Giovanna Sottomano Albano and the composer Nino Rota were very good friends. They met at the Giovanni Paisiello Music Conservatory, where both were teachers.

     Nino Rota lived here in Taranto only for two years, from 1937 to 1939, enough time to leave a mark especially in his career. His symphony no. 2 is named after the town “La Tarantina – Pilgrimage to the South”.

The two friends often met after the school, joining their great passion for music, playing together, going to concerts, talking each other.

During the postwar years, when concerts were restored, Giovanna Sottomano Albano did all she could for getting Nino Rota back to Taranto and joining some of the concerts at Amici della Musica, the Association she managed, and from 1945 to 1948 Rota played in different musical seasons.

He was back in Taranto to participate a conference for musical high schools in South Italy and member of the Committee at the arising piano competition, today the International Piano Competition Arcangelo Speranza.

Nino Rota dedicated a piano valse to her friend Giovanna, composed in 1945, with the words: “ To my dear lady Giovanna Albano Sottomano, as a tribute to her from Nino Rota” – July 12, 1945 .

Giovanna Sottomano Albano and the composer Nino Rota were very good friends. They met at the Giovanni Paisiello Music Conservatory, where both were teachers. Nino Rota lived here in Taranto only for two years, from 1937 to 1939, enough time to leave a mark especially in his career. His symphony no. 2 is named after the town “La Tarantina – Pilgrimage to the South”.

Among the few piano compositions in the catalogue this valse is an example of what even a composition for an opportunity – a tribute to his friend – has been for Nino Rota the way to use his unique talent together with that artistic streak rising up on his best works.

The score was founded by the musician Adriano Cirillo among his old music counterpoint books, and he writes :  “The theme of the composition recalls at the beginning a melody then developed in the opera The straw hat of Florence (1945-46), suddenly has a painful wistful expression, a typical emotion of the composer, to develop then an artistry with a perfect portrait of the nineteenth century spirit”.