LET GO is a meditation on change, its inevitability, and the need to embrace it with courage, surrender, and tenderness. Released in three EPs (Part I, Part II, Part III), this solo piano album picks up, through its 12 tracks, where I left off with AT NIGHT, ALONE, WITH YOU. Those songs explored “the sweetness and fragility […] but also the exhaustion and profound need for rest that accompany parenthood”; here the gaze widens to a truth that is as obvious as it is difficult to fully accept: everything is in constant flux, and our attempts to crystallize ourselves, others, and all the reality that surrounds us, to eternalize our brief experience of life, invariably resolve into nothingness, into a vain and meaningless effort, generating fear, disappointment, and frustration. On the contrary, if we understood that life – and music – would not be possible without change, without the passing of time, and became aware that, as Buddhists say with particular force, everything, big or small, from the stars in the sky to our daily thoughts, is subject to a cycle of birth, change, and cessation, tensions would dissolve and the possibility of a relationship of profound harmony with existence would open up.
A L B U M
In my early twenties, I had come to believe that death was the conditio sine qua non of making music, the ultimate guarantee of the passing of time, of the transformation and end of all things. Certainly not a great discovery, but, as always when something new enters your life for the first time, it had that flavor of definitive revelation that, at such an exuberant age, could not fail to take root. It also gave me a little pride, despite my lack of self-confidence, because it highlighted a particular sensitivity and added a certain impression of depth to a young man who, by definition, in the prime of his life, should be enjoying the journey rather than meditating on its inevitable conclusion.
However, it was a thought, an abstract concept, not a lived reality. Today it still is, but a little less so; it has become more tangible. I see it in my daughter as she grows up, different every day, a living representation of how everything changes. I feel it in my body, which is beginning to show the first signs of aging, and in a growing awareness of our vulnerability, that fragility that is no longer a philosophical idea but a daily presence, a discreet but insistent companion.
All this prompted me to reflect on the very meaning of identity. I am reminded of a book I read many years ago: The Teachings of Don Carlos, in which the author Victor Sanchez offered a practical reworking of Carlos Castaneda’s work. I remember that an entire chapter was devoted to how wrong, even harmful, it was to imprison ourselves in a set of definitions, as if we could truly say who we are once and for all and remain faithful to that statement forever. Many years later, during a stay in the United States, I had the opportunity to experience firsthand this suspension of the usual definitions I had of myself. It was something extraordinary, at times even intoxicating: far from my everyday context, free from established expectations, I found myself inhabiting dimensions of myself that until then had remained in the shadows or simply unexplored. When I returned to Italy, I brought this discovery with me, and the challenge of the following years was precisely to keep that door open, to resist the temptation to return to old habits once I was back among familiar expectations, people, and family dynamics.
The title LET GO speaks precisely to this: the understanding that we must give up static definitions of ourselves, the illusory comfort of saying “this is how I am” or “I have always been this way.” Life does not tolerate such rigidity. Instead, it asks us to remain open and accept that the person we were at twenty is not the person we are today. And this is not a loss, it is simply reality.
Musically, LET GO continues the aesthetic I developed in my solo piano works that I describe as my diary, where I tell stories and share reflections through an immediate and accessible language. The common thread is “Una vecchia melodia”, a theme that runs through the entire album, alternating with the other tracks in six progressive variations. Together, they represent this idea of transformation; with the sixth, in particular, there is a change in the nature of the theme, the result of the journey taken, symbolizing the transition from holding back to letting go, from contraction to expansion. It is like opening a hand that has been clenched for years: letting go does not mean giving up, but gaining space, breath, possibilities. The album dialogues with ideas of cyclical return, myth, family, and the sacred, themes drawn from my encounter with Marcello Veneziani’s Nostalgia degli Dei (Nostalgia for the Gods), a text that greatly struck my imagination. But it also embraces a radical simplicity, which culminates in the track that gives the album its title, Let Go, a piece so minimalist that it refuses to make any statement, offering itself only as an invitation to approach life with the freedom that comes from our spiritual dimension.
LET GO is music for those moments when we need to remember that everything passes, everything changes, not with anxiety, but with serenity and a deep sense of liberation.
S T O R I E S
The common thread running through the album is a theme I wrote in my early years at conservatory, when I was beginning to study composition more systematically. Revisiting it now, more than twenty years later, and exploring it in these six short variations has made me reflect on how far I’ve come since I was that young man.
UNA VECCHIA MELODIA (AN OLD MELODY)
I
The first variation presents the melody in its most essential form: a single melodic line suspended over a pedal note that sustains the entire piece, without a fixed rhythm, free to breathe. This is the starting point.
II
In the second, the harmonic context is added. This is actually the original version, which I wrote at the time as an introduction to a piano study. Here, the melody no longer resides in an empty space but expands, projecting itself into the vertical dimension of the chords, which in turn define its character.
III
In the third variation, the theme shifts to a darker register of the instrument and is supported by deep bass notes. The atmosphere becomes more somber, but at the same time the melody flows more smoothly through continuous figuration.
IV
In the fourth movement, an ostinato in the right hand, centered on a D minor chord, creates a soundscape. Beneath it, the theme emerges from the bass in longer notes, stretched out in time. Then, a third voice is added above it, which at first seems to merely accompany, but gradually takes on a more recognizable melodic profile, dialoguing with the theme until it echoes it directly at the end.
V
The fifth is the longest and most developed, a sort of synthesis of the previous ones. Its melodic material is essentially derived from the main theme, while the harmonic language revolves around the chromatic idea first introduced in the second variation; it also incorporates the continuous figuration of the third and the idea of dialogue between different voices explored in the fourth. It is the moment of greatest dynamic intensity on the album, but above all the point at which a transition from minor to major takes place, referring to the idea of transformation.
VI
The sixth variation is an exact rewriting of the second but reinterpreted in the new major key. The theme is the same, yet it has changed profoundly, like a hand that finally opens after clenching something for too long.
NOSTALGIA FOR THE GODS
Four pieces stem from my dialogue with Marcello Veneziani’s Nostalgia degli Dei, a book published in 2022 that explores fundamental concepts of our culture as if they were forgotten divinities worthy of rediscovery.
Rotas – Amor Fati
ROTAS – Amor Fati takes its name from the famous Sator Square, that ancient Latin palindrome inscription that can be read in all directions and whose meaning remains a mystery. I have always been fascinated by this idea of something that rotates on itself, remaining identical regardless of the direction in which it is viewed. After all, ever since we were children, backwards words and palindromes have had a special flavor and are perhaps among the few things that, even as adults, can reawaken that same childlike wonder. In the piece, the melody develops through different sections until it reaches a central point, where everything literally rotates: the melody moves from the high register to the low register, bringing with it the accompanying figuration, and retraces the path it has just taken. The subtitle, Amor Fati, invites us to fully embrace our destiny, whatever it may be, accepting even its returns and repetitions as a necessary part of the journey.
Ritorno – Regressus ad Uterum
RITORNO – Regressus ad Uterum is a sort of hypnotic piano mantra: the piece develops on a bass line of just three notes, without ever modulating, entrusting minimal melodic variations – always within a constant rhythm – with the only margin for transformation. The melody gradually expands and then closes in on itself, according to a modular structure (ABACBDA’) that reinforces the idea of cyclicality and return. The overall effect recalls the sensory and emotional experience of a fetus in the womb: the flow of blood, the beating of the heart, a muffled dimension of absolute protection and primary intimacy. In this suspended space, the piece deliberately renounces a defined personality, symbolically reflecting the condition of a human being still in the making, devoid of identity contours but immersed in an original listening to the world.
Famiglia
FAMIGLIA is a piece that refers to something we all have in common, despite the infinite differences in our stories, roles, and relationships. The link between the music and the title emerges in the alternation, not always regular, of two different patterns: one full and stable, the other slightly unbalanced, as if something were always missing. This irregularity symbolically suggests that a person’s life cannot be exhausted in the fundamental dimension of family: we are not only children, parents, or partners, but individuals who need to feel in balance with ourselves to truly feel good with others. The music moves with natural cantabile and a widespread serenity, evoking the idea of family relationships lived without disruption, in an overall harmonious atmosphere.
Mito (Ordo ab Chao)
Myth is a vast and layered concept, to which entire lives could be devoted; yet, in its essence, it is something very simple: a story. It is the oldest way in which human beings have sought to give shape to experience, transmitting truths that do not need scientific proof to be recognized as such. Music attempts to move in this direction, telling a story with a beginning, a development, a climax, and a deliberately open ending. It is clear that a small, intimate piano piece cannot claim to exhaust or explain the semantic immensity of the word myth: however, it can allude to it, suggest it, transforming itself into a personal narrative that starts from private experiences and reflections to seek a broader and more shareable resonance.
CREPUSCOLO MARINO (SEA TWILIGHT)
This piece dates back almost twenty years, and for a long time it remained in a drawer, like a private note for which I had not yet found a place. It is an accompanied melody that gradually expands to occupy the entire range of the instrument, progressively opening up in the sound space and then folding back and returning to the initial quiet. The inspiration came from a very simple image: twilight on the sea, that suspended moment when it is no longer night but not yet day, no longer day but not yet night. A time of transition, a fragile and silent threshold. The music seeks to inhabit that very intermediate space, allowing the sound to accompany a slow and almost imperceptible transformation, as happens in those moments when things end and begin without us really noticing.
LET GO
The final track, which gives the entire album its title, is one of the simplest I have ever written: three chords and a melody line so subtle that it seems merely decorative. It is music made more of space than sound, more of silence than affirmation. This piece brings together and fulfills many of the ideas that run through the entire work: the abandonment of rigid definitions, the renunciation of the need to prove or explain. For me, as a composer, this piece also represents a gesture of freedom: to stop feeling the need to impress, to build complex architectures, to leave a clear mark. It is an invitation to encounter life with the simplicity and freedom that come from our spiritual dimension. Sometimes the best thing we can do is say less, demand less, and in that empty space discover who we could really be.