Starter question for 10 - can you name any Italian orchestral composers of the early to mid 20^th century? Ottorino Respighi comes to mind, as do Gian Francesco Malipiero, Ildebrando Pizzetti and - thanks in part to those enterprising souls at Naxos - we can now add Alfredo Casella. This recording of the latter’s Symphony No. 1, a world premiere, is just part of a projected series devoted to Casella’s œuvre; the most recent instalment - which includes Symphony No 2 - is available on 8.572414. Naxos have stolen a march on Chandos, who have just released a recording of the latter - coupled with Scarlattiana - featuring Gianandrea Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic (CHAN 10605). And we mustn’t forget CPO, whose contribution to this risorgimento includes the Op. 63 Sinfonia.

At first glance, Casella’s enrolment at the Paris Conservatoire - Gabriel Fauré was one of his teachers - and his admiration for Debussy might suggest strong links with French music of the period. However, the First Symphony, which dates from 1905, doesn’t strike me as particularly Gallic, either in sensibility or sound world; indeed, Casella is quoted in the liner-notes, where he dismisses the work as a potpourri of Borodin, Brahms and Enescu. These influences may be there, but they aren’t striking. Perhaps it’s the Italian band and conductor who are to blame, as they add a touch of southern warmth to this absorbing score.

True, the brooding start to the Lento seems Russianate, but then there’s an arresting lyricism in the strings and an orchestral blush that speaks more of Richard Strauss. As for the Roman orchestra they sound full-bodied and precise, climaxes expanding with plenty of weight and impact. Musically the score may seem a tad threadbare at times, but it’s well shaped and convincingly paced. Initial impressions suggest this is not the youthful indiscretion it first seems; in fact, the Adagio - reprised in the Second Symphony - is rather lovely. After a quiet, rather unsettling theme at the outset there are some melting string tunes - just listen to the passage that begins at 3:44. It really is luminous, heart-stopping music, most eloquently phrased.

The final movement, like the first, is a dark-toned Lento, the grumble of percussion at the start thrillingly caught. And, for the first time, there’s a real sense of nobility, a Wagnerian amplitude if you like, the muted brass simply splendid. Moreover, there’s a momentum here - listen out for that recurring, jaunty little tune - and a firm sense of purpose, which ensures that any structural weaknesses are artfully concealed. Such advocacy augurs well for the rest of this series; indeed, having heard both Noseda and La Vecchia’s accounts of the Second Symphony I can assure you the latter yields little or nothing to the former in terms of execution although, as expected, the Chandos sound is both weightier and more spacious.

The concerto is a wartime work, written while the composer was recovering from a serious illness. The soft edges of the symphony are replaced here by a harder, more muscular idiom, which includes strong, uncompromising rhythms. There’s plenty of bite to the strings, ever-present timps commendably crisp and clear, the Sarabande more lyrical - and inward - than one might expect. The piano part is carefully woven into the musical fabric, which only shows signs of fraying in the latter half of this movement. The brisk, martial opening to the final Allegro - snare drums very much in evidence - takes us back to the sinewy world of the first. It’s well played and tightly argued, the muted march coloured by the gentlest of taps on the tam-tam.

So, a most encouraging start to this new cycle which, along with Noseda’s, will surely bring this music back into the mainstream, where it belongs. It seems entirely right that La Vecchia and his Roman band are leading the charge; goodness knows, they play this music with verve and vision - and that’s just what it needs

Nice one, Naxos.

-- Dan Morgan, MusicWeb International

When, in 1928, Alfredo Casella approached opera for the first time, he was already a mature, 45-year-old composer. La Donna Serpente by Carlo Gozzi was a subject that had intrigued him for a decade or so and, in fact, in 1918 he had conceived of a choral ballet, for which he commissioned scenery and costumes from the Russian painter. La Donna Serpente kept Casella busy for three years, from October 1928 to the same month in 1931. Just days before the opening at the Teatro Reale in Rome of his "opera-fairy tale" - the description the composer and obliging librettist Cesare Vico Lodovici chose to give the score - Casella listed the criteria utilized for its composition: choice of a subject taking place in an imaginary, fantasy world given the fact that opera itself already represented an anti-realistic genre and prevalence given to the music.

From mysterious moonlit night to joyous sunlit day, this recording runs the gamut of Alfredo Casella’s huge stylistic range. Notte di maggio (‘A Night in May’), composed in the wake of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, is Casella at his most radical, while the delightful ‘Divertimento’ Scarlattiana finds him at his most relaxed, spicing up themes from Domenico Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas—in the manner of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella. Between them comes Casella’s Cello Concerto, its style influenced by the ‘baroque magnificence of Rome’, with a finale the composer called ‘the flight of the improved bumblebee’.

Alfredo Casella identified three different periods in his composing career, and this disc features one work from each. The Suite in C major is early Casella, a fascinating combination of influences from the French Baroque through Domenico Scarlatti to Mahler. War Pages are images of the horrific mechanised warfare of 1914–18, as seen on silent cinema newsreels: among the music’s admirers was Puccini. Casella himself felt that the Concerto, Op 61—a commission for the 50th birthday of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra—was his ‘most complete achievement in the field of orchestral music’.

REVIEW:

You simply have to hear this. Alfredo Casella’s Suite, Op. 13 is an early work, ca. 1910, in which Mahler meets Sibelius in the best way, with both models given a jolt of additional energy by a talented young composer overflowing with enthusiasm and the sheer gusto of writing an orchestral extravaganza in the latest style, but without a shred of originality.

Pagine di guerra (“War Pages”) is a tiny suite in five movements lasting barely eleven minutes based on World War I newsreels. This is Casella in modern mode, with elements of impressionism and bitonality, the music consistently colorful and atmospheric. The concluding march, featuring Italian cruisers in the Adriatic carrying armaments, brings the piece to an eerie but at the same time triumphant conclusion.

Casella’s Concerto for Orchestra (1937) was commissioned by Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and it’s a masterpiece. Its main theme, a surging melody that rises up beneath a bustling accompaniment (third sound clip) is very typical of the composer’s late work. His Partita for piano and orchestra features a very similar idea. This is music that absolutely deserves to be in the standard repertoire; it’s as good as anything written in the last century.

These performances are extremely fine. La Vecchia allows its Italianate lyricism to blossom naturally, while the neoclassical chatter of its rhythms never turns mechanical. The engineering also ranks with the best in this generally excellent ongoing series. Both the Suite and Pagine di guerra are recording premieres. This disc is a treat, and a major release.

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)

A plunge among the sunken composers of Italian chamber music and the salvaged ones. The program recorded in this album is a ticket for a journey of a century and a half, that is the distance between the composition of the Sonata “con accompagnamento” by Muzio Clementi (1792) and its transformation into the Trio ortodosso by Alfredo Casella (1936). An intermediate stop is represented by the Trio op. 59 by Giuseppe Martucci (1882). The route of this journey retraces a history that is not unimportant or unsurprising: it summarises the significance and vicissitudes of the chamber music produced by Italian composers from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards. In many texts of music history this topic is relegated in a note, or at most is dealt with in a paragraph, not even a chapter: an upgraded echo of the Fascist nationalism and dislike for Puccini that, for ideological reasons rather than for a historical or critical conviction, made themselves useful in raising the issue in the twentieth century. This recording, which presents a performance for piano, violin and cello, is a tiny artistic compensation, and an aesthetic and formal clarification. It leads us to consider and understand the role that Italian composers played also in the specific area of non-theatrical music.

Also available on Blu-ray

Alfredo Casella was one of the ‘Generation of the eighties’ who sought to shake Italian music from its longstanding operatic heritage and the dominance of Puccini. La donna serpente was Casella’s only full-scale opera, its fantastic plot based on Carlo Gozzi’s renowned fairy tale that perpetually alternates between tragedy and comedy, expressed in neo-Classical music that skillfully portrays the sinister and ethereal world of the fairies as well as the intense emotions of the human realm. This production was acclaimed for Arturo Cirillo’s dreamlike setting and Gianandrea Noseda’s pin-point conducting: ‘What energy, what precision! … he delivers the complexity of this score with a disconcerting ease.’ (resmusica.com)

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REVIEW:

In the leading role of Miranda, Carmela Remigio is one of today’s leading Italian sopranos in high demand in the world’s leading opera houses. Totally committed in an exacting role, she is partnered by the Sardinian tenor, Piero Pretti, who is often called upon to go into that upper stratosphere, the conclusion in a duet of sheer exultation. To bring the comedy to life, the Italian trio of Francesco Marsiglia, Marco Filippo Romano and Roberto de Candia are superb both vocally and characterisation.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

Reviews of previously released performances included in this set:

Casella: Symphony No. 1



The performances are exemplary. The symphony seethes with tension and excitement, while the shattering Elegia is one of the composer's greatest works. Highly recommended.

– Gramophone

Casella: Symphony No. 2

A stunning first recording of the Second Symphony, written just a few years (1908–10) after the First. Among its notable incidental virtues is an irresistibly tuneful scherzo cast in a tarantella-like mode that foreshadows important elements in Casella’s later development.

– Fanfare

Casella: Symphony No. 3

The conductor makes much of the vastly proportioned work’s orchestral panoply. The musicians’ energy and sensitivity, and the brilliant Chandos sound make for a most welcome disc.

– Fanfare

An interesting big symphony coupled with a shorter work that represents Casella at his considerable finest.

To my mind one of the most interesting and successful current Naxos series is that devoted to the orchestral music of Alfredo Casella. The current release is the fourth and contains Casella’s third and last symphony. Suffice to say all of the excellent values of performance and engineering/production of the first three volumes are duplicated here so admirers need not hesitate.
 
I had no knowledge of the major works prior to collecting these discs but I was mightily impressed with the scale and power of the earlier two symphonies. Casella’s third and final essay in the form is actually – and rather confusingly – simply titled Sinfonia and dates from 1939 making it a full three decades younger than the earlier pair. All three are big works; Nos. 1 & 3 clock in around the ¾ hour mark and No.2 is a full 55 minutes. Although the influences are different it is clear to hear that Casella was a man who was willing to let his admiration for the music of others infuse his own. So where the earlier works are epically Mahlerian the later work echoes Shostakovich and Nielsen as well. I would have to say that this Sinfonia has not made as immediate an impact on me as the earlier works. The central pair of movements seem to contain the most cogent and well argued music. In the excellent liner-note by David Gallagher it is pointed out that the work is truly symphonic in that nearly all of the melodic material in the entire work derives from the opening germinal material. This I suppose reflects the experience gained through his career but it does not necessarily make for as compelling a listen as the excitingly confident indeed bravura music he wrote in his twenties. The first movement in particular suffers from extended passages of musical material being ‘worked’ without the sense of it creating an emotional landscape for the listener. After the rather appealing sparse opening the scoring suffers from being rather heavy and unrelenting. That being said the final pages of the movement flutter away into quiet inconsequence. These are all impressions that are based on a relatively brief acquaintance with the work and without the benefit of the score.
 
The Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma under conductor Francesco La Vecchia continue to make the good impression they formed previously – the strings play with good ensemble and a well balanced tone. Italian brass players are always game to play with plenty of edge and attack and so they do here. I have not heard the other available version on CPO from the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln under Alun Francis but I cannot imagine they have much to fear from it in purely technical terms. Having heard very little ‘war’ music in the opening movement the second movement Andante molto moderato opens with a string-led threnody that is instantly much more engaging and powerful than anything in the opening movement. The Rome strings are good but I can imagine this movement being even more powerful if played with the weight and unanimity of Vienna or Berlin. I like the way the music slowly builds a momentum becoming a rather lop-sided yet unrelenting march underlying some lovely lyrical lines for the strings and woodwind. It is rather quirky and individual before the mood lightens towards a calm major key resolution. The third movement Scherzo has a mechanistic (rather than militaristic) feel and while it has some of Shostakovich’s stamping energy it lacks the nightmarish malice of that composer’s writing that makes his scherzi in particular so remarkable. I wonder if it would benefit from a slightly more unleashed tempo than here? I’m sure La Vecchia’s choice is dictated by the complex filigree writing that surrounds the main material but it does result in a basic pulse that plods.
 
The Finale is altogether more buoyant indeed optimistic which might seem at odds with the wartime context. But as Gallagher points out repeatedly Casella was an enthusiastic indeed sycophantic supporter of Mussolini and his fascist agenda and since the war was still going relatively well for the regime in 1939/40 why not be optimistic? Again, I find there are passages which I suspect appeal more to the academics who admire the way in which the material is developed – to my innocent ear they lack a huge amount of melodic interest. But there are several passages which allow the impressive Rome horns and brass to shine excitingly. This is the movement that sounds most heroically filmic. After the bombast of the opening ten minutes of the movement there is a coda/epilogue that is rather beautiful in the way the musical lines grope upwards sinuously in a mood of hymn-like reflection which just as it is fading away with elegiac solo strings is flattened by a raucously noisy conclusion. Given that that ending lacks any of the irony or forced good-humour of a Shostakovich one is left assuming that Casella was feeling pretty good about things in 1940 after all!
 
If the symphony was the only work on offer here I would direct collectors to the earlier works. However, it is this disc’s ‘filler’ which proves to be the absolute jewel here and indeed one of the finest works by Casella I have yet encountered. This is also a work written in time of war – 1916 – but here the presence of tragedy and sorrow is unmistakeable. This Elegia eroica is subtitled “alla memoria di un Soldato morto in Guerra”. The very opening is magnificently striking in a way that eluded the symphony totally. Tolling horns, ominous tam-tam, skirling wood-wind and disconsolate strings immediately plunge the listener in a world of loss and despair. It feels much more modern and challenging than the later work. This is how Casella described it; “a heroic funeral march, a more intimate deeply sorrowful central episode; and finally a fusillade of death that thunders through the orchestra [and] subsides into a tender lullaby evoking an image of our country as a mother tenderly cradling her dead son”. The musical means Casella uses for this are actually considerably more modernistic than the potentially maudlin narrative might imply. It reminds me of the expressionist scores being written in Germany around this time and certainly quite unlike any other contemporaneous Italian score I can think of. The Rome orchestra are superb here relishing the extremes of dynamic and range the piece demands. Casella’s particular coup-de-théâtre was lost on the work’s first audience. The final lullaby is given to the solo oboe which plays fragments of the 19 ^th century patriotic song Fratelli d’Italia over a string-led rocking berceuse accompaniment – definite echoes of The Firebird here. It is a passage of tender beauty and poignant rapture – all drowned out in 1916 by “a tidal wave of indignation … not a single note could be heard.” Casella pares his orchestration right back to a skeletal minimum to stunning effect. In its quasi-minimalist way this passage pre-echoes Holst’s Uranus or the finale of Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No.6. Even the way Casella avoids any ‘comfortable’ ending adds to the impact and sincere power of the work.
 
So a conundrum for the collector to consider – a big symphony that is interesting but not the place to start your symphonic investigation of the composer coupled with a shorter work that represents him at his considerable finest. On balance, at the Naxos bargain price point, I would say worth buying for the Elegia alone. Hopefully Naxos will continue to use this creative team for further projects and indeed more Casella.
 
-- Nick Barnard, MusicWeb International

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Francesco La Vecchia’s recordings of modern Italian music for Naxos have been impressive, nowhere more so than in his discs dedicated to the finely crafted works of Alfredo Casella. The Third Symphony, written for Chicago, is a late piece (1940), but still an ambitious essay in the grand tradition. It’s beautifully put together, melodically pungent (maybe a touch of Honegger), colorfully scored, but also austere, even severe in places. It’s clearly the work of a mature master. Elegia eroica is a funeral march dating from 1916, a passionate threnody “to the memory of a soldier killed in battle.”
As with the other discs in this series, the performances are wholly convincing, well played and recorded. In the case of the symphony, though, there’s very strong competition, even better engineered, from Alun Francis and the slightly finer WDR Symphony Orchestra on CPO, coupled to the tone poem Italia. La Vecchia does present a legitimate alternate view, of course, with some strikingly different bits of instrumental detail, and a work of this richness ought to be heard in more than one interpretation. So if you’ve been collecting this series, by all means grab this release without qualms.
-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The composer that Casella most resembles in his chameleon-like musical personality is probably Martinu, and this is nowhere more true than in the Partita for piano and small orchestra. Scored for the distinctive combination of oboe, two clarinets, bass clarinet, three trumpets, timpani and strings, the work is an unalloyed delight. Listen to the end of the first movement recapitulation, and you’ll be hooked. Like Martinu’s Sinfonietta giocosa, the lightweight title in fact conceals a work of genuine substance, lasting (in this case) just over half an hour. The central Passacaglia (a form much exploited by Casella) is profoundly beautiful, and its evocative use of trills reveals that Casella learned a trick or two from the first Nachtmusik of Mahler’s Seventh, which he arranged for piano four-hands.

The Introduzione, aria e toccata again recalls (or foreshadows) Martinu–in this case the Toccata e due canzone. Like that piece, this is a substantial, at times brooding work brimming with memorable invention. The music’s stylized, neo-Baroque idiom couldn’t be farther removed from the nearly contemporary orchestral fragments from Casella’s only opera, La donna serpente (The Snake Woman), after a play by Gozzi. These “fragments” are actually pretty extensive, lasting a full half an hour, and if they pay homage to anyone I’d have to mention Rimsky-Korsakov. The Military March that ends the first suite evokes a fairytale atmosphere similar to that of The Golden Cockerel or Tsar Sultan, but there’s nothing Russian about the melodic material, which is completely personal.

This disc marks the conclusion of Naxos’ Casella series, and it has been a wonderful journey. As with the other discs, the performances are excellent. Sun Hee You does a wonderful job in the Partita, offering effortless virtuosity and an aptly light touch. There’s only one other recording available, featuring the very good Joshua Pierce, coupled to concertante works by Respighi and Rachmaninov, but conductor Franceso La Vecchia proves himself more imaginative an accompanist the Anton Nanut, and he also has the better orchestra and engineering. Casella truly was a great composer. The evidence on this disc is incontestable.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com