Edition 2014
It would be hard to imagine a major retrospective of Federico Fellini's work without a salute to the composer he worked with so closely, Fellini's films are simply unthinkable without Nino Rota's superb music. The influence of fairground and circus music may predominate but Rota's versatility can also be clearly heard in this concert performed by the Brussels philharmonic and conducted by Dirk Brossé.
No one has set the world of a film director to music as successfully as Nino Rota did for the work of Federico Fellini. Simply hearing the first notes is enough to conjure up scenes by the Italian maestro. The first half of the concert is dedicated to Rota's compositions for other directors. These include operatic scores for two Luchino Visconti classics but also the heart-wrenchingly dramatic and romantic music for Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. Of course we could not leave out the music that brought Rota worldwide fame: his score for Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, whose southern waltz melody became one of the most recognisable pieces of music in the history of film.