Mandolins Sound From Italy

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 1980

Label: Music Scene

THE INSTRUMENT
Mandolin, a stringed musical instrument belonging to the lute family, with a deep, pear-shaped back. The Neapolitan has four pairs of strings — the lower usually of gut spun over with silver or copper, the upper of steel only — which are set in vibration by a plectrum. The strings are tuned in fifths, and there are 17 frets across the fingerboard. The rarer Milanese type has five or six pairs of strings. The mandolino originated in Italy as a popular instrument, but was introduced into England in 1713 in concert, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed a serenade for mandolin in Act II of Don Giovanni, and Ludwig van Beethoven wrote a piece for the instrument. Related to the mandolin is the Spanish «bandurria» which is played with a plectrum but has a flat back.

THE RECORDINGS
IVO MELETTI is one of the most gifted mandolinists in Italy also an able and versatile guitarist. For this production he has played with his mandolinistic group constituted by young pupils of his school in Milan together with the «soundmaker» inventions by GIAMPIERO BONESCHI. The result is excellent and stimulant because there are mandolins of today brights and «young» but always romantics and melodious! The stage of this fascinating recordings is the bay of Naples, his charming sea and the magic isles but all the music on this album written by IVO MELETTI is suitable not only for radio plays but designed as background for light romantic stories, nights scene, panorama, nature, memory, young love, holiday-trip, beachlive, passion, play of colours, etc.