PICCOLA RAPSODIA DELL'APE

The experiment with ''Florian'' with Le Orme flirting with classical music was rather succesful and so the band decided to move on in the same direction.Just a year after ''Florian'',the new album ''Piccola Rapsodia dell'Ape'' holds strong similarities with the previous work,the last album for the band on Phillips before their first break.

''Piccola rapsodia dell'ape'' is again a very gentle and pastoral release of Classical Music mixed with Acoustic Prog.Strong romantic passages,warm melodies all over the place and nice vocal work by Aldo Tagliapietra.This time Germano Serafin leans towards using more of his mandolin and leave aside his violin,thus adding to the album a heavy and lovely Meditterenean feeling.Pagliuca shines again on tracks like the eponymous one or ''Fragile conchiglia'' with his complicated Classical-influenced piano and the atmosphere becomes even more cinematic with the help of Michi Dei Rossi's vibraphone and glockenspiel.The album is actually carefully balanced between Classical and Acoustic vocal-based Music.The final result is very close to what the album title indicates,a small rhapsody full of smooth acoutic passages,harmonic vocal lines and classical references.

This would be unfortunately the end of Le Orme's best period.''Venerdi'' from 1982 on DDD without Serafin and produced by Roberto Colombo would send Le Orme to the SanRemo Festival but also to their first breakdown.They would reform in 1986 with the classic 1970-1975 line-up to perform a huge number of shows but the 1990 album ''Orme'' was again just horrible pop-rock.The band broke up again the same year,Pagliuca was gone for good and only the 1996 re-formation would show a turn towards a more progressive sound.Meanwhile Le Orme's last document from their early good years is a decent album and if you like ''Florian'',you should certainly go after it.