http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n76uYrjqd7Q
Live improvisation in Db Ionian
The Ionian Mode, built on the Ionian scale, has a low tension degree and remarkable stability, which allows the Mode to convey sensations of balance and tranquility.
Many pianists have been captivated by their own cultural origins. In the last twenty years, the reconsideration of the relationships between East and West has prompted producers and professionals interested in promoting many projects of musicians who found themselves along that sort of looking-glass path, which goes from Morocco to the Middle East and then up through Europe to reach Russian ethnicities (see the style of ECM pianists). But very few have taken into consideration the oldest derivations involving the entire Mediterranean area in Oriental-type modality: in this sense, the pianist Giuseppe Perna is an oasis in a desert. His two most recent solo piano CDs, just published, retrace this "virtuoso" union between classical expression—as we have known it from Romanticism to Debussy's Impressionism—and the theories of harmonic relationships usable through modal scales. But it is a path made of originality that, while having the usual reference figures as its temporal stylistic substrate, escapes any repetition because it approaches modality in depth not only as the result of specific artistic preparation (which you are now coming to know through his articles on this blog), but also as a heartfelt penetration into the implied objects of the compositions.
"Taormina" is the most mature example of Perna-oriented, which for the first time tackles the "risky" format of long-duration pieces. The thoughtful shadows of "Il fuoco dell'Etna" alternate with the melodic openings to beauty in "Canto della Sicilia"; "La Valle dell'Agrò" establishes a new contact between ancient Western history and Oriental-style mysticism, a splendid piece played entirely in full exploration of the harmonic possibilities drawn from modal improvisation, just as in "Canto per Francesca Martinez Paris" one also perceives a complete sense of drama in the development of the composition. "Canto per Taormina" admits, alongside the doubt and mystery that constitute the leitmotif of the piece, splendid harmonic-instrumental oases: a contrast handled in a very personal way, wonderfully enriched by the occasional slowing of the tempos.
