Il nuovo contrabbasso italiano

Since the 1970s, the instrumental repertoire for double bass has been enriched with a considerable amount of new literature. We are facing what can be defined as the “renaissance” of the double bass, which revolves around key players such as Fernando Grillo, Franco Petracchi, Joëlle Léandre and Stefano Scodanibbio. The disruption with the virtuosity of previous solo literature is radical: the emulation of the expressiveness of the other string instruments (which increased a quasi-complex of inferiority towards violinists and cellists) definitively gives way to the specificities of the double bass, so that the new literature becomes idiomatic. This collection of pieces therefore aims to be an update to the traditional double bass repertoire. In fact, it brings together works composed starting from the 1970s by some of the most representative Italian composers of the second half of the 1900s. The pieces in question have had, for various reasons, a large consensus among double bass players, and continue to have more and more, surviving the oblivion of the first performance, and fully entering the corpus of “standard” literature for solo double bass.