Tu solamente tu playlist

Tu, solamente tu (‘You, only you’) The songs of Pasquale Frustaci

Pasquale Frustaci (1901-1971) was a composer and orchestra director active for thirty years (from the 1920s to the 1950s) on the Italian musical scene. Born in Naples, he had a close connection to the city during the early stages of his career, as testified by the song ‘‘A vela’, written with Libero Bovio in 1924 and included in this playlist. Frustaci then moved to Turin, where he became the steadfast collaborator of Macario, writing songs for numerous musical revues and later for cinema as well. It was in these fields that his versatility was given full expression, as he managed to inject a felicitous compositional flair into a variety of genres. ‘Tu, solamente tu’, ‘Sentimental’ (written for Wanda Osiris but presented here in the elegant version by Natalino Otto) and ‘Amarsi quando piove’ are perhaps his most famous songs, yet this playlist also includes many other interesting tracks (with lyrics often written by Bixio Cherubini). These contain a number of pleasant passages which suggest theatrical or cinematographic contexts for their capacity to evoke images in both their music and lyrics, even when they were not expressly written for these purposes.

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