Walter Marchetti

2006 release. Music: the foundation of that presence in which we find ourselves shows itself as pure negative. Everything is founded on a demonstration of its own negativity: as awareness of its being negative, and does not look for an escape into a future presence that is an objective future, but, accepting its negativity, makes of this self-negation the real act, the true reality -- the true foundation, the real and actual continuity: this is music's sense. Utopia Andata e Ritorno is the title of the new composition by Walter Marchetti, recorded in Milano in 2005. It has two parts, each one CD long. The first part, "L'andata," puts together two former recordings of Marchetti -- the recording of a real storm and a recital for solo piano. This is not the first time that Marchetti mixes a piano solo recital with the recording of a natural live event, thus creating a "piano concert." The second CD, "Il ritorno," reverses the direction of the first record and literally destroys itself. In the first part of this work, Marchetti puts music successfully in the place it has to have today: on the road to renewal in contact with reality, a reality that is a synonym for vacuity, that is the interdependence of phenomena, music, reality, technology. There is nothing mimetic or anecdotal in this work. The storm is a real storm and the solo piano recital is a modern work of pure music, without the excesses that the society expects of a piano recital from composer and virtuoso player. Pure music, in the best sense of the word. "L'andata" is one of the great works of music of our time, or, as José Luis Castillejo remarked, "it may be the best modern piano concert since Brahms." In the second part, "Il ritorno," sound waves are deformed when one tries a reverse hearing and the return trip becomes an aural nightmare. Of course, avant-gardism has made us accustomed to noises and silences and to the arbitrary idea that anything is music. "Il ritorno" announces the end of musical avant-gardism and its technocratic aspirations. It points to the end of music avant-gardism because it exposes the technological manipulation not only of technology beyond its powers, but also the manipulation of both music and sound. "Il ritorno" is such a problematic work also because its subject is failure and impossibility. Three-folded digipack 2CD edition. It includes a 32-page booklet with essays by Water Marchetti, Gabriele Bonomo and José Luis Castillejo.