progenesis

A suite of pieces composed in the 70’s by the very famous British group Genesis.
The transcription has been accomplished with great ability by the Canadian pianist David Myers, who has been able to create a bridge between the world of classical music and the progressive rock universe, obtaining an extraordinarily beautiful version for piano. Not a simple pianistic reduction but a complex and circumstantial work of sonorous research which nevertheless maintains the authentic and articulate harmonic structure of every single piece unaltered. During the recital the best pages of the following albums will be performed: Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound, A Trick of the Tail and Wind and Wuthering, The “Golden period” of the Genesis, in the original and winning piano transcription by David Myers, who exalts the complex and articulate mosaic of sounds down to the smallest details.

In the 70’s when I first approached the music by the Genesis, I was attending the conservatory, and it was the piano introduction of Firth of Fifth that attracted my attention to the British group, leaving me fascinated at first hearing. In short, together with Bach, Schumann, Debussy, Bartok, authors that I loved, heard and studied in that period, there was also a space dedicated to the Genesis. Strangely enough, I found melodic, harmonic, rythmic and structural fragments in their music that led me back to the above mentioned composers. In actual fact, the Genesis were the forerunners of that new current of composition named progressive rock which brought various groups (to name a few King Crimson, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso, Premiata Forneria Marconi) to conceive a new musical expression which included elements that derived from other musical genres, such as classical music, jazz, experimental music and electronic music. The original group of the Genesis formed by Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford began their rise in the musical world in the mid 60’s, in the shadow of the famous private school in the neighbourhood of London, Charterhouse School.

Later Phil Collins and Steve Hackett joined the group, originating the “Golden Period” formation, where the peculiarity of each component, alternating and merging together, originated the Genesis style, unique and unmistakable, characterised by the frequent use of classical instruments, by the choice of melodies and harmonies far from the usual blues progression, often classical and ambitious and, at times, with extreme lyricism and epic meaning. Other peculiarities were the partiality for longer pieces compared to the normal 3 or 4 minute songs of the time, the creation of refined and complex arrangements, the use of compound and unusual movements with frequent changes of time, intensity and speed during the same piece.

However, the utterly extraordinary thing was that in nearly all the pieces all five souls of the group took part in the creation of the base concept and in the elaboration of the thematic line. During the recital the best pages of the following albums will be performed: Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound, A Trick of the Tail and Wind and Wuthering, The “Golden period” of the Genesis, in the original and winning piano transcription by David Myers, who has been able to exalt the complex and articulate mosaic of sounds down to the smallest details and to create a bridge between the world of classical music and the progressive rock universe, obtaining an extraordinarily beautiful version for piano. Not a simple pianistic reduction but a complex and circumstantial work of sonorous research which nevertheless maintains the authentic and articulate harmonic structure of every single piece unaltered.

Paolo Chiarandini