LAURA MORO
"Angelo Gilardino, explorer
of Music”
I remember with emotion the day he contacted me to ask me to prepare a new edition of Fernando Sor's 20 Studies for Guitar, a best seller in the historic review and fingering by Andrés Segovia. He proposed to add the Urtext edition of each study, so that teachers and students could compare them and get a more complete idea. It was a small revolution that marked the beginning of a collaboration that became always closer with Edizioni Curci and which, over the years, has led us to publish a remarkable number of his compositions, reviews and essays.
Among the many volumes that he wanted to entrust to us, I remember the Easy Studies, the 7 Preludes and the Twelve Brilliant Studies for the Masters of the Guitar series; original pieces and transcriptions for solo guitar or in ensemble; the several volumes of the Guitar Encyclopedia (in collaboration with the quarterly Seicorde); the biographies, documented and compelling, of Andrés Segovia and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco; the best seller "La Chitarra, guida completa all'ascolto del repertorio da concerto" ("The guitar: a guide to listening to the concert repertoire"; and his artist memories written in epistolary: "Io, la Chitarra e altri incontri" ("Me, the guitar and other encounters").
One day he confided in me that the owner of the publishing house with which he had published much part of his catalogue, the Bèrben of Ancona, was intending to sell. He was very worried that his works could end up in some international publishing giant, without guarantees of be followed and valued, left to their own devices.
I talked about it with the property and convinced our president to take over Bèrben whose catalogue from 2019 has officially entered the Curci house.
​
I still remember the relief and happiness when I informed him of the successful outcome of the operation.
Later he spread a message that I keep like a flower that never fades: «Laura, bit was an immense fortune to meet you and work with you, as an author and as an editor. And today for the friendship you gave me I can't find the right words».
​
He knew how to talk to anyone, gaining esteem, respect, admiration, affection.
Loved by everyone, in the editorial staff. Great men don't need to weigh their position either
intellectual superiority.
Playing his music, teaching it to young people, preserving and spreading his work, is the best way to remember him.
And we will always be ready!
​
Laura Moro
Milan, 18 July 2023.
There are people who leave deep traces of their journey, footprints intended to indicate the road to who will arrive later. Angelo Gilardino was a music explorer. He discovered and made available to all new ways, thoughts, authors, repertoires that were not known before him.
If his life lasted 80 years -born in Vercelli on November 16, 1941 and died there on January 14 2022 - the effects of its action are destined to last much longer.
I had the good fortune, the privilege, to know him. His was a complex personality, always eclectic supported by an original thought, an insatiable curiosity and a capacity for work extraordinary.
Musician, guitarist, composer, teacher, scholar, writer, reviewer, editor,expert in lutterei and figurative arts. Angelo Gilardino was all of this, but above all he was able to always remain himself.
​
He was an absolute point of reference thanks to his boundless knowledge of the repertoire guitar: there was no composer or piece that did not find in his words the right historical, qualitative collocation, and a biographical and artistic contextualization.
When I proposed him to write the first biography of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, he agreed with enthusiasm: in a few months he delivered the manuscript. He considered it the right expression of his gratitude for what the Florentine composer had done for him when he was still an unknown guitar master. The volume was presented with full honors in Rome, in the Chamber of Deputies, in January 2018, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Angelo and his book received the gold medal of the Chamber, the heirs of the composer that of the President of the Republic. After the dramatic exile caused by brutal racial laws of 1938, Italy finally recognized the value and work of its illustrious son.
​
If we were able to start the project of publishing the unpublished works of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco is thanks to Gilardino and to the trust that the heirs placed in him. His published revisions from the beginning of the works, in 2015, to his death; are the unwritten rules transferred to the current curators. He had no doubts about the setting of the series: philological approach and absolute fidelity to the manuscript, so that each publication reported the authentic intentions of Florentine composer. Angelo, always one step behind, had assumed the role of guarantor of this integrity.
