Liberta'

"The Spiritual power of Music.
'Canto della Passione' :Cantarelli sways the crowd with emotions"

In the world of music business it is very easy to find people and artists constantly looking for those dazzling stage lights, perhaps through banality and compromise. It is very difficult and unusual, on the other hand, to find an Artist who, after (deservedly) achieving international status and recognition, chooses an artistic - and human - path that privileges quality, motivated by a spirituality that gives existence a real meaning.
Beppe Cantarelli belongs to this second category: everyone knows for whom he has composed and with whom he has collaborated (Mina, Quincy Jones, Mariah Carey, Michael Bolton, Aretha Franklin, Ornella Vanoni, Josè Feliciano, Wilson Pickett...), but last night many people have probably discovered and tasted once more his true "essence," at the packed "SS. Fermo & Rustico" Church in Carpaneto (Italy), when the composer has performed, along with soprano Giovanna Gattuso and the Millennium Choir's Little Angels Department, his "Canto della Passione."
It is a very intense opera, never banal nor foreseen, performed with emotions and capable to give emotions, especially thanks to the excellence of the singer and guitarist who has been successful in achieving a very delicate yet complex objective: to compose Sacred Music sustained by a perfect architecture of contemporary harmony but, at the same time, very respectful of the teachings by such composers as Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Strauss, and expressing the painful magnificence and the enlightened hope imagined as Jesus' thoughts in the last days of His life.
Cantarelli, Ms. Gattuso and his Millennium Choir (a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional choir, with over 1,000 singers around the world, that symbolizes peace) have already great credits, good enough to make grow pale whatever Big name within both the classical and pop music. We would like to remember a veryunique and unforgettable moment: Christmas Day 1999, when the Millennium Choir was the official choir in the Vatican while Pope John Paul II was opening the Holy Doors to the entire world.
Last night though, in Carpaneto, after an introduction by the Mayor and the Vicar of that town, the audience had a chance to witness, thanks to the sponsorship by City Hall as well as by the Bank of Piacenza, to one more event that must be preciously preserved in the memory of our heart and soul.
The music and lyrics by Cantarelli's "Canto della Passione" (in Ancient Latin, English and Italian) represent one of the most interesting pages of contemporary sacred music.
If Ms. Gattuso, who is also the director of the choir, has interpreted her parts with grace and expressiveness, Cantarelli has been able to make the sentiment penetrate; religious and secular sentiment of Jesus who lives the Passion of the Cross, a small and humble man who dies and then resurrects for the salvation of the entire humanity.
After the "Prelude," the tenor voice becomes clear like spring water in "Silenziosa Notte, Parlami Ancora (Silent Night, Talk To Me Again)." Right after that, the soprano and the choir cue in with "Panis Angelicus (Bread of The Angels)," accompanied, like all the other selections, only by Cantarelli's acoustic guitar that he plays sometimes in a crystal clear way and some other times violent and impetuous as if it is an orchestra, with never excessive virtuosities, that let both richness of flavours as well as effects emerge, from delicate harmonics to percussive patterns on the guitar harmonic case ["Ricordati (Remember Me)" and "Nella Remota Cadenza Del Tempo (In The Remote Cadence of Time)".] The composer has also proposed a "Pater Noster (Our Father)" musically worthy of a Grammy Award, and that resonated especially like a Prayer...that Cantarelli's music made even more "alive." His composing technique is astounding, and you could clearly perceive it when, toward the finale, he did really reach the top with the splendid "Da Te Ritornerò (I Will Come Back To You)" and "Don't You Know, That I Know," this last one sung in English.
In the final "Magnificat" even the church bells had to participate, in a magic unison with the notes: almost like God's breath that wanted to remind us all of His presence.
At the very end then, numerous ovations joined in with a very long applause by an audience visibly enchanted and enthusiast, audience made also by representatives of the Vatican, foreign tourists and many young people.

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