One feels like saying: the conductor, this person unknown. Yes sir. A great part of the worth of this new release is the worth of these Masters. Let’s start with the first title: “The second programme presents: Nati per la musica (Born for Music) – a music show by Gorni Kramer and Lelio Luttazzi. The Orchestra di Ritmi Moderni is conducted by Gorni Kramer, the Orchestra Ritmo Sinfonica conducted by Lelio Luttazzi”. The certitude of high artistic level and the assurance of high quality start here, with two names that, indeed twice, co-author the programme. There was a time in Italian melodic music – on radio, but also records and live exhibitions – in which the central importance of the conductor of the orchestra was absolute. Well before the advent of artistic directors, record companies, impresarios and producers, the dictate of the artist on the podium was law. Lord and master of the career of each and every singer, the monarch the depository of the secrets and dosage of the repertoire, the conductor heard no reason. The large orchestras, the popularity of the conductors and a taste for fruition at home of an ‘orchestral’ genre such as this (that then faded away in the course of time) became the ingredients of a formula that was to remain unchanged for many years. Here at Nati per la musica, two great personalities of radio gain the podium, Gorni Kramer e Lelio Luttazzi. The first, already very famous, is pure talent, an enthusiast, an inexorable exponent of swing, one could say a “modern-day Offenbach”, as a Paris newspaper indeed dubbed him in those very days. He chose to ignore the job of first contrabass player at the famous Regio di Parma concert hall in order to pursue his burning fixation, which he never abandoned throughout his life: swing. Already, in 1953, Kramer was spread across several fronts: accordionist, conductor, composer, arranger, the author of songs and musical comedies, radio programmes (TV came a year later) and, seeing as he didn’t like chuck money around, publisher of himself and owner of an enviable stock of songs. Kramer’s energy and enthusiasm have always been proverbial: aboard his splendid Maserati – in the Italy of the early fifties that for sure had no modern motorway network – the Master put himself through the ordeal of bouncing back and forth from Milan to Rome and back, so as to be able to meet his commitments as author-publisher in the Galleria del Corso and at the RAI radio studios. Lelio Luttazzi - who had left his birthplace Trieste when still very young, in answer to Teddy Reno’s invitation, who wanted him in Milan as artistic director for his new record label Cgd – found in Rome a much livelier jazz atmosphere, capable of stimulating him as author and performer but above all, thanks to Kramer (who wanted him alongside also because of his huge workload) an engagement with RAI as director and arranger with singers who would have collaborated with for a very long time. To entrust a radio programme that was a truly vast undertaking such as was Nati per la Musica to two composers, one of which already famous, the other well on his way to a fortunate career, constituted the clearest expression of that further process of enhancement and renewal of melodic music radio programmes that was already on going. A renewal both in terms of formula and language, tending at reaching that to that multitude of forms that was already the most salient characteristic of early radio. It was Gianni Giannantonio who, on the Radiocorriere of 29th November 1953, wrote: “... a programme, Nati per la musica, which will be nothing less than a great show, in a completely new style; a programme that for once will see agree the two opposing camps of eternal contenders: the lovers of waltz and tango and the fans of pure jazz, both traditional and modern. Two different forms of expression created by Kramer and Luttazzi in the name of the common denominator that is music”. This of the ‘opposing factions’ was probably an understandable fixation borrowed from the world of sport, but which in any case recorded cases in show business as well, not just between stars, primadonnas and conductors, but even among impresarios, players and simple fans. A post war weakness thanks to which the passion for music generated growing interest and quality. Via Asiago 10 for the first time presents a double CD, drawn from one of the most representative programmes of the fifties. Having spoken about orchestras we must now pass on to singers: Teddy Reno, Jula De Palma, the Quartetto Cetra and the Coro di Franco Potenza. Youthful talents, at the start to their careers but already fairly well known. Teddy Reno, for example, had by then already become the most famous of the Italian crooners: he toured Latin America, he was already someone in the world of record companies and also contributed to Lelio Luttazzi and Jula De Palma’s success. In the first CD the singer from Trieste pays homage to Alberto Rabagliati in Silenzioso/Silent show, maybe he also felt his colleague’s influence but in the end paid him homage. Teddy Reno sang in three languages, being able to copy the international hits of the time reasonably faithfully, as was the case of Vaya con Dios, Les Paul and Mary Ford’s American hit. Each number of Nati per la musica presented an articulate sequence of musical fantasies, which constituted the central element to the programme. The fantasy presented in the first CD concerns the tracks which have the moon as their theme, an extraordinary miscellany of Italian, Neapolitan and American tunes, with that most classic of pieces Blue moon presented both at the beginning and the end. There are also pieces of pure virtuoso talent, as is Kramer’s Campanaro for the Sanremo song festival, done with “large and small bells, and a contrabass”, a performance halfway between Mike Oldfield and Pierre Favre ante litteram. But the episodes concerning American music and jazz are not merely orchestral: this is the case of the Cetra quartet with their pocket size operettas, colourful and unprejudiced evocations of the America that was, full of irony and ... premonitions. In the tasteful text to Se il jazz fosse nato a Roma/If Jazz had been born in Rome Tata Giacobetti lets himself slip “there would have been a Testaccio Big Band”, which, as chance would have it, was created twenty years later. Also the bonus tracks are not to be missed: from Katyna Ranieri’s three songs for Sanremo to the two performances by Alberto Rabagliati. In the first, Los Angeles/Frosinone Hot Club, instrumental only, he plays the violin in a style vaguely inspired to the great Stuff Smith (who not by chance was the first to electrify his instrument and, unlike Stéphane Grappelli and Joe Venuti, was the only violinist also to be a vocalist, in his time); the other: La samba del pappagallo (which in truth sounds very ‘rasp’ like), seems to be heavily improvised. In the second CD the central fantasy is dedicated to the names of women and once again the mix of humours and sonority is decidedly varied, with Latin, American, Italian and Neapolitan themes, with an all so special talent of the two Masters in their choice of very well known pieces and others that are only apparently of secondary importance. A sensibility also extended to other themes, for example Sera/Evening, the well known piece by Pippo Barzizza, and Coglierò la rosa del deserto/I will pick the desert rose, a piece by William Righi decidedly to be reassessed. Very ductile, as always, the employment of the Quartetto Cetra, capable of going from Sinatra classics such as How High the Moon, to a bobbistic Scrapple From The Apple, and transatlantic classics such Un gettone nei juke-box or Al Festival del jazz, including the piece they took to the Sanremo festival in 1954 (the year they sang six songs): Un diario/A diary, which despite having Alberto Semprini as orchestra conductor did not even make it to the finals. Here too bonuses of a very global nature: the Peter Sisters (an afro-American trio that were very popular in Italy in the fifties and early sixties, also thanks to a collaboration with Garinei and Giovannini, Renato Rascel and even a successful series of TV spots) with Writing on a Tree, and in two pieces in which Alberto Semprini shows his incredible mastery. In closing, a word on she who ties all this together, often with scarce means and little time available. Isa Bellini’s style of presentation is fun, light hearted, and never imposing, she is a radio talent of the time, among the few women to be a frontline speaker in those days, without necessarily having to play second fiddle to a better known male colleague. On radio Isa Bellini did a bit of everything, but here she too has swing and has been forgotten too soon.