Nino Rota (1911-1979) was a child prodigy, a wanderer in the musical world and a genius at the same time. At the age of thirteen he had performed his self-composed oratorio. In 1975 he won an Oscar for his work on the second part of the trilogy “The Godfather”. His most famous melody is the theme “Il Padrino” from the film of the same name by Francis Ford Coppola. His musical mastery bore the stamp of his collaboration with Federico Fellini, with whom he worked from 1960 until his death in 1979.

Nino Rota's talent was often compared to that of Mozart. He was able to compose a melody while listening to other music. He was also able to fully tune into his counterpart, absorb his ideas and then elicit a unique correspondence from it, which did not arise from a conscious process but directly from the pure inspiration of the moment, proving something free of the urge to have to.

Nino Rota's musical interpretations are characterized by a special openness, they are never just sad, never unambiguous, it is not specified what you have to feel or think, your own possibilities of interpretation are preserved. In this respect, Nino Rota matched the filmic language of Federico Fellini very well.

Fellini and Rota were idealy complementary to each other in their skills and characters: Fellini, the exuberant, stirring visionary, trumpeter of his own dream worlds, verbose and expressive. On the other hand, Nino Rota, calm and introverted, who, thanks to his outstanding musical and improvisational skills, was able to convert Fellini's words directly into music with dream-like ease and accuracy.

In his compositions, Rota drew from an extraordinarily rich musical repertoire of the time and created his own style and sound from classic, folk, jazz and contemporary popular elements.

This closeness to folk and popular music is probably one of the reasons why Nino Rota's melodies are mostly cantabile, so they are easy to sing along with and therefore very accessible and memorable. His arrangement style is also characteristic: each instrument retains its own voice, as is known from smaller ensembles rather than from orchestras. Playfulness and lightness always shine through here in every single voice.

Rota, always curious and open to new technical developments, integrated all kinds of modern instruments and sound effects in his arrangements.

Rotatonics try to compress the complex sound world of Nino Rota into a handy duo format without losing the composer's spirit.