Building on the success of Cavalleria rusticana, Pietro Mascagni’s commedia lirica L’amico Fritz was given seven encores and thirty-five curtain calls at its premiere in Rome in 1891. Considered by critics to be one of Mascagni’s best operas, the story is that of a love triangle involving the wealthy Fritz Kobus and Suzel, daughter of one of his tenants, who together sing the famous ‘Cherry Duet’ in Act II. Returning to the Teatro del Maggio Musicale in Florence for the first time since 1941, this production was acclaimed for its superb cast and astonishingly effective modern setting.

The eight string quartets that Malipiero wrote between 1920 and 1964 constitute a major body of Italian chamber music and reflect his successive musical affiliations. The first two form a linked unit and espouse his radical anti-Romanticism in the early 1920s. Nos. 3 and 4 share structural similarities and act as a kind of laboratory for his symphonies of the time. Quartet No. 5 was inspired by Malipiero’s theatrical work, whilst No. 6 explores a new-found narrative dimension. With the two late quartets Malipiero moves into a world of chromaticism, where tone-color freedom reaches the apex of imagination and achievement.

REVIEW:

Malipiero’s eight string quartets were composed over a period of 44 years and show a remarkably consonant stylistic development.

The First Quartet, composed in 1920 and showing the impressionist influence of Debussy and folk textures alike, is his most extended quartet at (here) 22 minutes. Its partition points are clear as are the ritornello figures. Malipiero’s way is not development, more successive panels of light, color or contrast but he ensures that the work ends with a reflection on the Italian baroque so close to his musical heart, cadences of almost ecclesiastical beauty and refinement. The Second Quartet is related to the First in several structurally important ways but is more compressed and in some ways even more lyrical. It generates real propulsion and sonority and this malleable movement alternates with light textures.

The athleticism of Malipiero’s conception is a distinguishing feature of the quartets; tightly constructed single-movement works that bring a heavy quotient of Venetian energy, myriad in effect, constantly referencing, briefly but adroitly, Italian Baroque and his rich folkloric storehouse. That’s certainly the procedure in String Quartet No.3 ‘Cantàri alla madrigalesca’ (1931) by which time impressionism has been lightly dispersed. A greater sense of fluidity and metrical flexibility enters with the Fourth Quartet of 1934. The occasional eruptive material seems more organic than in previous quartets where paragraphical points could impede and threaten to destabilize the music.

The wartime Fifth Quartet was written concurrently with an operatic project and here a greater sense of textural clarity infiltrates itself into the music. In part lyrically effusive this is an effective work that reflects cross-pollination of influence but also an increasing tightening of procedure, so that incidental elements are more clearly subsumed into the musical argument. No.6, though once again in a single movement, is in three ‘parts’, two Allegros surrounding a central quasi-improvised section which has catchy, playful elements.

The last two quartets show an increasing enthusiasm for chromaticism, and this means a moving away from the mid-period clarity established earlier in the cycle. If you welcome clotted textures and thickening of the quartet sonority, you’ll enjoy No.7 where livelier music includes a clarifying lyricism alongside that sense of effortful skirling dynamism. In 1964 he wrote his final quartet, the tautest yet, in which the material is foregrounded and saturated in chromaticism. The fugal elements that also motor the music are eloquent tribute to his command of the quartet medium and his skill in introducing disparate material without ever becoming academic.

Suitably, these recordings are played by the Quartetto di Venezia, city of Malipiero’s birth. They play with fulsome commitment and the booklet notes, reprised from that earlier appearance, will tell you all you need to know.

-- MusicWeb International

This album of works for flute and piano presents a sequence of 19th-century variations exploring the virtuosic, lyric and popular impulses of the genre. Ignaz Moscheles’ Variations concertantes is a graceful work by one of the greatest piano virtuosos of his time in which both instruments are given equal importance. Richard Strauss’s Introduktion, Thema und Variationen – composed when he was 15 years old – is an example of the young composer’s precocity. Beethoven’s contribution was aimed at the British amateur market with its selection of popular songs, while Theobald Böhm’s arrangements of Schubert Lieder from Winterreise and Schwanengesang reveal some of the composer’s most beautiful and expressive melodies.

Nicola Porpora was a composer who helped to turn Italian opera into the most successful and spectacular genre in Europe. One of the few luminaries of the ‘Neapolitan School’ to actually be born in Naples, Porpora wrote L’Angelica, a serenade for six voices and instruments, to a libretto by the young Pietro Metastasio in 1720. The work was composed for the birthday of Empress Elizabeth Christine, wife of Charles VI, and its plot is comedic, focusing on the travails of a couple in love. The opera’s success was immediate, resulting in the commissioning of further works that would lead to ever more glamorous successes for Porpora in Venice, London, Dresden and Vienna.

A student of John Field, Charles Mayer was a brilliant pianist and teacher who performed throughout Europe and composed prolifically for his instrument. Both the Jugendblüten (‘Flowers of Youth’) and Jugendträume (‘Dreams of Youth’) collections reflect the evocative titles and late-Romantic expressive style fashionably represented by Schumann and Mendelssohn. Mayer’s beautifully crafted musical gems were aimed at pianists eager to widen their repertoire and entertain through, in the words of Schumann, the ‘rich and eclectic imagination of a cosmopolitan musician’ whose works ‘tell with affection and sincerity the story of a bourgeois world made of dreams and good will’.

REVIEWS:

Dynamic have amply fleshed out this picture of Charles Mayer with this release of two of his numerous collections of short piano works.

Italian pianist Luigi Gerosa plays these pieces very sympathetically…he is full of character in pieces like Die Dämonen (no.11) and Neckereien – banter/teasing (no.19).

-- MusicWeb International

Robert Schumann spoke of East Prussian composer Charles Mayer (1799–1862) as an artist expressive of “rich and eclectic imagination,” whose music sought to widen the repertory of pianists through finely crafted pieces of a “cosmopolitan” nature. Schumann elaborated further, lauding Mayer’s works for their ability to “tell with affection and sincerity the story of a bourgeois world made of dreams and good will.” A student of John Field, Charles Mayer became a brilliant pianist and teacher who performed throughout Europe and composed prolifically for the keyboard. Both the Jugendblüten (Flowers of Youth, c. 1850) and Jugendträume (Dreams of Youth, 1860) collections evoke the imagery and late Romantic expressive style fashionably represented by Schumann (his op. 68) and Mendelssohn’s collections of Lieder ohne Worte.

The opening piece from op. 300, “Traumbild,” exerts an easy, graceful flow, in the Schumann style. The succeeding “Sehnsucht” (Longing), in ternary form, resembles Mendelssohn’s lyrical approach, with a middle section waltz in Chopin’s salon style. “Das stürmische Herz” (The Tormented Heart) asks for left hand agitation but proceeds in conventional harmony.

The cycle of 24 Flowers of Youth begins with a Romanze entitled “Sehnsucht” in conventional, symmetrical phraseology. A vivacious, minute-long tarantella ensues in a mock-Rossini mode. We pass through a series of conventional, Biedermeier exercises in style, faux Mendelssohn, but the Barcarole exudes limited, gondola charm. Gerosa’s own pianistic prowess shows itself in Toccata, a test of agogic and dynamic shifts. “Der junge Virtuoso” proffers a witty, Gottschalk-like, broken-rhythm dance.

Of the final group of ten compositions, the first, “Norwegischer Tanz,” sounds like Grieg if he were performing in a standard salon. Mayer calls his “Leid und Freud” (Sadness and Joy) a “Melodic Etude,” although as a study other than in legato and presto staccato it remains graciously unassuming. “Das schlafende Kind” unabashedly borrows its sentiment from Schumann’s Kinderszenen, op. 15. “Neckerein” indeed “flirts” with gently cantering tropes and brief onrushes of Mendelssohnian intensity. “Der Jagd” seems like a restrained hunt, albeit lyrical in the manner of Weber. “Notturno” might pass for music by Sinding, or yet again Mendelssohn. As a predictable song without words, it proves eminently effective. The penultimate work, “Tremolino,” does well serve as a study in syncopation in the Chopin manner. Its cascades increase in dynamic and then recede, a hint at Chopin’s “Aeolian Harp,” op. 25/1. The “Russiche Hymne” (Etude-Transcription) combines the tune we know from Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture with a florid ground of Chopin.

-- Fanfare

Rome became an important musical centre during that precious moment of peace between the two world wars, and both of these composers were swept along in feverish activity in the arts during this period. Iditta Parpagliolo matches a refined choice of texts with an equally diverse use of musical language in her songs, from the modal mysticism of La buona parola to the infinite sadness of the Tre canti d’amore. Giovanni Salviucci captures the soul of nature in his Quattro liriche, the twilight classical intimacy of his songs contrasting with the radiant neoclassical style of his Chamber Symphony.

Bianca e Fernando, commissioned for the inauguration of the Carlo Felice Theatre in 1828, was composed at the start of Bellini’s career as one of the most important opera composers of the 19th century. The superb music for this dramatic story of filial love, wicked intrigues and triumph over tyranny was received with the ‘jubilation and admiration of the citizens of Genoa’ and greatly admired by the likes of Donizetti, earning Bellini recognition throughout Italy and beyond. This acclaimed first modern performance brings to light precious lost pages of music, reviving the original ‘splendid celebration’ of its premiere.

The three British composers in this program all found very different ways to integrate the harmonica with that most aristocratic of ensembles, the string quartet. Gordon Jacob’s Divertimento is a delicious musical tableau, full of his characteristic melodic ease and playfulness. James Moody was devoted to the harmonica, for which he wrote a number of works, and his Quintet has a Classical structure that includes both highly virtuosic and deeply introspective episodes. Renowned as a jazz drummer, Tony Kinsey adopted a late-Romantic stance in his Quintet but also looked to Gershwin and Piazzolla, ending the work with the blues and an unforgettably catchy riff.

Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore is a melodrama giocoso in two acts and has remained one of the world’s most popular and often performed operas. Nemorino is in love with Adina, who is indifferent, but eventually falls for him, helped by the huckster Dr Dulcamara’s elixir (in reality, cheap red wine). This performance restores cuts and is heard in full, as Donizetti intended, played on original instruments of the time at the original pitch. This allows one to hear more fully how he turned a traditional opera buffa into a masterpiece of characterization and theatrical power.

World Première Recordings

The premiere of Nabucco at La Scala, Milan in 1842 was a huge success for Verdi and soon led to foreign performances of the work. For its appearance in Brussels under the name Nebuchodonozor Verdi fashioned an orchestral Divertissement which was inserted into Act III; the composer’s score of this, performed here, has only very recently been rediscovered. Macbeth is one of his psychologically penetrating masterpieces and for its Parisian staging in 1865 it underwent considerable revision, notably to make its dramatic development more incisive. When Il trovatore was performed in Paris as Le Trouvère Verdi added lively local color as new additions to the score.

REVIEW:

One may ask, if these Verdi masterpieces are ‘made in Italy’, why is the title of the disc Vive Verdi!? Well, the answer is simple. All three works were such huge successes that Verdi was obliged to write a ’French version’ for each opera for foreign performances in Brussels (Nabucco) and Paris (Macbeth and Il Trovatore). Apart from the language, Verdi also included a substantial amount of revised and new music, including ballet, and this issue is dedicated to the rarities and discoveries found in these French versions. Indeed, the ’Nabucco Divertissement’ has only very recently been rediscovered. If you believe you know your Verdi, think again. A memorable programme, passionately performed and splendidly recorded, that widens our knowledge of the great Italian master.

-- Classical Music Daily

World Première Recordings

Giovanni Battista Sammartini attained a leading role in Milan’s music scene in the 18th century, his career extending from the height of the Baroque era to the Classical worlds of Mozart and Haydn by his death in 1775. Appearing here in world premiere recordings, these works appear to belong to Sammartini’s early period, including a four-movement example that recollects archaic church sonata form. Full of fascinating stylistic quirks, these sonatas reflect the refined taste for nuance found in the Milanese musician’s finest chamber works, with an easy melodic flow that expresses a mood for stylistic change.

Giuseppe Verdi was well on the way towards renown and prosperity when he took up the story of Violetta, a famed courtesan whose intensely romantic and colorful but tragically brief life marked the emergence of realism into Italian opera. Verdi and Alexandre Dumas intended this melodrama to have a contemporary setting, and David Livermore’s stunning production maintains this wish by placing his elegant and powerful cast firmly into the 20th century. This alchemy of masterful acting, vivid bel canto voices and the vitality of Zubin Mehta’s conducting results in a triumphant and unforgettably poignant operatic experience.

Fernando Sor was born at a time when the guitar enjoyed increasing prominence. He differed from other virtuoso-composers for the instrument such as Giuliani and Carulli due to his far greater sense of harmonic refinement. Sor’s studies and exercises have been fundamental to guitarists for two centuries, and his sequence of Themes and Variations are his best-known compositions. His three collections based on popular French melodies have enjoyed popularity as has Les Folies d’Espagne avec Variations et un Menuet, but his masterpiece remains the Introduction et Variations sur un Thème de Mozart, a sublime example of his skill.

The composition of Un ballo in maschera caused Verdi many problems. What began as an opera called Gustavo III was subject to censorship by the Neapolitan and Roman authorities, so its libretto, location and title all changed. The subject, however, is still the murder of Riccardo (Gustavo) at the masked ball, couched in a musical language in which the seriousness of Italian opera is infused with French vivacity. The opera’s structure is carefully symmetrical in the great terzets, and the themes of duty, pleasure, drama and humor are rendered with masterful clarity.

Johann Pachelbel is remembered today for his Canon in D major, but he was an outstandingly successful organist and composer whose musical legacy is in fact quite broad and varied. Of his keyboard pieces the Hexachordum Apollinis is regarded as the pinnacle of his oeuvre and was a work to which Pachelbel himself attached great importance. Consisting of six arias with variations, the collection brings together the influence of several schools of music, all filtered through the composer’s refined tastes and superlative technical skill. The splendid Chaconne anticipates Bach and is one of Pachelbel’s best-known keyboard pieces.

REVIEW:

The title work on this disc is a fascinating composition. A set of 6 arias with variations written for either harpsichord or organ. Mathematically complex with symbolism relating to numerology and the Kabbalah the booklet notes point out some interesting features and point to a work that should perhaps be more widely known and appreciated. The Chaconne is a more known work.

-- Lark Reviews (Stephen Page)