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The legendary composer Ennio Morricone is scheduled to return to the Arena di Verona on May 18th and 19th, and to the Terme do Caracalla on June 15th, 16th, 21st and 22nd. These 2019 concerts will the last opportunity to see the great man conducting his own music, although there are no plans to stop working. It’s merely time to retire from “the road” and let’s be frank on this matter, many younger musicians have already done so.

Having worked with great directors from Leone and Bertolucci to Almodóvar and Tarantino, Morricone is among the most prolific and influential movie composers of all time. Accompanying him on this “60 Years of Music” tour, are the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and the Crouch End Festival Chorus. It has a definite end of term feel to it.

Still, it’s nonetheless been a staggering career. The ninety year old is a pop-cultural phenomenon, whose music for more than 500 films including The Mission, A Fistful of Dollars and Cinema Paradiso props up every movie compilation CD you’ve ever seen discounted at Tesco, and whose 1960s scores for Sergio Leone’s psychological westerns (Italians consider the term “Spaghetti Westerns” somewhat insulting)’ remain so influential that merely humming two bars of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is enough to bring an entire genre to dusty, sweaty imaginative life.

According to his staff, the maestro writes film music, not soundtracks. Apparently, composers do not use the piano to create their sprawling works, choosing instead to notate their inspiration down directly onto the musical page without the interference of any instrument.

It’s all in the great mind you see……………………….