Federico Fellini – Nino Rota
Concert with screening of scenes from Fellini’s films

Rome, early 1950s. Outside the Cinecittà, a still unknown director watches a “funny little fellow” waiting for the tram in the wrong place.

Taken aback by the man’s cheerful absent-mindedness, he feels compelled to show solidarity with him, even though he’s fully aware that, when the bus arrived, the pair of them will have to run to the right stop to catch it. But for some strange reason, his companion is convinced the tram will stop right in front of them. And that’s precisely what it does...

Years later, Fellini would relate this anecdote as the starting point of his life-long artistic collaboration with his “most precious colleague”, Nino Rota. A relationship that Fellini would maintain through three quarters of his films—which is to say the duo collaborated on 18 cinematic and musical masterpieces (for that is how they divided up their respective responsibilities) including La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, La dolce vita, 8 1/2, Satyricon and Amarcord.

Their artistic affinity represents an ideal pooling of talent, experience and what Fellini meant when he said Rota only had to show up at the studio for a film to acquire ‘new life’. Or what Hadjidakis meant when he wrote that Rota’s music and Fellini's cinema had been inseparable from the very start and that together “they had created one of the most courageous and magical moments in this world we live in”.

It is this sense of a world shared that the Athens State Orchestra seeks to convey in this concert in which, under the baton of Europe’s leading conductor of film music, Frank Strobel, it will perform Rota’s best-loved melodies accompanied on screen by the corresponding scenes from

Fellini’s films. Like an open-air cinema in a square in an imagined post- war Italy.

Suite from Prova d’orchestra (1979)
1. Risatine Maliziose (Malinconiche)
2. I Gemmelli allo Specchio
3. Valzerino
4. Attesa
5. Galopp

Suite from La dolce vita (1960)

Suite from Giuletta degli spiriti (1965)

The Fashion Show from Roma (1972)

Concert Suite Fellini / Rota
1. I vitelloni (1953)
2. Lo sceicco bianco (1952)
3. Il bidone (1955)
4. Boccaccio 70 (1962)

* * * Intermission * * *

Suite from Amarcord (1973)

Suite from La Strada (1954)