Twelve Songs on Poems by Emily Dickinson

It is ironic, but also profoundly right, that the words which came silently out of the pen of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) nowadays are heard frequently in concert halls, and elsewhere too. In 1992, Carlton Lowenberg, in his book Musicians wrestle everywhere: Emily Dickinson and Music, listed no less than 1,615 compositions based on her texts, by 276 different composers, from 1896 onwards; according to the musicologist Enrico Maria Polimanti, by 2007 this number had almost doubled. In 2018, Francesco Carta’s Dodici romanze su poesie di Emily Dickinson, for soprano and string orchestra, show that the growth of this repertoire is still far from stopping. The selection of poems, however, is new, and intercepts some of the most inspired moments of metaphysical disquiet in Dickinson’s whole work. The Nuova Orchestra Pedrollo di Vicenza directed by Gabriele dal Santo accompanies the soprano Naoka Ohbayashi in the performing of this very particular vision of the poet’s texts by Francesco Carta.