Hailing from a family of musicians, guitarist and composer Bruno Battisti D’Amario (b.1937) trained at the Conservatorio Musicale di Santa Cecilia in his native Rome, where he studied under Benedetto Di Ponio and Mario Gangi. In 1960 he met Ennio Morricone, who involved him in many collaborations as lead guitarist (classical and electric) on his film soundtracks. He also took composition lessons from Morricone, thus establishing a solid working relationship that lasted more than 20 years. Alongside his decorated career as a guitarist, Battisti D’Amario’s activity as a composer is noteworthy, including works for guitar (both solo and in chamber ensembles) and for orchestra. A highlight is his work I Tarocchi (The Tarot), in which the composer sets the 22 cards of the Major Arcana to music for guitar and magnetic tape.

Guitarist Adriano Sebastiani met Bruno Battisti D’Amario in 1986 and studied with him in Naples for five years as an undergraduate. Beyond the usual teacher–pupil bond, a deep mutual esteem and beautiful friendship later developed between them. The idea for this recording was born in September 2022, when Battisti D’Amario informed Sebastiani he had written and dedicated a new work for solo guitar, Contrasts, to him. This led to the recording project of all Battisti D’Amario’s works for solo guitar informed by in-depth work with the composer. His sole piece for two guitars was added at a later stage.

Battisti D’Amario knows the guitar perfectly, exploring all its timbres and colours, creating fantastic soundscapes, sophisticated harmonies and flowing melodies. Contrasts, dedicated to the recording artist, is a work with a modern and resolute character alternating lyrical and melancholic moments with others that are stormy or mysterious. Nostalgia is an explicit homage to the composer’s late wife Dolores: a song of infinite sweetness, imbued with deep sadness and melancholy.

The Four Impressions are dedicated to four famous impressionist painters: Monet, Van Gogh, Renoir and Degas. Una Fantasia per Ennio needs no introduction: the best-known themes from Morricone’s Western films are reviewed with great harmonic and contrapuntal mastery, demanding great technical commitment from the performer.

The Piccola Suite for guitar is divided into four movements: an opening Prelude that unfolds with an ingenious and rapid arpeggio formula in the right hand, a Dance with a rhythmic-melodic character reminiscent of South America, a simply delightful Berceuse that presents rarefied and dreamy atmospheres and finally an explosive final Allegro structured in the form of a rondo.

The programme concludes with the work for two guitars, Dr. Sound, an anagram of the Italian words for ‘North’ and ‘South’, inspired by the music of the two Americas, with particular reference to Gershwin’s harmonic concepts (North) and Brazilian music (South).