FROM HELL (2008)

Movements

I - Hell's gate and Caron

II - Paolo and Francesca

III - Scherzo: Barbariccia, Cagnazzo and Calcabrina

IV - Finale: The emperor of the kingdom dolorous

PROGRAM NOTES

Dante’s Divina Commedia is one of the books that has had a greater impact on me. Full of images described using a sublime poetic language, this work is still nowadays a central piece of our culture. More interestingly, even after several hundreds of years, it feels relevant to our culture and society.

The book encapsulates one of the most impressive love stories ever written. This is one of the reasons why the first part of the book, Inferno (Hell), is the part that had the greatest evocative power to me. During Dante’s trip across Hell, horrific scenes are intertwined with the love story between Dante and Beatrice, which is the main storyline for the whole book.

To write this piece, I selected four of the scenes from the Inferno section that both impacted me the most and that I found to be the most evocative. At the same time, I tried to use scenes that could shape the whole piece cohesively, creating an interesting musical narrative.