This month has seen the release of two new videos produced by OMNI on-Location. Today was my first opportunity to catch up with one of them. Ironically, the music being performed is “Toccata Ritoccata,” composed by Marco De Biasi. This was not the first De Biasi video. At the end of last year, the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts recorded him performing all three movements of La Catedral, the three-movement suite by Agustín Barrios. As I observed at that time, De Biasi had been contending with focal dystonia since 2000.
Leonardo De Marchi playing music by Marco De Biasi in a printing press museum (screen shot from YouTube video courtesy of the Omni Foundation)
“Toccata Ritoccata” was originally composed for six-string guitar. However, the polyphony was so rich that it was subsequently adapted for ten-string guitar by Maurice Ohana and Narciso Yepes. This is the version that was performed by Leonardo De Marchi for OMNI on-Location. It was captured on video at Tipoteca Italiana, a printing press museum in Cornuda, Italy. As can be seen in the screen shot, the printing gear is on display just as the guitarist is.
What is probably most important about this performance is that more strings allow for more sympathetic resonance among those strings not immediately being plucked. This makes for richer sonorous qualities, and De Biasi consistently knows how to elicit those sonorities. Thus, while encountering a composition for the first time is always a “journey of discovery,” this particular journey involves not only the notes being played by the guitarist but also the sympathetic response by the strings themselves. Most likely, the journey will yield new discoveries with subsequent visits to this video.
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