Thursday 1 November 2012

Nino Rota - the great maestro of film music

"When I’m creating at the piano, I tend to feel happy; but - the eternal dilemma - how can we be happy amid the unhappiness of others? I'd do everything I could to give everyone a moment of happiness. That's what's at the heart of my music."
Nino Rota

If I would be asked to name the best ever composer of film music, I would not hesitate to choose Nino Rota (1911 - 1979), the great Italian maestro of film scores. Rota was not only a prolific film composer - the list of his film scores includes at least 173 films - but above all the musical quality of his scores was - and still is - astounding. In addition to the film music, Rota found the time to compose a lot of "ordinary" music, e.g. ten operas, five ballets and a countless number of works for orchestra.


The list of directors Rota co-operated with during his long career includes many of the greatest directors of his time, most of them of Italian, but also many others. Here are just a few of them: Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Vittorio de Sica, Franco Zeffirelli, Francis Ford Coppola, King Vidor, Sergei BondarchukLina Wertmüller, Jan Troell.

Here a five of my personal Rota favorites:








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