Lukas Foss may be regarded as a mirror of twentieth century music, since his works seem more influenced by other composers and trends than influential in their own right. Whether experimenting with neo-Classicism, as in his Two-Part Inventions (4) (1938), the Passacaglia (1940), the Prelude in D (1951), and the Scherzo Ricercato (1954), or dabbling with popular song in his Grotesque Dance (1938) and the Fantasy Rondo (1944), Foss toys with styles and mannerisms with an amused detachment. Ever mindful of his craft but reticent in expression and apparently unconcerned with originality, Foss seems to approach composition with a utilitarian attitude, and his results are quite similar to Hindemith's Gebrauchs music. Even in such late works as the stylistically varied Solo (1981) and the witty For Lenny, Variations on "New York, New York" (1987), Foss seems a distant observer, and writes what is effective without revealing much of his own personality. Pianist Scott Dunn plays these works with a crisp touch and a disciplined control of line, but at no point does he express more than Foss indicates.

From a 1960 live performance in the Teatro Colòn Buenos Aires, Argentina, Ponchielli's La Gioconda's libretto was written by composter Arrigo Boito who adapted it from a play by Victor Hugo. A quintessential operatic tale of thwarted love and devotion this performance features the American soprano Lucille Udovich, noted mezzo-soprano Mignon Dunn, longtime Metropolitan Opera member bass Norman Scott, and tenor Flaviano Labo with the Teatro Colòn Orchestra and Choir conducted by Carlo Felice Cillario.

ALFANO Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano. Cello Sonata • Samuel Magill (vc); Scott Dunn (pn); Elmira Darvarova (vn) • NAXOS 8.570928 (60: 06)


These days Franco Alfano (1875–1954) is remembered more for his controversial and much maligned 1926 completion of Puccini’s Turandot than for his own well-crafted and often quite striking music. His career started promisingly. In 1904, his opera Risurrezione , based on Tolstoy’s last full-length novel, made him internationally famous (see Henry Fogel’s review in Fanfare 28:4). In 1918, he rose to the directorship of Liceo Musicale, Bologna, and two years later helped to found the society Musica Nova. His career remained on the ascendancy until 1926, when Toscanini’s de facto damnation of his completion of Turandot made him an odd man out in Italian music. Add to this that two of his contemporaries, Malipiero and Respighi, were changing the focus of Italian music from opera to purely instrumental, while Alfano continued doggedly in the operatic realm with Madonna imperia (1927), Cyrano de Bergerac (1936), Don Juan de Manara (1941), Il dottor Antonia (1949), Vesuvius (1950), and Sakùntala (1952). Then further add that Alfano was on favorable terms with Mussolini’s fascist government and one has a pretty good recipe for his subsequent obscurity.


Then there is the music itself, as illustrated by these two chamber works—soft edged, introspective, and quietly luminous in a most Debussian manner. Cellist Samuel Magill, in his liner notes to this release, points out that Alfano was half French (on his maternal side), and spent the years from 1899 until about 1905 in Paris, where he composed light music for the Folies Bergère. It is plain from these two pieces that he soaked up the atmosphere and found it most congenial. The earlier of these two works, the Cello Sonata, was commissioned in 1928 by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. It is a tour de force in its exploitation of the cello’s full compass and coloristic possibilities. The high A-string writing makes it seem a super violin, and the use of harmonics in combination with quiet sustaining pedaled piano figurations creates moments that would have made both Ravel and Debussy proud. It is a long and discursive work that opens serenely, as if to say “I will reveal a great mystery,” and then travels from the elementally abstract toward the more and more intelligible; unfathomable mystery gives way to unbridled passion, and then to a moment of sublime peace.


The Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano of 1932 is similar to the Cello Sonata, but given the third instrument, the violin, it is richer in tonal possibilities. Its opening revealing a kinship with Renaissance polyphony, indeed farther back than that, shows how easily those languages can dovetail into that of the French Impressionists. Alfano, like Bruckner and Brahms, was an antiquarian. In both of these works, Debussy’s idea that pure sonority should be an element of music equal with melody, harmony, and rhythm, is writ large.


All three performers are excellent and play with razor-edged accuracy, passion, and insight in these two world-premiere recordings. The recording, alas, is harsh in its upper register, requiring treble cut on my system, but, on the other hand, it reveals everything, as if under a microscope. The piano, however, is splendidly registered throughout.


FANFARE: William Zagorski

Alfano' chamber music is receiving deserved recognition. The Violin Sonata is a powerful and impressive work, with elements of French impressionism, but essentially post-romantic in ethos. The Piano Quintet was Alfano' last chamber work, premiered in 1946.

In September 2013, in NYC, Richard Dunn conducted the Palisades Baroque in all nine Telemann concerti for horn(s) and strings, with soloist R. J. Kelley performing on a baroque horn. Many of Telemann's horn works are a kind of hybrid. Some, called "concerto," show elements of a suite, while some show elements of both chamber music and orchestral music at the same time. In their selection, they included TWV 43: F8, a composition resembling chamber music but with a solo-tutti indication, and excluded others called "concertos", but in reality are either a suite concertante or chamber music.