Five vividly contrasting works, four of them in world première recordings, make up this latest issue in the Naxos series of orchestral music by the Italian composer Gian Francesco Malipiero. Visions of heroism and death form the cornerstone of the release, in the Ditirambo tragico (Tragic Dithyramb) composed during the First World War, and in Malipiero’s two earliest surviving pieces, Dai sepolcri (From ‘Tombs’) and the Sinfonia degli eroi (Symphony of Heroes). They are heard alongside the deceptively relaxed charm of Armenia, based on traditional Armenian melodies, and the varied, pungently Stravinskian moods of the aptly titled Grottesco (Grotesque).

MALIPIERO Symphonies: No. 1, “In quattro tempi, come le quattro stagioni;” No. 2, “Elegiaca.” Sinfonie del silenzio e della morte • Antonio de Almeida, cond; Moscow SO • NAXOS 8.570879 (77:40)


CDs containing the works of Gian Francesco Malipiero (1883–1973) occupy less than two inches of shelf space in my collection, so by no means can I claim more than passing familiarity with his music. My first encounter with this composer, however, was on a 1950s Nonesuch LP with the Stuyvesant String Quartet playing one of Malipiero’s string quartets. That recording, if anyone is interested, has been transferred to CD by Bridge.


Malipiero was one of the so-called “generazione dell’ottanta” (generation of the 1880s) composers that included Wolf-Ferrari (1876–1948), Respighi (1879–1936), Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880–1968), Riccardo Zandonai (1883–1944), Alfredo Casella (1883–1947), and Castelnuovo Tedesco (1895–1968). If permitted to engage in a bit of chronological stretching, I’d also include in this group Nino Rota (1911–1979) and Gian Carlo Menotti (1911–2007). In a 31:5 Rota review, I substituted for “generazione dell’ottanta” the “identity crisis generation.” Here were several Italian composers working independently of each other, but each in similar circumstances. Instrumental music in 19th-century Italy was all but dead, having been displaced by opera. And while all of the above-named composers made contributions to the operatic literature, one aspect of their shared dilemma was that Italian opera had by this time already achieved its apogee in Verdi and Puccini. At the same time, they also shared a desire to create a new legacy of Italian instrumental music, which led to their second dilemma. They retained strong roots in 19th-century Romantic traditions, yet their lives intersected those of other roughly contemporaneous 20th-century Italians—Dallapiccola, Nono, and Berio—who were committed to keeping abreast of the more modernistic and avant-garde trends elsewhere on the Continent. As a result, the “generazione dell’ottanta” came to be seen largely as a throwback to an earlier period.


Malipiero was enormously prolific, and much of his output is mostly of a serious nature, weighted towards Classical-form symphonies, concertos, and chamber works. His music never gained the traction of Respighi’s more easily digested style, but Malipiero’s smaller following of intellectual elites was significant and influential. Among his admirers was the aforementioned Dallapiccola, and Bruno Maderna was one of his students. It seems that Malipiero played a bit loose with musical terminology. No fewer than 17 of his works include in their titles the word “sinfonia,” and in the case of one of them on this disc, “sinfonie,” though not all of them necessarily fit the description of what is commonly thought of as a symphony. This also leads to some confusion, for the two numbered symphonies heard here are nowhere near being among the composer’s earliest efforts in the form. Three symphonies preceded the No. 1, and by quite a few years: the Sinfonia degli eroi (1905), the Sinfonia del mare (1906), and the Sinfonie del silenzio e della morte (1910) listed in the headnote. The Symphony No. 1, subtitled “In quattro tempi, come le quattro stagioni,” was not written until 1933, and its successor, the Symphony No. 2, subtitled “Elegiaca,” followed three years later in 1936.


The Sinfonie del silenzio e della morte (“Symphonies of Silence and Death”) is more like three interconnected tone poems than it is a three-movement symphony. Inspired by Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death , the first movement, “Danza tragica,” is a lot less macabre sounding than its description might suggest. The music has a distinctly Russian flavor to it, echoes of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bare Mountain being inescapable. But the specter of evil conjured by Malipiero is neither as vivid nor as visceral as that of Mussorgsky’s shrieking fiends. The second movement bears the heading that gives the work its name, while the third movement bears the heading, “Il molino della morte” (The Mill of Death). Whatever Malipiero’s morbid, ghoulish, and grisly intent may have been, his score too often belies it with interruptions by arching lyrical themes and infusions of lush orchestral writing. The work is simply too fetching to be anything other than a less-than-hair-raising ride on the lighter side of the dark side.


Malipiero’s Symphony No. 1 (“In four movements, like the four seasons”) was inspired by the Venetian poet Anton Maria Lamberti’s Le stagioni . The Symphony is programmatic only superficially and not representational in content. The music is abstract, and its formal structure laid out in four movements that proceed in a slow-fast-slow-fast order. The piece is fragrant with scents of the Orient, of the exotic, of early Debussy, and indeed of Respighi. In fact, if you like Respighi’s Roman trilogy, you are bound to find a close relative to it in Malipiero’s Symphony. It’s an exquisitely beautiful score, easily and immediately accessible, luxuriantly orchestrated, and filled with many memorable mood-evoking passages. I was so spellbound by the Lento, ma non troppo that I had to listen to it a second time before continuing on to the last movement. As the saying goes, “You can take the Romantic out of the 19th century, but . . .”.


Eschewing even the superficial program of the Symphony No. 1, the Symphony No. 2, “Elegiaca,” is also in four movements, but orders them in a fast-slow-fast-slow sequence. Three years in Malipiero’s life made no difference in his style. He was at this juncture still a dyed-in-the-wool Romantic, and this work dating from 1936 is as resplendent and gorgeous as the previous one. Again, it’s in the slow movements that Malipiero pours out his heart and soul in music that is never cloying but that nonetheless can make you weep. Considering the modernist trends of the time—Schoenberg’s Fourth String Quartet was written in the same year—it’s little wonder that history has marginalized Malipiero, along with many of the composers mentioned at the outset, as regressive and even reactionary. But unless one is an academic elitist of the worst kind, that should not be an argument against music written by any composer in any period that is beautiful and moving; and I can tell you that Malipiero’s music is both. I know that I, for one, having heard this disc, will be expanding my heretofore very limited Malipiero collection.


There do not appear to be any competing recordings of these works currently listed, so it’s providential that Antonio de Almeida and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra give exceptionally fine performances. I did not realize, however, until reading the fine print, that this Naxos disc is actually a re-release of a 1993 recording that originally appeared on the marco polo label. So make sure you don’t already have it before you run out and buy this one. If you don’t, this is a must-have purchase.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Classical Music

Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973) originally composed his Seven Inventions and Four Inventions as a score for the 1932 Italian film Acciaio (Steel). The music's intended function as an accompaniment to visual storytelling perhaps explains its consistent use of a basic melodic idea, which sounds deceptively like a novice at the piano playing up and down the white keys. That Malipiero creates interesting and beautiful musical moments from this raw and unadorned device is most impressive, as is the ever-captivating orchestration, which at times reminds us of the colorful works of Respighi (especially in the dramatic opening and concluding movements).


The Four Inventions, though slightly more tuneful, follow the same melodic principle as the Seven, which can lead to an impression of sameness if played in succession. Malipiero's 1925 opera Il finto Arlecchino evoked the world of 18th-century Venice, and the music ranges from neo-classical to near parody of the period. For some of today's "authenic performance"-trained ears this will seem quite anachronistic, as will Malipiero's Vivaldiana (1952), a loving tribute that is true to the text of Vivaldi's concerto movements while imbuing them with newly vivid and vibrant orchestral colors. Peter Maag's insightful and committed conducting makes the most of these elements, which are wonderfully realized in brilliant performances by the Veneto Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded in clear, full sound by Naxos. Do give this a try.
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

The unconventional structure of Gian Francesco Malipiero’s music takes us on a journey through unexpected, sometimes incredibly beautiful vistas. The Sixth Symphony is a rich and songful celebration of string sonorities and moods, while the heroic Ritrovari and evocative Serenata mattutina display Malipiero’s expertise in writing for unusual chamber ensembles. The Cinque studi, heard here in their premiere recording, demonstrate an astonishing range of contrasting moods- a kaleidoscopic sonic tour with no more than a small orchestra, which juxtaposes orchestral strings with a wind group of a single flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon and two horns, and a percussion group of cymbal, bass drum, tambourine, celesta, and piano.

The Milanese composer Riccardo Malipiero was born in Milan in 1914 and took lessons with his uncle, Gian Francesco Malipiero in the late 30s. Malipiero disowned all that he wrote up until 1938 and saved only a small amount of that written before 1945: the surviving early pieces show the influence of his uncle’s teaching and the neo-classicism of Casella and Stravinsky. However, influenced by Luigi Dallapiccola, he came to embrace a personal, lyrical language of 12-tone composition which ultimately traces its roots back to the music of Berg. The four-movement Violin Sonata from 1956 makes an ideal introduction to Riccardo Malipiero’s music, with a nervous, waltz-like Scherzo and a frozen slow movement leading into the finale’s extensive violin cadenza, beautifully written for the instrument and played here by Rebecca Raimondi with burning conviction as well as ferocious accuracy (she included the sonata within her Master’s recital at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, from which she graduated in 2017). At her graduation recital she was accompanied by Alessandro Viale, and together with the other members of the Rest Ensemble they have given concerts of Malipiero’s music in both the UK and Italy, lending to these studio recordings the ring of intimacy and impassioned authenticity that is rare in recordings of unfamiliar modernist music. The Piano Trio of 1969 sets a tougher challenge to both performers and listeners, more angular and explosive, yet still imbued with a strain of wit and grace that runs through his output.

Three very varied works make up this latest disc in the Naxos series of Gian Francesco Malipiero’s orchestral works, including two world premiere recordings. Malipiero claimed, extremely improbably, to have created his Fantasie di ogni giorno – ‘Everyday Fantasies’ – simply by stringing together musical ideas he had scribbled down from day to day, ‘and it was not even necessary to change their order’. In the Passacaglie, by contrast, Malipiero deliberately set out to use far stricter structural devices, while Concerti, composed two decades earlier, is a highly imaginative and diverse suite of miniature concertos for different instrumental sections of the orchestra.

Belonging to the generation of Respighi but dying several decades later, Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973) is a far more varied composer than listeners to his post-Romantic chamber and orchestral music would guess. This album is both the most comprehensive publication ever issued of his song output on record, and a valuable opportunity to reappraise an often under-rated 20th-century composer. Malipiero wrote songs throughout his career, and in his late 20s found an affinity with the visionary and influential poet Gabriele d’Annunzio. Their artistic partnership began in 1909 with I sonetti delle fate, full of Wagnerian yearning in the spirit of Debussy’s incidental music to d’Annunzio’s St Sebastian play. The composer’s literary leanings and gifted word setting soon produced equally idiomatic settings of French poetry in a set of Cinq mélodies and an elliptical cycle of three poems (titled in English) by Georges Jean-Aubry, Keepsake. With Le stagioni italiche, however, Malipiero shows himself up to date and in sympathy with the latest developments in expressionist song writing from the pens of Mahler, Schoenberg and Webern, and with an ambition to match: a 40-minute cycle of four varied texts ranging from the 15th century to Malipiero’s own day. Like much else here, the cycle has previously been recorded but never in the context of Malipiero’s other songs which help us to understand the composer’s stylistic evolution. Three years later, there followed a through-composed drama based on the ancient legend of Philomel (immortalized by Ovid in the Metamorphoses) from which Malipiero extracted a cycle of three songs. He continued to refresh his style and innovate with Le sette allegrezze d’amore from 1945, but little in his music prepares the listener for the pointilliste precision of the Sette canzonette veneziane from 1960.

The Italian composer Gian Francesco Malipiero, despite considering the piano his ‘strange enemy’, created a highly individual body of works for the instrument, exploring its most beautiful sonorities. + These five contrasting early collections range from the deliberately archaic idiom of the Tre danze antiche to the quirky humor of the Cavalcate (‘Rides’ on a donkey, a camel and a fiery charger), via the resonating bell-sounds of Risonanze and the gentle autumnal melancholy of the Preludi autunnali. + The powerful Poemetti lunari, a struggle between a world of radiant beauty and forces bent on its destruction, are regarded as Malipiero’s first truly personal creation.

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

Within the context of the wide and multifaceted creative activity of Gian Francesco Malipiero (Venice, 1882 – Treviso, 1973), piano production represents a marginal branch, or at least one that was developed less systematically. However, there are about thirty titles – spread over more than sixty years – in which the most typical forms of Malipiero’s language find perfect expression: from the melancholy restlessness of the first works to the clear expressive intensity of the last ones.

In the dark years of the Nazi-Fascist period, when the light of the end was still far off, Malipiero completed a long-awaited undertaking: an edition of the complete works of Claudio Monteverdi. Its last volume, the sixteenth, came out in 1942 at the height of the war. The edition contained the sacred production that the publisher Vincenti had assembled in the collection Messa a 4 voci et salmi (1650).

Quartetto Sincronie’s choice to include an arrangement of Monteverdi’s Mass, alternating the parts with Malipiero’s work, is yet another example of reinvention-creation that Malipiero would likely have appreciated. In the composers’ poetics, instruments are asked to sing as voices, and so the opposite—voices translated to instruments—is fitting. Philological rigor was, after all, foreign to Malipiero’s worldview. Instead, the composer spoke of his relationship with Monteverdi as a kind of psychic channeling: finding synchronicity within the synchrony of listening, which dissolves the distance of centuries. The Mass for Four Voices is thus split into parts throughout the record, but it remains possible to orient oneself. The cohesion is melodic: there’s a descending tetrachord G-F-E-D at the beginning of the Kyrie that returns in various guises (inverted, diminished, augmented), articulating the contrapuntal fabric of the different movements. The listener can thus follow this pathway, from the Gloria to the Agnus Dei, in a zigzag that turns Monteverdi the sacred “refrain” to Malipiero’s profane cycle of quartets.

The piano works on this CD date from different periods in Gian Francesco Malipiero’s creative life. From his unpublished juvenilia to the late Ricercar toccando, from the evocative Poemi asolani of 1916 to the disillusionment of the pieces written in the years following the First World War: a range of works that bear witness to the development of the composer’s conception of the piano miniature as a kind of intimate diary, between nostalgic impressions and aphoristic humour.

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)

Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973) approached the piano with a sense of expressive freedom, avoiding the conventions of pure virtuosity and preferring a more intimate and reflective language. His piano pieces range from lyrical miniatures to more complex works, in which influences can be recognized from Italian early music to the modernity of Debussy, Casella, Stravinsky and Scriabin. Alessandro Riccardi has programmed a sequence of pieces written during the 1900s and 1910s. They evoke a creative laboratory, where harmonic experimentation and the search for new expressive forms intertwine with a deep respect for the past. From 1905, the 6 Morceaux represent the first expression of Malipiero's compositional personality, where modal influences intersect with late 19th-century trends. Published in 1910, the Tre danze antiche represent Malipiero the assiduous antiquarian, the reviver and transcriber of his 17th-century forebears such as Monteverdi and Gabrieli. The quartet of Preludi autunnali were composed in Venice in September 1914 and foreshadow a period of 'perpetual tragedy' in the composer's music caused by the outbreak of World War I. As Malipiero wrote in 1952: "Their melancholy is perhaps the effect of the war just begun and not yet felt." Those effects are further amplified in Maschere che passano from 1918, a 10-minute quintet of oblique sketches, presenting high contrasts: mysterious, violent, distant, Malipiero at his most late-Debussyan. In 1920 he then wrote a heartfelt homage to Debussy, followed by 'Three Homages', which undercut the solemnity of their title by being dedicated successively to a parrot, an elephant and 'an idiot'. Throughout the album, marking Alessandro Riccardi's debut on Piano Classics, the piano becomes an instrument for personal introspection and sonic exploration, while maintaining a strong connection to Italian tradition and, at the same time, looking into the future. - Gian Francesco Malipiero was an Italian composer whose piano works reflect his unique approach to musical expression, blending tradition and modernity. Known for rejecting the rigid structures of classical forms, Malipiero sought to evoke pure emotion and a sense of mystery in his music, often drawing on Italian folk traditions and Renaissance polyphony. His piano compositions are characterized by their lyrical qualities, rich textures, and distinctive harmonic language. - Malipiero's piano output includes several collections, each showing his innovative yet deeply Italian aesthetic. Among his notable works are the Preludi autunnali (Autumnal Preludes), a series of poetic and introspective pieces imbued with melancholic beauty. These works often feature modal harmonies and unexpected shifts in tonality, reflecting his quest to free music from the constraints of conventional Romanticism. - Other works on this new recording are the Maschere que passano, Omaggi, Six Morceaux, and 3 Danze Antiche. These pieces are deeply atmospheric, blending delicate, impressionistic passages with moments of stark drama. Malipiero's piano music often eschews virtuosic display in favor of expressive depth, demanding a nuanced and sensitive touch from the performer. - Alessandro Riccardi is one of the most remarkable young pianists of his generation. His CDs with works by Scriabin and Liszt received several 5-star reviews in the international press.

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