Marco Serino turns iconic film music into an intimate chamber experience on Cinema Memories, unveiling Ennio Morricone's own violin-and-piano arrangements alongside classics from John Williams, Leonard Bernstein, and Myroslav Skoryk.
Cinema Memories finds Marco Serino stepping into the most personal corner of Ennio Morricone’s world, performing the Maestro’s own arrangements for violin and piano after more than two decades spent bringing his film music to life. Serino recorded every solo violin line Morricone wrote for the screen starting in 2000 and toured globally with him from the Royal Albert Hall to Verona’s Arena, experience that now shapes this intimate new anthology.
These are world premiere recordings drawn directly from celebrated soundtracks, presented not as grand orchestral statements but as reflective close-ups. Serino is joined by pianist Leandro Piccioni, a fellow veteran of Morricone’s favored Roma Sinfonietta. Their approach feels like memory turned into performance, revisiting music they lived from the inside rather than reviving repertoire from afar.
The collection expands beyond Morricone, widening its cinematic lens to include music that shaped the language of film. John Williams’ Three Pieces from Schindler’s List, Bernstein’s West Side Story Suite, and Myroslav Skoryk’s Melody in A minor appear not as diversions, but as companions to Morricone’s themes; works that share the same mingling of memory, narrative, and emotional precision. Together they weave a program that balances melancholy and light, imagination and reality, like scenes shifting across a screen.
Serino’s classical pedigree reinforces the album’s intent. He has performed in leading halls from Berlin’s Philharmonie to Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, working with artists such as Albrecht Mayer, Mario Brunello, Christophe Coin, Giovanni Sollima, and Pepe Romero. Composers including Morricone, Luis Bacalov, Steve Reich, and Pascal Dusapin have entrusted him with new pieces written for his instrument.
With Cinema Memories, Serino and Piccioni transform iconic film music into a chamber experience rooted in lived history. The album plays less like a soundtrack tribute and more like a dialogue between musicians and the cinema that shaped them, keeping Morricone’s spirit present in every quiet phrase.