«My name is Ezio Bosso, and in life I make music. And I’m a lucky man “

One year after the death, at the age of 48, of the conductor, composer and pianist, suffering from an irreversible neurogenerative disease, we want to remember him in his words. What we publish below is an excerpt from I make music, writings and scattered thoughts by Ezio Bosso, now in the bookshop for Piemme (edited by Alessia Capelletti). Unpublished texts that document the relationship with music through his words.

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Presentation of himself to the German public, in draft.
2017

«My name is Ezio Bosso, and in life I make music.

And I’m a lucky man.
Some time ago a journalist in asking me a question said to me: “You did not have an academic path”, in reality the question wanted to turn to how my career had been, to how I was “born” let’s say.
My answer was, as always, sincere and direct: my career is defined by my life.
Now, I don’t like talking about my life. I am a reserved person by nature. Now many collaborators ask me to write something, to better tell my career. It seems that if you only want the music to speak, misunderstandings are created. That one can give a “wrong” impression especially to detractors. Even if it’s something that has never touched me. Who likes you, you can’t please everyone.
There is an old saying of African Americans: “You can’t control what others say about you. But you always have to make sure they spell your name at least correctly. ‘ And even though my name is often misspelled – Enzo, Enzio, Ezzio -, I think it’s a beautiful concept.
It is not easy, I assure you. Because what I am doing also brings painful memories, because it is difficult to choose what is essential and what is not, when you are aware that everything is, especially breathing. And also because I write really badly.
But of one thing I’m sure.
What I have done, what I have achieved and achieved, exists thanks to the famous concept of “having earned it” in every small step and the indisputable fact of being a lucky being, even if those who see the wheels or my body tend to prejudice not to think so.
And above all from the need for music in my life. Fromhave always wanted music, and perhaps today I would also venture to have evidently been desired by it all along. My family was not wealthy and I was born in a working-class area of ​​Turin in the seventies.
This is the key to getting into a part of what has defined my career, why you ask?
Why the mentality of a worker, especially in Northern Italy, towards his children it was only that of being able to give him a future a little better than his own, to make him study just enough that would allow him a security, that would lead him to have an economic stability that would allow him to help even the family, but without too many ambitions.
It must also be imagined that my parents were much older than the average and me. They were born in the late twenties and the concept that the children – especially the minor – were destined to take care of their old age economically was a normal thing, there was still a post-war period that mixed industry with the countryside.
Now, you see, the most recurring phrase in the poorer classes of those times, and one of the phrases that I heard to the point of exhaustion in my childhood, is: “We can’t”, “We can’t afford it.”
Somehow Turin is still like this, it is divided by caste. If you are the son of a worker, you remain a worker, if you are an architect, a musician, etc.
But I was obviously not a child like the others. I was not particularly sociable and only started talking around the age of three and little. I liked to listen and in addition I stopped, petrified, as my older brother tells me, but I smiled in front of the music as if it were all happiness there.

Published for Piemme by Mondadori Libri SpA
© 2021 Mondadori Libri SpA, Milan

*Ezio Bosso he was director of the Europe Philharmonic Orchestra he founded, Sony Classical International Artist, Steinway Artist, Ambassador of the Mozart14 Association of Alessandra Abbado and before that double bass player, composer, “pianist if necessary”, finally conductor, but also intellectual , popularizer, creator and host of the revolutionary television program Che Storia è la Musica. He died in his home, in Bologna, on May 14, 2020.