BERNARDO SASSETTI – Dúvida – CD – TA002CD

Besides being a talented pianist and composer, Bernardo Sassetti is among the best soundtrack artists around today, the author of masterpieces such as “Alice” (a film by Marco Martins which he scored, touching my heart in every minute). “Dùvida”, which features the Orquestra Sinfonietta de Lisboa in several of its passages, is not on the same level of that milestone yet remains an excellent example of how to use different shades in an arrangement while exploiting one or two simple concepts by putting them at work in diverse circumstances. This is the commentary to a theatre performance held in 2007 at the Teatro Maria Matos in Lisbon, which Sassetti underlines and characterizes through his customary piano-based revelations mixing heavy-hearted melancholy and romantic variations on minimalism. What’s perceived as the recurring theme sounds a bit like a cross of Philip Glass circa “Glassworks” and the arpeggio of “Anyway” (Genesis, “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway”). A too simplistic description maybe, yet this must not detract from the many qualities of the album, which utilizes repetition and delicacy as non-invasive reminders of the fact that life is not, and will never be, just something limited to the sheer trust in a “superior entity” without striving for the betterment of our earthly presence. Sassetti’s music is the kind of soul-opening expression that results as grieving as the passage from adolescence to adulthood in sensitive beings, giving the idea of phases of existence that can be recollected but won’t return.

Massimo Ricci / Touching Extremes