When you began writing the new world?
NGC: I debut the new world in 2009. I started writing in 2005 in Italy. It's not a question of spotlight. That's how I see the world. I have various pieces of composition, is also want to show them and see what happens. What I have it all in the drawer. I also wrote Ezekiel for cinema. There, you have what you are as a person. The language used in this work is heavy. It is a character who tries to be faithful to himself. Ezekiel is a whole story. It is shown, is a kind of purgatory, where it shows a certain resentment, guilt at that time. Indicates that the time is also elastic.
Going back a little bit, why did you choose the mandolin as an instrument?
NGC: I was twenty and it was my reference. My grandfather played mandolin. I always saw him playing and he did not at first want to teach me, but he saw me as a person and he was very careful with his things, asked me if I wanted to learn. I learned watching him playing and then it was easy because I soon began to walk by myself and created a special bond with the instrument. He had a perspective that was keeping me true to my identity.
You went to Italy with a scholarship?
RGC: Yes, at that time was very difficult. The mandolin has this image still very popular. It is the same as having a scholarship in Scottish pipes. It's complicated. Times were different and had to show a work and demonstrate that I really wanted to do this, even to ease the way for others. It was very difficult to find scholarships, because there was as easy as today to find everything on the Internet. I spent a lot of time calling, talking with teachers to find the school. Then the second problem emerge, how I go there? Tried to show work and was involved as possible so that the right people saw that it I was seriously intended to do music of my life. Even in Italy kept this posture. There I met people who followed the same philosophy as me.
In Italy they appreciate more the musicians than here in Portugal?
NGC: That is a very difficult question to answer. The Italian has one aspect that I like are quite patriotic, what its value concerns, proud of that they built up before they were even a country But, institutionally, politically, there is no support.
But you won a premium in Italy, a medal of merit. They appreciated your work and you are not Italian.
NGC: Yes it is true, but that's because Italy support s its major theaters, the great works. They are very attached to all that is instrumental music, all the rest is self-sustaining, i.e., the groups go by themselves, they bet on quality, then the government gives awards or accolades, i.e., do not support them economically. They give you the market and the rest depends on you. I think it's bad, and I know that some people will not like what I am about to say but, the subsidized culture is very poor, our work is limited to that budget, and that money and it stifles creativity. Our problem is we do not have a music market. It's all free and sponsored by the government. The final product can even be good, but it is not feasible and it is reflected in everything, even the arts. You must be stimulated in order to do something. Work is only to please such service or such people from abroad. This is bad.
Now that you teach your art, how the young generations see the mandolin, which was associated with a more traditional music. They look at the instrument otherwise?
RG: It's funny; they look at the instrument in a completely different way. I am a person who teaches, but I'm not a teacher. I pass on my experience as a musician. Learners with five and six years old when they hear Bach or Vivaldi, their mouths open and ask what this is? This is good. By having another type of musical experience as they grow, it appears that classical music is boring. The same happens with the mandolin. We have to work attitudes, other ways of seeing things, give room for many kinds of music, so to look at music differently. Create a more open view. The mindset is now the instrument, all ready we have this idea of learning the instrument spiritually and physically. It's something you oriented and leave them in their discovery. We should never impose. Not interfere too much, avoid saying go here, and they wonder why and the answer is because it has to be this way. This creates barriers that people cannot overcome. You must know how to explain. First, because it is culturally ours, it's wonderful to play this instrument. The other important point is that people need to feel they are part of this nucleus, this musical path. It is hard work.
Why?
NGC: There are many prejudices about the mandolin, is not voluntary. In Italy this instrument has lost its historical weight, because the mandolin was a noble instrument. There are great works written for mandolin, but usually they called the violinists. When I started working in the theater "La Scala", people are asking me if I knew how to read music. There were questions like this. Then come to respect me individually when they saw what the instrument was capable of doing. I have become one more in the orchestra. The process is this. To show what I can do with the mandolin, however, is slow. I'm not individualistic, I'm glad that people come and enjoy.
You are a musician for how many years?
RG: For me, a musician is a big word. I echo the words of Marcello Biotti, he was a great orchestra director, teacher of Riccardo Muti, another great director, and he said: Mutti Now that I'm about to die is that I'm learning how to direct an orchestra. I tell you the same, may I'll be a musician one day, is not enough to make music, you also need to know how to communicate with people, guides them and helps them. That's what music is all about. It makes me confused after a concert, when they say what they think and then add, but I do not know anything about music. That makes no sense, the work of the musician is to tell what the human being is like and how one can convey loves, or anger. People show in their work their more true side, this is music too, and they don't have to feel small before a music work. It is a problem of the culture and the arts. The commercial music reaches all people, is not it? The classical, doesn't. Did you know that Vivaldi and other composers showed their works in the streets in a makeshift stage? Music was born that way before an audience. Currently, certain type of music has become elitist and seems that to go to a concert is like going to a museum. I worked in the theater "la scala" for eight years, and knew nothing about being there. It was a learning process. When we played the whole room vibrated with the music, was wonderful. You learn a lot and the union is quality. The general public, when they feel a special energy they attached. There must be a tradeoff between the musician and the people who attend, is not enough to earn a degree in music and play. You must create that magnetism with the public; you need to know how to recreate that love, that anger and they feel it.
