut short by Scodanibbio falling ill with motor neuron disease which, by 2010, made it impossible for him to continue playing the bass. Roccato travelled to Mexico in November 2010 to help him work on the score of the Ottetto. “I left Cuernavaca with a kind of storyboard of the score,” Roccato writes in the liner notes, “containing all the indications relating to expression, articulation and dynamics.” Back in Italy he began working with Ludus Gravis to bring the multiple techniques on which the piece was based to life. In the meantime, the first pages of the final score arrived from Mexico. “Later Stefano joined us to help us prepare for the premiere.” The first part of the piece was premiered at the Angelica Festival in Bologna in May 2011. The first complete performance of the Ottetto took place at the Venice Biennale in October 2012, nine months after Scodanibbio’s death. (ECM Records)