Artist

ANGELO BRANDUARDI

A very popular artist still in the 2000's, Angelo Branduardi can be somehow considered a progressive artist due to his great love for folk and classical music, that have always inspired his music. During his long career he's always been very coherent with his style and never fell into commercial productions.

The eponymous first album, from 1974, can be the most appealing for prog fans, but the great success came with Alla fiera dell'est, his first on Polydor, in 1976. Both the single and the LP were top hits in Italy, and also gave the artist a great notoriety in other european countries, like in Germany and France where most of his albums have been issued, often in different versions than the originals, and Branduardi constantly toured.

Combining traditional folk tunes (often from northern Europe) with classical music, Branduardi, a trained violinist, has created a distinctive style that's still very popular nowadays.
He has worked with many other Italian artists during the years, and his collaboration with Banco del Mutuo Soccorso is noteworthy for prog fans, with Branduardi playing violin on Come in un'ultima cena and translating the lyrics for the English-sung version of that album, As in a last supper, and Banco's members playing with him on the live Concerto 3-LP box set.

Most Branduardi releases are still common to find, but some of these are a bit scarcer in their original issues.
The first one originally had a thick gatefold glossy cover, that was almost immediately replaced by a single one. Apparently only a few hundreds copies were printed of this first issue.
Alla fiera dell'est had a giant 12-page booklet with lyrics and black & white pictures glued to the cover. Design and pictures were by Caesar Monti, and one of the photos has the same subject as on the Rocky's Filj album cover.
La pulce d'acqua contained in its first pressing an envelope with 9 drawings inspired by the songs' lyrics, and painted by Mario Convertino.
The Concerto 3-LP live album, featuring Banco del Mutuo Soccorso members in many tracks, was released in a box set including a 12-page colour booklet, the records having differently coloured inner covers. A single promo album was extracted from the box set, apparently 2 different versions exist of this, the most common on Polydor and a rarer one on the Luna Musica management's own label.

Most of these albums have been released in various european countries, where many singles have also appeared. 
In France there were French sung versions of Angelo Branduardi (but this was only released in 1981), Alla fiera dell'est (called A la foire de l'est, on Arabella), La pulce d'acqua (as La demoiselle, also on Arabella) and Cogli la prima mela (as Va ou' le vent te mene, on Musiza, with blue laminated gatefold cover).
In other european countries English-sung versions of Angelo Branduardi (in England on RCA in 1974, Germany in 1979 and Italy in 1980), Alla fiera dell'est (called Highdown fair, gatefold cover, with lyrics by Pete Sinfield, also issued in Italy by Polydor), La pulce d'acqua (as Fables and fantasies) and Cogli la prima mela (as Life is the only teacher, on Musiza, again with a different coloured, red cover), most of these were on Musiza/Ariola.

No counterfeits exist.

Being a very popular artist throughout Europe, Angelo Branduardi has attracted much interest on the Internet. 
His official website is www.angelobranduardi.it.

A very good one in Italian is http://www.branduardi.org
A very nice multilingual site on Branduardi is at http://www.branduardi.info 
The site of the "europAMICI di Angelo Branduardi" fan club is at http://www.europamici.com/, while another good one in French only, can be found at http://www.chez.com/branduardi/ 

Thanks to Carmine Musella for help and suggestions with the discography, and to Valerio D'Angelo, Maurizio Fulvi and Manuel da Achada for some of the scans.