Pianists from oblivion

[HT]

On YT a certain Gullivior has 18K followers. He specializes in pianists. New (as far as I know) is the playlist called "Pianists from Oblivion", copyright Oblivion Recordings. A specimen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQmE5MGcPts

Does anyone know more about the concept behind these recordings? Where do people like Bruce Coletti come from? Are they all students from the same piano school?

Henk

[chriskh...@gmail.com]

It's been going for some time and some of the "pianists" have been identified. I've an idea the originator is in Italy since several of the names are actually crazy takes on Italian words.

Mario Netta = Marionetta = marionette
Sarah Cineska = saracinesca = portcullis/roller shutter
Melina dall'Orto = apple from the orchard
There used to be Criside Nervi = crisi di nervi = nervous breakdown, but I can't find her any more

But there's also Klaus Trofobic = claustrophobic, who's been logically enough booked to do Scriabin

I don't quite see the point of it if the real pianists are not named in the end but I doubt if there's any more real stuff there than there was in Hatto. Only, since the perpetrator is just amusing himself, not robbing customers of money, nobody's got very het up about the thing. There are copyright issues, obviously

[HT]

Op maandag 15 oktober 2018 20:30:20 UTC+2 schreef chriskh...@gmail.com:

> It's been going for some time and some of the "pianists" have been identified. I've an idea the originator is in Italy since several of the names are actually crazy takes on Italian words.
>
> Mario Netta = Marionetta = marionette
> Sarah Cineska = saracinesca = portcullis/roller shutter
> Melina dall'Orto = apple from the orchard
> There used to be Criside Nervi = crisi di nervi = nervous breakdown, but I can't find her any more
>
> But there's also Klaus Trofobic = claustrophobic, who's been logically enough booked to do Scriabin
>
> I don't quite see the point of it if the real pianists are not named in the end but I doubt if there's any more real stuff there than there was in Hatto. Only, since the perpetrator is just amusing himself, not robbing customers of money, nobody's got very het up about the thing. There are copyright issues, obviously

Many thanks for the information!
Is bruscoleti some kind of Italian food?

Henk

[Frank Berger]

I thought he was the Prime Minister of Italy.

[chriskh...@gmail.com]

> Many thanks for the information!
> Is bruscoleti some kind of Italian food?
>
> Henk

No, bruscolo means a tiny, thin person, so a bruscoletto would be smaller and thinner still

Maybe the real pianist is very small and thin, but this is a very rare word anyway, I suspect that in this case the "pianist's" name has been derived some other way. The hoaxer's powers of linguistic fantasy seem wide-ranging

[chriskh...@gmail.com]

I've just noticed a very cute one - Judy Korda = giù di corda = a colloquial expression meaning down in the dumps

Whoever invented this is either Italian or has a very good knowledge of the language

Judy Korda's fairly rare repertoire of Dohnanyi transcriptions would surely make her real identity not so hard to track down

[linde...@gmail.com]

Bruscolo means "a speck" in English. "magro/a" means a thin person.

Mort Linder

[PP]

All played by a MIDI!

it is VERY audible. Just a software playing the midi inputted music.

[chriskh...@gmail.com]

>
> Bruscolo means "a speck" in English. "magro/a" means a thin person.
>
> Mort Linder

Definitions of bruscolo from the Garzanti dictionary. Definition 1 = speck, definition 2 = something like "titch" or "twiggy" in English. It's not a commonly used word in modern Italian (in any definition)

pl. -i
1. frammento molto piccolo di materiale; granello di polvere |avere un bruscolo in un occhio, (fig.) avere un fastidio |levarsi un bruscolo dall’occhio, (fig.) liberarsi da un fastidio dim. bruscolino

2. (scherz.) cosa o persona assai piccola: un bruscolo di bambino |non è un bruscolo, (non com.) non è cosa trascurabile

3. (non com.) foruncoletto

Etimologia: ← propr. dim. di brusco 2.

[Herman]

On Wednesday, October 17, 2018 at 7:26:48 AM UTC+2, chriskh...@gmail.com wrote:

>
> 2. (scherz.) cosa o persona assai piccola: un bruscolo di bambino |non è un bruscolo, (non com.) non è cosa trascurabile
>

So Twiggy, the Sixties model, was a 'bruscola'.

[chriskh...@gmail.com]

Yes, though the Italians knew her as Twiggy, sometimes adding in brackets "stecchino" as explanation/translation which is the more usual word in modern Italian.

As I said, it's a rare word today in whatever meaning, the usual word for "speck" is "scheggio".

My wife, who is Italian, confirms all this, adding that it's not a word she would ever use in normal speech

[HT]

Google mentions bruscoleti in the following sentence:

"Er publico tiene er fiatto mozo; li regazzini smeteno da magnà li bruscoleti, li giovenoti a fano fenita de fa franela che 'e regasse nun lanno graditto ..."

http://centrodestra.blogspot.com/2008/03/la-prosopopea-con-la-quale-la-ditta.html

Henk

[chriskh...@gmail.com]

This is such broad dialect (I think Roman) as to be almost incomprehensible. But it begins "The public holds its breath, the boys stop eating their bruscoleti". Only a guess, but I think it must be a local form for "bruschette", a form of toasted bread that you eat soaked in tomatoes (and very nice, too, under a hot sun)

[HT]

> This is such broad dialect (I think Roman) as to be almost incomprehensible. But it begins "The public holds its breath, the boys stop eating their bruscoleti". Only a guess, but I think it must be a local form for "bruschette", a form of toasted bread that you eat soaked in tomatoes (and very nice, too, under a hot sun)

Thanks for the information! I'll give the "bruschette" a try. They sound great.

Henk

[linde...@gmail.com]

Stecchino in English is toothpick.

Mort Linder

[chriskh...@gmail.com]

>
> Stecchino in English is toothpick.
>
> Mort Linder

I'm not sure whether you have been working as an Italian-English translator for as many decades as I have, whether you have been living in Italy for as long as I have (43 years) or whether you have been married to an Italian for as long as I have (32 years), if not you still have time to learn that few words have a single translation and that linguistic uses change. No one today in Milan (there may be regional variants) would be likely to call a toothpick anything but a "stuzzicadenti" even if "stecchino" would be correct. On the other hand, "stecchino" is still used colloquially to describe someone ultra-thin. The entry in the Treccani is pretty clear (I've added translations of the more significant parts):

stuzzicadènti s. m. [comp. di stuzzicare e dente]. – 1. Stecchetta o cilindretto sottile di legno, ma anche d’osso, di materia plastica o di penna d’oca, opportunamente appuntiti, usati per togliere dagli interstizî fra i denti frammenti di cibo che vi siano rimasti mangiando: è chiamato anche [IT IS ALSO CALLED] stecchino, e si utilizza pure in alcune preparazioni culinarie (per es., negli involtini), per servirsi di antipasti come olive, tartine, ecc. 2. fig., scherz. Persona molto magra e alta, per lo più in similitudini o come termine di paragone (oggi più com. sostituito da stecchino): [FIG. JOKINGLY. VERY TALL AND THIN PERSON --- TODAY MORE COMMONLY SUBSTITUTED BY STECCHINO] è uno s., è magra come uno s., e sim.

[linde...@gmail.com]

Hi,

I was married to an Italian woman for 55 years. What does that have to do with anything? When I lived in Rome,I learned the Roman words. In Milano, the words are often different. Spacca tut , e.g., is Milanese dialect for spacca tutto.

Basta, veramente basta,

Mort

[Herman]

so it looks like the two of you have a lot in common!