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Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky: Romeo & Juliet / Gatti, RPO
This pair of Romeo and Juliets from Daniele Gatti and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is the conductor's fourth CD for BMG Conifer. Others include a Bartók disc, Respighi 's "Roman Trilogy," and a very effective Mahler Symphony No .5. With the Prokofiev, the trend in recent years has been for conductors to fashion their own series of selections from the compete work and to eschew the three suites the composer produced that may be musically satisfying but that ignore entirely the narrative flow of the ballet. A spectacularly successful example is a 1996 RCA disc from Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony which, at 78 minutes, presents a bit more than half of the ballet—perhaps all you really need outside the context of a staged performance. Gatti takes a middle ground. He plays most of the movements from the "official" Suites Nos. 1 and 2 (op. 64b and op. 64c) but reorders them to make more dramatic sense. Gatti states in the notes, "I have chosen to present the individual pieces as a series of colorful contrasts, as Prokofiev did, whilst retaining a semblance of the original story line."
The conductor succeeds considerably. Gatti registers a wide emotional range, rendering aptly both the most tender music and the crudest moments. He captures both the Neoclassical spirit of the work, as in his graceful, spontaneous-sounding "Juliet, the young girl," and the overtly Romantic gestures. The "Balcony Scene" has moments of exquisite delicacy, rising to a fervent tenderness; the closing "Romeo at Juliet's Tomb" is powerful, with an acutely agonized sense of grief. Those who love this music will have (at least) one of the several versions of the complete score—Maazel's, on a bargain-priced London "Double Decker" set, fills the bill nicely—and I find Tilson Thomas's balletic, well-played program indispensable. There's also still a place for the traditional, composer-approved suites: Muti's early 1980s readings of the first two, for instance.
In Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, Gatti makes very familiar material seem fresh and compelling without being willfully "different." The opening minutes are permeated with a sense of longing, and when the Big Theme comes, while Gatti doesn't wallow, his performance is certainly quite stirring. From Intersound's budget-priced "Royal Philharmonic Orchestra" series, we know this venerable ensemble plays well for any good conductor; they play exceptionally well for their young Music Director. The recording is billed as having "EDR"—"Extended Dynamic Range"—and, indeed, you'd better adjust the volume level with care. The opening chord of "Montagues and Capulets" starts at a modest level, but Crescendos to a cataclysmic roar that had me diving for the gain control the first time out. The sound, generally, is nonfatiguing, with imaging and depth that are very good, if not quite state-of-the-art. The conductor's respiratory exertions are episodically audible.
There are close to 100 listings for the Tchaikovsky in Schwann Opus and dozens of Prokofiev's R & J, in various forms. Do you really want another version of these perennial favorites? You may want Gatti's.
-- Andrew Quint, FANFARE [7/1999]
Malipiero: Violin Concertos & Per una favola cavalleresca / Symphonic Orchestra of Rome
This release couples Gian Francesco Malipiero’s two contrasting violin concertos with the world premiere recording of his kaleidoscopic orchestral work Per una favola cavalleresca, evoking legendary scenes of love, tournaments, battles, moonbeams and heroes. Malipiero’s First Violin Concerto is one of his most beautiful and joyful works, a remarkable achievement for a composer who is said to have played the violin badly in his youth. His Second Violin Concerto, written 30 years later, sounds astonishingly different on a first hearing, but reveals itself to be inspired by the same lyrical impulse as the earlier concerto.
Review
Naxos/Marco Polo have been staunch allies of Malipiero of yore. Their example has been all the more admirable since their advocacy dates from a decade or more after the composer’s death. First, they recorded all the symphonies - and there are lots of them - in Russia on Marco Polo. These were done largely with the far too easily overlooked Antonio de Almeida (1928-1997). That multiple-CD series has been reissued on Naxos.
His First Violin Concerto (1932) is in the accustomed furiously confident three movements. There’s no hint of neo-classicism or museum-rigid “Alte Stil”. This is fast-flowing music where the orchestra keep pace with the ardent solo, here played with unblinking skill by Paolo Chiavacci. The writing is juicy and its probing ardour continues into the central Lento and the nicely rounded finale. This is a work and performance that, for me, never descends into tedium.
Per una favola cavalleresca (For a chivalric tale) is in four movements and is the earliest piece here. It is claimed to be inspired by legendary scenes of love, tournaments, battles, moon-beams and burials of heroes, possibly with links to a Malipero opera Lancelotto del Lago. It’s the longest work here, in four unnamed movements, across half an hour. It’s masterfully orchestrated with no strata of the orchestra wasted. Romantic to the hilt and occasionally voluptuous in the familiar manner of Respighi, as in his Ballad of the Gnomes. Even within these bounds it is a full-lipped piece yet with plenty of nocturnal facets as in parts of the third movement. Written at about the same time as Sibelius’s Suite mignonne which, at least in its titles, has its chivalric overtones, it is a very different. The Malipiero is more head-on and drips with juice as you can hear with the no-holds-barred brass fanfaring of the highly coloured finale. One can easily read into this the betrayal of Arthur and his anger, even if the work and the movement does end in a romantic glow.
Malipero wastes nothing - no time beating of useless filler material - both this and the second concerto are over and done with in about twenty minutes. The second - quite a short piece at 19:35 - is cooler. It was written a decade before the composer’s death and confronts a very different world order from the First. It is by no means devoid of passion. Even so, darker emotions are in play. The soloist has to make speedy headway. Disillusion inflects the central non troppo lento which is lichen-hung. The finale is another work of testing virtuosity, but brusque.
Another point to make is that these works, especially the First concerto and the Cavalleresca at times seem wrung from the same harmonic material as Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending but always stand in their own right.
A Malipiero genre admirably tackled by the familiar La Vecchia and his orchestra. They have been most agreeably performed and recorded.
--MusicWeb International (Rob Barnett)
Salut D'amour - R. Strauss: Violin Sonata, Etc / Chuanyun Li
SALUT D’AMOUR • Chuanyun Li (vn); Robert Koenig (pn) • HÄNSSLER 98.278 (67:08)
DVO?ÁK Slavonic Dance, op. 72/2. KROLL Banjo and Fiddle. ELGAR Salut d’amour. BAZZINI La ronde des lutins. GLAZUNOV Raymonda: Intermezzo. SARASATE Zapateado. GLUCK Orfeo ed Euridice: Melody. PAGANINI Introduction and Variations on “Nel cor più non mi sento.” GERSHWIN (arr. Heifetz) It Ain’t Necessarily So. R. STRAUSS Violin Sonata
In how many programs does the obligatory sonata follow the encores (the jewel box lists the sonata first)? Chuanyun Li mixes simple and expressive numbers like Elgar’s Salut d’amour with virtuoso showstoppers like Paganini’s Variations on “Nel cor più non mi sento,” Bazzini’s Dance of the Goblins , and Sarasate’s Zapateado as an appetizer for the main course, Strauss’s concerto-like Violin Sonata. Those not familiar with Li from his playing on the soundtrack for the Chinese-produced movie, Together (and his appearance in the movie as a student emerging into the professional world playing Vieuxtemps’s Fifth Concerto), or from his video recordings produced by Bein and Fushi (both in a Ruggiero Ricci lesson and as a participant in a festival of Chinese violin music), should be struck in Hänssler’s issue of a 1999 recording he made at the Cincinnati Conservatory, by his soaring tone, his brilliant technical command, and his grasp of the many styles he’s assembled in his program. Idiomatic Elgar rubs shoulders with Slavonic Dvo?ák, darkly glowing Glazunov, and steamy Gershwin. Bazzini’s Ronde des lutins might as well have been retired for decades after Heifetz’s first recording of it in 1917; later recordings may have included all the notes but not the sizzle. Some, even as recent as Gil Shaham’s (24:3), seemed almost somber in comparison to the young Heifetz’s. Those who might not have heard that earlier recording might come to the end of Li’s with a very similar impression of overwhelming virtuosity coupled with heroic dash and élan. For example, at the section of notes repeated on each of four strings, some violinists simply struggle to play solidly, while Li manages to add tangy nuances. Glazunov’s Intermezzo offers many opportunities for portamentos, and violinists of earlier generations would have taken them with relish. So does Li, but never to the detriment of the music’s lyrical flow, which he builds in waves to a powerful climax. When the music settles to its quiet conclusion, he draws a pure tone from both strings in the final double-stops, a feat perhaps as difficult as the left-hand pizzicato in Bazzini’s Ronde . Li introduces stronger accents than Sarasate did into the Zapateado , and he adds some twangy timbral graces of his own. His performance goes beyond the heavier Russian style that became common in readings of the mercurial Sarasate; but, taken on its own terms, it’s a heady sprint to the finish. Heifetz and Milstein both played Gluck’s Melody, which Fritz Kreisler had arranged for violin and piano. Li’s performance matches theirs in elegance and warmth, and his special personal touches make it his own rather than a copy of theirs. Paganini’s Variations fare well in Li’s reading, sweetly lyrical in the manner of Rossini as devilish in the style of Locatelli. His gift for sumptuous melody alternates in this violinist’s compendium with his knack for brash pyrotechnics (which he fires off with surprising sweetness), and those mount to the conclusion in an unstoppable juggernaut.
Strauss’s early Sonata has been taken almost as a Concerto for Violin and Piano, and Heifetz (who reputedly tried to commission such a Concerto from Prokofiev) seemed always on the lookout for pieces he could play that way, like this one, Saint-Saëns’s First Sonata in D Minor, and Respighi’s. Memory of Heifetz remains strong, but Li manages to create his own forceful identity from the bold first movement. Arguably the slow movement of the Sonata makes a more glowing musical statement than does the slow movement of the (also youthful) Violin Concerto, and Li warms not only to its initial sentiment but also to its more agitated central section. He also seems comfortably at home in the finale’s broad rhetoric.
Here’s an old-fashioned violin recital with a Sonata thrown in to please everyone (the reverse of the usual procedure), and only those with almost unreasonably strong preferences should complain. It’s individual, brilliant, and musically both protean and probing—a substantial accomplishment for anyone, and certainly so for a 19-year-old. As Mischa Elman supposedly remarked to his accompanist, Joseph Seiger, when he heard Michael Rabin’s recording of Wieniawski’s First Concerto, that’s the way the violin should be played. Robert Koenig remains an insightful supporter through the many changes in style, and the lifelike recorded sound makes both players almost bodily present. Strongly recommended.
FANFARE: Robert Maxham
Cello Masterpieces
The Mercury Masters - Antal Doráti and the Philharmonia Hungarica
Driving intensity, rhythmic flair, and demonstration-quality sound are brought to the fore in a new anthology of Antal Doráti's early recordings with the Philharmonia Hungarica on Mercury and Philips. Founded in 1956, the Philharmonia Hungarica emerged from turbulent post-war times as a crack ensemble of émigré Hungarian musicians who had fled Communism for the West. While they gave concerts in Europe and the US, it was through these seven albums on Mercury and Philips that they became famous, and synonymous with the name of the conductor Antal Doráti. Together, Doráti and the Philharmonia Hungarica would go on to make a celebrated cycle of Haydn symphonies for Decca in the early 1970s. But these early recordings already demonstrate what a potent artistic combination they were, as forerunners both to that monument of gramophone history, and to the modern-day Budapest Festival Orchestra. As reviewers at the time remarked, the strings play with a particular unanimity and attack which sounds uniquely 'Hungarian'.
A booklet essay by the music historian David Patmore tells the story of the Philharmonia Hungarica and their debut on record. All six Mercury albums were recorded at sessions in June 1958, held in the Vienna Konzerthaus: a spacious but analytical acoustic, well suited to the label's trademark high-impact sound. The repertoire played to the strengths of both label and musicians: mostly Hungarian music from the last half century, vividly colored and coursing with rhythmic energy.
There is an early taste of the ensemble's feeling for Haydn, in the 'Surprise' and 'Drum Roll' Symphonies. Doráti's established reputation as a masterful conductor of ballet brings a sweeping sense of line to a collection of Viennese waltzes. The ace in the pack of the Mercury/Philharmonia Hungarica albums was Respighi's suites of Ancient Airs and Dances, which soon became a demonstration disc for audiophiles worldwide. Never previously collected together, this Mercury legacy is complemented by the two albums which the Philharmonia Hungarica and Doráti recorded for Philips. The ensemble's first-ever recording, made in October 1957, appeared on the Fontana imprint, coupling Bartók's Divertimento with Leo Weiner's Hungarian Dances. From 1974, the second Philips album returns to Bartók, with gripping interpretations of the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Dance Suite.
Castelnuovo-tedesco: Piano Concertos / Maragoni, Magrelia, Malmo Symphony
R E V I E W:
CASTELNUOVO-TEDESCO Piano Concertos: Nos. 1, 2. Love’s Labour’s Lost: 4 Dances • Alessandro Marangoni (pn); Andrew Mogrelia, cond; Malmö SO • NAXOS 8.572823 (76: 43)
Naxos’s two discs of this composer’s Shakespeare overtures really turned a lot of heads, mine included, a couple of years ago. Therefore, it was inevitable that the label would add to its Castelnuovo-Tedesco discography. The two piano concertos are not new to CD. However, as happens with greater frequency these days, alternative recordings have either gone out of print or are prohibitively expensive imports. This new release makes a lot of sense then, and it has been made all the more attractive by the addition of the four dances from Love’s Labour’s Lost , in not only their first recording but also their first performance!
That’s probably a good place to start. Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed these in 1953, but apparently Boosey & Hawkes, to which they were offered, did not publish them, and neither did Ricordi. Thus, they remained in manuscript, and unheard, until they were lent by the composer’s niece, Lisbeth Castelnuovo-Tedesco, to Alessandro Marangoni, who prepared a performing edition. This utterly delightful music should not have waited 60 years for a performance. The composer’s affinity for Shakespeare, already demonstrated in the concert overtures, also comes forward here. There is a gently ironic, somewhat Ravel-like and somewhat cinematic approach to old dance forms here. A lush Sarabande (for the King of Navarre) is followed by a mocking Gavotte (for the Princess of France) and a quietly loquacious Spanish Dance (for Don Adriano de Armado). Last is a Russian Dance—the flavoring is subtle—which corresponds to the scene in Shakespeare’s comedy in which the King and his scholarly companions disguise themselves as Muscovites to woo the Princess and her three ladies. Again, it floors me that this music had to wait so long to be heard.
A similar situation applies to the Piano Concerto No. 2. The original score appears to have been lost, but Marangoni found a copy in the Library of Congress and prepared a performing edition of the piano part. (The orchestral parts were found somewhere else—talk about pieces and parts!) Both of the concertos are an unusual marriage of virtuoso writing and Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s relatively relaxed compositional style. The second concerto is the darker of the two; it was composed in 1936–37, shortly before the composer, who was a Jew, left Italy, ending up in Hollywood. It is, however, not a tragic work, but it lacks the lightness and wit of the other two works on this CD. For me, its romantic gestures don’t add up to a lot, given the not very distinctive quality of the melodic writing. Also, Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s longer works don’t have the structural strength of the Shakespeare overtures, for example, and this also contributes to the sense that the music is always going somewhere but never quite arriving. It is, by the way, proudly tonal. I am reminded of Respighi’s comment, around this time, that “dissonance has its place as a medium of tone-color, and polytonality has important uses as a means of expression, but for their own sake, they are completely abhorrent to me.”
So, as suggested, the Piano Concerto No. 1 (1927), which opens the CD, is less moody. As Graham Wade writes in his booklet note, it “was written in a spirit of optimism and ebullience.” Like the second concerto, its middle movement is a Romanza, although here, its introspection is less merited, and perhaps driven simply by the need for contrast. As I relisten to both of these concertos, I think the best way to describe them would be “Nino Rota meets Rachmaninoff,” although the First, in particular, is less impressive than either of those composers usually managed to be.
Away from the piano bench, Marangoni appears to be putting unusual effort forward on behalf of the composer, and I have no reason to believe that his pianism is holding either of these concertos back. He seems to enjoy their romantic lushness, and he has the fingers to make the most of that quality. Andrew Mogrelia, a familiar name from many Naxos releases, is associated with ballet music, and so it is not surprising that color and transparency are two strong features of these recordings. The Swedish orchestra is just fine, as is the engineering.
This is most desirable, I think, for the 16 minutes allotted to the dances from Love’s Labour’s Lost. I don’t reject the possibility, however, that the two piano concertos might grow on me, in time.
FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle
Catalani: Ero e Leandro... / La Vecchia, Rome
CATALANI Ero e Leandro. Scherzo. Andantino. Contemplazione. Il Mattino “Sinfonia romantica” • Francesco La Vecchia, cond; Roma SO • NAXOS 8.573072 (54:48)
Due to his premature death at age 39 from tuberculosis, Alfredo Catalani (1854–1893) is one of the tragic near misses for musical immortality. In his finals years, after four earlier and promising but flawed efforts, he produced one very creditable opera, Loreley , followed by a stunning masterpiece, La Wally , which unfortunately and unjustly remains known almost solely for a single “hit” aria, “Ebben? Ne andrò lontana.” The quality of his surviving works, and their trajectory toward ever greater excellence, suggest that had he lived a normal lifespan, he might have ranked alongside Verdi and Puccini in the pantheon of operatic masters—at the very least, equal to or ahead of Mascagni, Giordano, Leoncavallo, and similar figures. (Certainly, Toscanini thought so, going to the extreme of naming two of his children after characters from Catalani’s operas.)
Equally unfortunately, the handful of recordings that have been made of his operas and other works have not done them justice, being generally cast with inadequate or over-the-hill singers and provincial orchestras. (The one truly great performance, the 1968 American Opera Society presentation of La Wally with Renata Tebaldi and Carlo Bergonzi, was released on the long defunct Intaglio label; it should be hunted down by anyone who cares about the work.) While this release does not rectify that lamentable situation with respect to Catalani’s operas, the most significant part of his compositional output, it does provide us with solid performances of five of his orchestral compositions. While none of these works is great music, all are at least worth hearing, being typical of their composer and pointing to the genius that would be fully realized in his final stage works.
Lyricism is, of course, a given and expected trait when one looks to Italian opera composers of the Romantic and verismo periods and styles. That said, there are distinct approaches to that lyricism. Verdi and his contemporaries represent an earlier stylistic school, in which phrases within arias tend to be more symmetrical and strophically defined, and emotional expression is more Classically poised. Puccini and the verists who came later, by contrast, composed arias whose lines follow more irregular patterns, and where the emotional passion is uninhibited. Catalani falls somewhere between the two. While chronologically he belongs to the verist period, and his melodic lines partake to some degree of their more free-flowing nature, there is a good deal of Classical restraint in his style; inflections are more subtle, and there is none of the sheer gaucherie to which the verists often fell prey. Generally, his music is more introspective, infused with a gentle melancholy and reflectiveness, retaining a certain elegance even in climactic outbursts. Indeed, the greater subtlety of Catalani’s music in comparison to that of his confreres may largely account for its failure to gain a greater foothold in the affections of the opera-going public.
All of the aforementioned traits are on full display in the works presented here. The earliest of them, a brief Andantino dating from about 1871 when the composer was only 17, was one of his first works to be published and attract favorable notice. Composed in rondo form, it shows confident command of that idiom, and the opening musical material is already redolent of the atmospheric music that Catalani would use to invoke the Swiss Alps in La Wally two decades later. The equally brief Scherzo in A from 1878 belies its jocund title, savoring instead of an almost minuet-like decorum. Both works also exist in versions for piano, which are most likely their original guises. The aptly-named Contemplazione , also from 1878, is a more substantial piece (11:35 in this recording); it is a mostly quiet and dream-like nocturne cast broadly in A-B-A form.
The two most formidable works here are separated by the interval of a decade. Il Mattino (Morning), dating from 1874, is one of at least three attempts the youthful composer made at a symphony; the other two are a companion work, La Notte (Night), and a previous Sinfonia from 1872. It opens with a brief slow introduction on the woodwinds before segueing to a somewhat faster allegro section in a still moderate tempo. While the thematic material is unmistakably of an Italianate cast, Catalani here clearly has his eyes set on formal models from north of the Alps, particularly Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms. In this case he struggles, somewhat unsuccessfully, to make grandly weighty musical gestures, which come off as rather commonplace instead, though I have a sense that a considerably more lively tempo would be more apt and could remedy that perception, at least in part.
Ero e Leandro , Catalani’s one attempt at a symphonic poem, followed in 1884. It depicts the ancient Greek myth of the illicit love between the youth Leander of the city of Abados, and Ero (Hero), the vestal virgin priestess of Venus held in a tower in the city of Sestos on the other side of the strait of the Hellespont (Dardanelles). Each night, guided by a lamp suspended by Ero in the tower, Leander swims the strait to join her in nightly ecstasies of love. (Inspired by the myth, Lord Byron replicated this feat and swam the channel in four hours in 1810, an event commemorated first by his subsequent poem and then by an annual swimming event.) One night, as Leander attempts to return home, a storm puts out the lamp, and he loses his way in the waters and drowns. His body washes up on the shore in sight of Ero, who then hurtles herself from the tower to her own death. At age 30, the composer has now arrived at full stylistic maturity. The thematic material, variously depicting the undulations and storms of the sea, the strenuous swimming of Leander, and the amorous passion between him and Ero, is well integrated into a seamless flow of ongoing variations supported by masterly orchestration. Stylistically it also shows the composer charting his own original path; while there is a distant kinship in spirit with the tone poems of Dvo?ák and Tchaikovsky, Catalani is now definitely his own man, setting an example that would later flow into the orchestral works of figures such as Respighi and Casella.
The recordings of the Andantino and Il Mattino are advertised as being world premieres. The other three works were previously issued on a Bongiovanni CD, with performances by Silvano Frontalini and the Warmia National Orchestra (a Polish ensemble) that David Johnson accorded a rather tepid review back in 15:1. Riccardo Muti and the orchestra of La Scala recorded the Scherzo and Contemplazione for Sony in 1998, a disc that Bernard Jacobson endorsed in 22:1; one wishes that Muti had taken on Ero and Leandro as well or instead. There is no question that the members of the Roma Symphony have this idiom in their blood, and play with style and commitment, and they are abetted by recorded sound that is clear and spacious but not overly resonant. My one reservation is that, while I don’t have a basis for comparison, I have a clear sense that the major works on this disc require a firmer, more energetic hand at the podium than Francesco La Vecchia provides. However, unless Muti, Gianandrea Noseda, or a figure of similar stature decides to take this music in hand (how about a disc with Ero and Leandro, Contemplazione , and all three of Catalani’s symphonies?), this is perforce the preferred choice for those who want recordings of the two major works and the Andantino . Recommended to specialists in the narrow niche of Romantic Italian symphonic repertoire.
FANFARE: James A. Altena
Pizzetti: Canti Della Stagione Alta / Oleg Caetani, Boris Statsenko
Does Marco Polo still exist as a label? Created under the mantle “the label of discovery” it used to be the Naxos main outlet for music from the world’s highways and byways. Now that Naxos seems to embrace all and every style of music and at a bargain price I’m guessing Marco Polo has quietly slipped away. Over the years Naxos has reissued many earlier Marco Polo discs and this is one such – a straight reissue of the 1999 disc. I missed it first time round and I am sorry that I did – it is a CD of rare but instantly appealing music convincingly performed.
Ildebrando Pizzetti is one of a group of Italian composers – the others included Respighi, Malipiero and Casella - who sought to modernise Italian opera as well as establishing a body of non-operatic Italian music. All of the music presented here is intensely dramatic – not surprising in a composer who produced more than a dozen operas as well as incidental and film music. Even the piano concerto here Canti della stagione alta is intensely pictorial. The disc opens with the prelude to Pizzetti’s first Opera Fedra. This opens with a strangely hypnotic sinuous melody (monody really) from the violas that immediately flags up one of Pizzetti’s great interests – Gregorian Chant yet this seamlessly moves into an impassioned lyrical outburst for the full orchestra within half a minute – it is powerfully dramatic and makes one want to hear more of the full opera. If you think that Puccini had yet to write Il Trittico or Turandot at the time Fedra was first performed you can hear what a new path Pizzetti was trying to forge. It is still very romantic and lyrical but quite different from the music of his more illustrious contemporary.
The major work presented here is the piano concerto of 1930 Canti della stagione alta (Songs of the High Season). Keith Anderson’s erudite - as usual - notes capture the sound world of this piece well. The music is immediately ‘open-air’, modal in flavour and with a rhapsodic feel - the long singing lines of the strings show a composer of a naturally lyrical bent. The way the woodwinds ornament and muse over their opening material is very beautiful. It doesn’t grab your attention by the use of great arching melodies instead it creates its effects by use of texture and atmosphere – Pizzetti handles the orchestra and soloist with great confidence. Certainly if you like your piano concertos big-boned, tonal and of a romantic cut this is for you. Running at a shade under thirty minutes this is not a huge work but it feels bigger than that. Not to imply that it outstays its welcome – far from it. As the first movement develops it moves away from the pastoral to something altogether more dramatic with double octave passages in the piano tossed off with conspicuous ease. There is a heraldic quality to some of Pizzetti’s brass writing that I really enjoy. Yes it could be argued there is a cinematic element to it but it works for me! The slow second movement is altogether simpler although once again the central climax is heavily brass led but I do like the way this immediately gives way to a quietly modal string passage with some distant brass figures – sounding deliberately archaic – decorating the music. Not having seen a score it is hard to know exactly how Pizzetti achieves the effect but the metre of the work is very flexible with a strong sense of regular predictable bar-lines removed. Instead we can feel the underlying basic pulse – once again this seems to be a stylistic nod towards the melodic fluidity of plainsong. The finale is played attacca leaping straight from the final notes of the second movement. This is a true rondo which – again I agree with Keith Anderson here – has echoes of an Italianate Rachmaninov although the quirky string led fugal passage and a final exciting brass peroration are uniquely Pizzetti’s own. This proved to be a very pleasurable discovery indeed. The disc is completed by music Pizzetti wrote for a silent movie in 1914 – Cabiria. What an extraordinary event this must have been – the bulk of the music for this two and a half hour epic was assembled - as was so often the case with early silent film scores - from standard orchestral repertoire. However for a key sequence – involving the sacrifice of 100 children to the God of Carthage Moloch! – Pizzetti was commissioned to provide this ten minute sequence involving large orchestra, baritone soloist and chorus. That it is pictorial is clear from the very first bars and again benefits from a performance of great flair. To be honest it is the piece on this disc I would least often return but it is not trying to be anything but colourful and illustrative – there is none of the subtlety or emotional weight that marks out the other pieces here. Conversely I cannot think of another example of so early a dedicated film score of this originality and power. Well worth a listen in that historical context alone. Quite how it sat next to excerpts of Mozart Mendelssohn and Gluck I do not have a clue!
The price of discovery for many of the early Marco Polo discs was the dubious quality of the performances and recordings. I’m pleased to say that this is not the case here. The Robert Schumann Philharmonie play this unfamiliar repertoire with great sensitivity and technical assurance. Only a couple of brief moments of string edginess in the second movement shows that the concerto was taken from live performances but in fact the balance and sound stage is excellent and the audience is totally inaudible. The rapport between the husband and wife team of Oleg and Susanna Stefani Caetani is excellent and the liner notes make clear that the concerto is part of her active repertoire. This clearly benefits the piece with a thoroughly convincing performance in every respect. Likewise the two filler pieces which are studio recordings from the same period – powerfully performed and well recorded.
Running to less than fifty minutes this is a rather under-filled disc although we would have been happy with that in the days of LP’s and at Naxos’ bargain price given the quality on offer I don’t really feel I can complain. All in all a disc of far greater musical and technical quality than I was expecting. It makes me want to hear the recently released Concerto dell’estate (Naxos 8.572013) as well as the complete Fedra.
Indulgently romantic piano concerto performed with bravura assurance.
-- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International
MERCURY MASTERS: THE MONO RECORDINGS
Respighi: Symphonic Poems / Bátiz, Royal Philharmonic
These recordings are also available on MiniDisc, catalog number 7.550539.
Respighi: Piano Concerto, Toccata / Scherbakov, Griffiths
. . . [A]t this price how could anyone with the slightest weakness for Respighi hesitate? Scherbakov and Griffiths do a good deal more than dutifully go through the motions, the soloist in particular playing with delicacy and affection . . . . [T]he Concerto and the Fantasia, both very early Respighi, are not patronized in the slightest. The central slow section of the Concerto, indeed, achieves something like nobility . . . . The Toccata is not so much an exercise in the neo-baroque, often though its dotted and florid figures promise it, more of an essay on how far one can be neo-baroque without giving up a post-Lisztian keyboard style and comfortable orchestral upholstery. But in a slow and florid central section, a rather melancholy aria that passes from the soloist to the oboe, to the strings and back again, there is a real quality of Bachian utterance translated not unrecognizably into a late romantic language . . . . Scherbakov sounds touched by it, and obviously wants us to like it. Indeed these are likeable performances of music that needs that sort of help, but repays it. . . . -- Michael Oliver, Gramophone
SCHATTENSPIELE
Di Vittorio: Sinfonias Nos. 3 & 4 / Hall-Tompkins, Di Vittorio, Chamber Orchestra of New York
Salvatore Di Vittorio is seen as heir to the Italian neo-Classical orchestral tradition with a narrative style notable for its colorful orchestration and ‘swelling lyricism’ (American Record Guide). This second volume of his orchestral works includes a vivid portrayal of the cultural and historical diversity of his home city in Overtura Palermo. Sinfonia No. 3 evokes the beauty and magnificence of Sicilian temples, while Sinfonia No. 4 ‘Metamorfosi’, based on Ovid, is Di Vittorio’s most important work to date. His Overtura Respighiana and Sinfonias Nos. 1 and 2 can be heard on Naxos 8.572333.
Malipiero: Complete Music For Solo Piano / Lopez
Italian composer Riccardo Malipiero (1914–2003) was the nephew of Gian Francesco Malipiero. He was a pioneer of twelve-tone technique in Italy. His 6 published piano works encapsulate half-a-century of development, from the post-Respighian 14 variazioni (1938), to the classicism of Diario second (1985). This is the first-ever recording of this music.
REVIEW:
The present six works, tracing this Milanese composer’s piano music from 1938 to 1989, are made up of short, separately-tracked musical episodes—the perfect answer to a challenged attention span. There are 49 tracks so Toccata’s attention to detail is nothing short of lavish. In addition the pianist’s essay on the composer and his solo piano music encompasses nine closely packed but perfectly eye-friendly pages. The booklet is in English only. The works recorded here make up Malipiero’s published corpus for piano solo. They here receive their recording premieres.
The 14 Variazioni di un tema musicale are already fully formed in dodecaphonic terms and angular style. Costellazioni finds this composer at close to the peak of the avant-garde’s popularity. We hear awkward figures rumble, ripple and skitter, deep bass chords resound. The hypnotic writing evokes thoughts of distant galaxies. The work ends in a stutter that gutters and then finally peters out. He is the master of Stravinskian scurrying figuration; cool, cold with flourishing rhythmic thunder and grunt.
This is tough music presented with factual and technical diligence as well as artistic qualities. Credit to the pianist for carrying through this distinctive project from concept to execution. There’s no want of valour in choosing this music to champion.
-- MusicWeb International
Rosner: Orchestral Music, Vol. 2 / Burchett, Palmer, London Philharmonic Orchestra
The musical language of the New York-based Arnold Rosner (1945–2013) clothes the modal harmony and rhythm of pre-Baroque polyphony in rich Romantic colours, producing a style that is instantly recognisable and immediately appealing. This second Toccata Classics album of his orchestral music contrasts the high-spirited Unraveling Dances – a rhapsody with more than a nod to Ravel’s Bolero – with the powerful symphonic suite Five Ko-ans for Orchestra and Rosner’s dramatic, dark, hieratic setting of Kafka’s The Parable of the Law for baritone and orchestra. American baritone Christopher Burchett has appeared on the stages of opera companies throughout the United States and Europe, including New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Opera News has described him as a ‘fearlessly vulnerable’ performer, ‘who gave an unflinchingly, heroically human performance that will linger long in the memory.’ Nick Palmer is music director of the Lafayette Symphony in Indiana, North Charleston Pops in South Carolina and the ‘Evening Under the Stars’ music festival in Massachusetts; principal pops conductor of the Altoona Symphony in Philadelphia; and distinguished conductor in residence at Kentucky Wesleyan College.
REVIEW:
This is the second of Toccata’s blessed progression of discs of orchestral music by New York-based Arnold Rosner. You can find reviews of Volume One here and here. Toccata have also issued a chamber music disc. Rosner wrote serious tonal music and the performances on this disc and its recording qualities are a superb compliment to Rosner’s achievement. There is nothing circus-like, trivial or superficial in his output. Even his Millenium Overture packs a far from cheap punch - imposing and sturdy.
The Five Ko-ans for Orchestra comprise No. 1 Music of Changes, No. 2 Ricercare, No. 3 Ostinato, No. 4 Music of Stillness and No. 5 Isorhythmic Motet. They are like a sequence of Samuel Barber’s essays yet distinguished by this composer’s trademark incessant persistence and cool limpidity. These qualities are juxtaposed with passages that are gaunt, statuesque and imposing. The music is not at all ascetic: witness the Respighian horn whoops in the first of the Ko-ans and the brief climactic pages in the Fourth Ko-an. Rosner’s writing throughout these five separately tracked pieces is grand. Indeed, all three works on this disc are further testimony that a Rosner score could have been written by no-one else. That is not to say that certain facets of his language do not touch base with other composers. Vaughan Williams is one reference point but Rosner has his own spare yet dynamic style. Few composers’ music can attain the feeling that he evokes of a lonely listener in some temple looking up giddily at the capitals of the towering columns. That sense of being lost in the moment - an intensity of today’s mindfulness. The Third Ko-an, the shortest of the five, pummels away rapidly and with a motoric power that appears indefatigable. The Fourth is a more peaceful essay - relaxed repose dominated by woodwind solos. The valedictory Fifth ends with a drift into hard-won silence. A Ko-an is defined by Rosner as “a riddle, action, remark or dialogue not comprehensible by rational understanding but conducive to intense or prolonged meditation.”
The other works here include the vigorous 16-minute Unraveling Dances. Through eleven variations the composer draws on familiar musical references: Renaissance, Baroque and Middle Eastern. The writing is richly colored and almost extravagantly joyful use is made of the orchestra. The work rises to a formidable conclusion of dancing grandeur - Rosner’s aural window opened out onto the music of the spheres.
The disc finishes with the 24-minute setting of Kafka’s The Parable of the Law for baritone and orchestra. The words set are reproduced in Toccata’s booklet. The music is hieratic, dramatic and dark-hued. A typically striking introduction commands by quiet and confident insinuation. Soon the slightly mournful baritone, Christopher Burchett, enters, singing of his long and ultimately unsuccessful wait and pleading for entry to “The Law”. The music is sombre, chiming and mesmeric as befits the Kafka text but rises to fury and sneering as the singer presses his bootless case for entry. There is something of RVW’s Pilgrim about the man trying, without success, to persuade The Doorkeeper to permit him access to The Law. The words are less sung and more spoken in hopelessness at 13:00. Later on, Burchett superbly shadows the orchestra in a pitch of roiling excitement although the final pages spell deep peace.
The liner-notes are by none other than Walter Simmons who has done so much for US composers of the generations beyond Gershwin, Copland and Bernstein. He has been a doughty advocate of Rosner’s music as he has also of Schuman, Persichetti, Mennin, Barber, Bloch, Creston, Flagello, Giannini and Hanson. He is also the producer of this disc. I just hope that there are later volumes.
-- MusicWeb International (Rob Barnett)
Orchestral Favourites Vol Ii / Boughton, Et Al
The Best Of Rimsky-korsakov
Meditations For A Quiet Dawn - Vaughan Williams, Ives, Et Al
Respighi: La Bella Dormente Nel Bosco
