VARIATIONS ON A SOUNDTRACK

Preludio, tema, variazioni, canzona also known as Milano Calibro 9, is Osanna’s second studio album and was released in 1972 on the Fonit Cetra label with a confirmed line up featuring Lino Vairetti (lead vocals, guitars, organ, synthesizer), Danilo Rustici (guitars, organ, synthesizer), Elio D’Anna (flute, sax, ottavino), Lello Brandi (bass) and Massimo Guarino (drums, percussion). It marks the collaboration between the band and Argentine-Italian film composer Luis Enriquez Bacalov (who had previously worked with the New Trolls) and was conceived as the score for the film Milano Calibro 9. Director Fernando Di Leo was very impressed by the album Concerto Grosso per i New Trolls and asked Luis Bacalov to compose the soundtrack for his film Milano Calibro 9 in the same style. Osanna were chosen to perform the score interacting with an orchestra and, according to an interview with Lino Vairetti, they recorded the music while watching the film on a screen in a theatre and for them this was really a new exciting experience...  

 

 

In my opinion, you can't really appreciate this album without watching the film and it would be unfair to define this work just as a sequel of the collaboration between Bacalov and New Trolls... The film Milano Calibro 9 (Milan Calibre 9) is a noir (or, if you prefer, a poliziottesco) inspired by some short stories of the writer Giorgio Scerbanenco (Kiev, 28 Jul. 1911 - Milan, 27 Oct. 1969) and it was conceived by Fernando Di Leo as a kind of vehicle to express his sociological, anthropological and philosophical point of view about the world of crime and the turmoil of Italy in the early Seventies. This film is the first chapter of a trilogy that includes also La mala ordina (The Italian Connection) and Il boss (The boss) and features an excellent cast of actors like Gastone Moschin, Mario Adorf, Philippe Leroy, Barbara Bouchet and Lionel Stander. During the movie you can listen to some delicate and very evocative themes while on the screen images of an almost surrealistic violence flow with Milan in the background. The blending of baroque music and progressive-rock commenting the crucial passages of the plot contributed to the successful final result of the film and only having watched it you can associate the music to the “shaking and dancing” images of the cruel and beautiful character interpreted by Barbara Bouchet or to a merciless killing (it's the case of “Variazione VI”).

 

  

After recording the score, the band re-recorded all the tracks for the record market adding a composition by Luis Bacalov, “There Will Be Time”, that can't be found on the original soundtrack. The first two seminal tracks of the album, “Preludio” and “Tema”, were composed by Luis Bacalov too and seem to come out from Concerto grosso while the variations, featuring a more aggressive mood, were composed by the band and arranged with the help of the maestro. The nervous “Variazione I (To Plinius)” fades into the following “Variazione II (My Mind Flies)”, the only variation featuring vocals and lyrics. It’s a beautiful, dreamy piece sung in English that ends the first side of the album by describing a kind of psychedelic flight where the mind soars over the sands of time leaving behind a body that looks like a sleeping bar of steel...  

 

 “Variazione III (Shuum…)” opens the second side of the LP with the flute in the forefront and strong Jethro Tull influences, then follow the nervous “Variazione IV (Tredicesimo cortile)”, the calm, ethereal “Variazione V (Dianalogo)”, the lively mix between baroque music, hard rock and tarantella of “Variazione VI (Spunti dallo spartito n. 17728 del Prof. Imolo Meninge)” and the short, jazzy “Variazione VII (Posizione raggiunta)”. The bitter-sweet ballad “There Will Be Time”, with lyrics based upon a poem of Thomas Elliot and dealing with some reflections about time passing by closes an album that might sound a bit fragmented but is really worth listening to...  

 

 

By the way, the film Milano Calibro 9 was also released on DVD and you can watch it in the original Italian version with removable English subtitles or in English version (restored, remastered and with bonus material including an interview with Luis Bacalov). Don't miss it!

You can listen to the complete album HERE

Preludio, tema, variazioni, canzona (1972). Other opinions:

Ben Miler (Proghead): On this album, the band matured quite a bit. Where on "L'Uomo", it was a combination of hard rock, blues, jazz, folk, and prog, on this album, they were able to combine those styles in a more mature and progressive framework... My big complaint of the album is I wished for lengthier compositions (luckily they fixed that problem with "Palepoli"), because I like the mood of many of the pieces, just wished it lasted longer. But I guess that had to deal with the fact this is a movie soundtrack. Still a great album... (You can read the complete review HERE)