Sonata (trumpet and piano) [score + detached part].

Antonio Zanon's Sonata for trumpet and piano reminds us of the greatness of this Veronese musician who must still be known and appreciated outside the restricted area in which he worked, starting with the Verona Conservatory where he taught for twenty years. He was a great teacher, but also a very refined composer, as this sonata, divided into three movements, Allegretto, Nenia somala (do not forget that Zanon, immediately after the end of the Second World War, won a competition to teach in Somalia, where he stayed for three years) and Allegro, demonstrates. That Zanon was fascinated by Stravinsky's neo-classicism is clear from the very first movement, in which the trumpet unravels an agile texture, in which ironic realms are manifested through a rigorous, 'healthy' style (it was Goethe who affirmed: 'I define as classical everything that is healthy, and romantic everything that is sick'), while the piano, from time to time, tries to support the wind instrument or legitimise its own stylistic principle. The neoclassical language is not lacking even in the Nenia somala, which begins with chords reminiscent of a twilight lullaby, but in the central section again lets itself go with exquisitely Stravinskian references before returning to a more mournful dimension, supported by a harmonic construction that highlights all the mastery of the Venetian musician. As in the concluding Allegro, openly virtuosic, in which the two instruments intertwine purposefully in a tight, rhythmic dialogue.