Witness to a solid and emblazoned tradition, Giacomo Miluccio (1918-1998), knew how to combine all those souls thai distinguished Neapolitan-trained artists for centuries. Ceaseless study led him to master the instrument with that mastership exhibited with "natu ralness " and "simplicity "; he generously instructed a group of instrumentalists and constantly showed his performative vocation among the ranks of the centuries-old Sancarlian orchestra as well as in solo and chamber music.
His love tor the clarinet was total and his exclusive commitment, even in the speculative path that saw him recklessly experimenting with instrumental technicality without ever straying from the stylistic modes linked to an ltalian-style sonic imagery. He is a noble "c raftsman ," such as only the Neapolitan identity could produce, who stili lives on in that knowledge infused to the many young people he trained, who pass on to their students the luminous teaching of this great artist.
The pages he composed are under the banner of a songfulness that is probably démodé but stili capable of suggesting the listener by evoking sound worlds thai reappear regenerated and transfigured in the master's happy intuition; it is nota chance lo come across a page such as Nostalgie - Petite Sérénade full of suggestions thai descend from the salon literature marked by the Tostian repertoire. The copious melodiousness carries with il an opalescent yearning dictated by the harmonic expedients of Neapolitan sixths; the charm of "southern" colors intertwined with a cantabile that in the key of D minor finds its natural sphere.
To a distant world identifiable with virtuosity and a love of melodrama, Miluccio's reworking of Ernesto Cavallini's "Fantasia sopra motivi della Sonnambula" for solo clarinet and orchestra is drawn. The composition, brought to success several times in the band sphere, was intended tor the "chamber" tor clarinet and piano in a reinterpretation that gave additional importance to the solo part, once again Miluccio is a child of the "pa st" when performers without any reluctance adapted the page lo their own means giving il a very persona! figure. Il is no coincidence thai he relies on the opera reminiscences of the Catanese, because Bellini, like him, was a pupil of that Neapolitan institution that had guaranteed him an exemplary cursus studiorum: the composer at the San Sebastiano's college and the native of Villaricca at the San Pietro a Maiella Conservatory.
Equally indicative is the exercise he performs in crafting pieces intended to amplify the technical and expressive potential of his students, as in the case of the "my sterious" Rhapsodie pour Clarinette seule destined lor the performance of student Giovanni De Falco at the Mediterraneo Opera House in Naples on December 22nd , 1978, a piece whose technical and dynamic daring has received no small amount of credi! among clarinetists of every latitude.
Il comes into contaci by "reading" Miluccio's life and activity with a legendary epic whose connotations, often strained to fade, shall be nourished, volitionally, by memory and history.