Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana
b. 1935. Swiss orchestra.
Regional Italian-Swiss orchestra based in Lugano; active in lesser-known Classical and Romantic repertoire including Paisiello, Krommer, Spohr, and Raff alongside standard works. Modest discography on CPO, Dynamic, and Naxos.
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Saint-Saens: Melodies avec orchestre / Poschner
Although the turn of the twentieth century marked the golden age of French song, the genre was generally accompanied on the piano and only rarely orchestrated by its composers. But Camille Saint-Saëns, a great lover of poetry, was also a champion of the orchestrated mélodie and the French coloristic style. He also wanted to counterbalance the overwhelming popularity of operatic arias in concert programmes. An immense admirer of Victor Hugo, Saint-Saëns set many of his poems to music, including L'Enlèvement, Rêverie, and Le Pas d'armes du Roi Jean, regarded as one of his masterpieces. Exoticism and a certain sense of the supernatural run through such songs as Danse macabre, one of the most popular pieces of classical music, but always heard nowadays either in its version for orchestra alone or performed by a singer with piano accompaniment. Of the twenty-five mélodies with orchestra listed in the catalogue of Saint-Saëns, nineteen are recorded here, all of them for the first time! With interpreters of the calibre of Yann Beuron and Tassis Christoyannis, the words are perfectly served here and the composer’s coloristic talents heard from the very first bars. This release of world premiere recordings is a genuine event that enables us to rediscover a whole segment of the history of vocal music, a renaissance made possible by the Fondation Bru Zane.
Casella: Divertimento for Fulvia / Iorio, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana
This programme of four colourful, contrasting but complementary works for small orchestra celebrates the lighter side of four twentieth-century Italian composers, centring on Alfredo Casella’s Divertimento for Fulvia, composed for his young daughter. Casella’s friend Gian Francesco Malipiero wrote Oriente immaginario (Imaginary Orient) for a Futurist play by Achille Ricciardi (1884-1923). Franco Donatoni once called his simply-titled Musica (Music) ‘kind of Schoenberg gone a bit neoclassical’ – but also with a great sense of humour – while Giorgio Federico Ghedini’s Concerto grosso is a twentieth-century tribute to both Bach and Beethoven.
Prokofiev: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 - Sonata for 2 Violin
Boieldieu: Piano Concerto & Six Overtures
Krommer: Symphonies 4, 5 & 7 / Griffiths, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana

Franz Krommer (1759-1831) was a first rate composer. As you can see, he was three years younger than Mozart, and outlived both Beethoven and Schubert. During that time, he wrote hundreds of instrumental works: chamber music, concertos, nine symphonies (No. 8 is missing), and the wind ensemble music on which his reputation now largely rests. Interestingly, he composed almost no vocal music. The quality of his output is very high: he really sounds like the natural successor to Haydn in many respects. His symphonies are almost exactly contemporary with Beethoven’s, and rather than sounding conservative or reactionary, we can hear them as part of an evolving tradition–different but not necessarily inferior.
Krommer’s idiom evolved as he aged. These three symphonies date from the 1820s, and reveal a composer moving comfortably within the classical style (of which he was a charter member, let’s not forget), but extending its expressive range through vivid orchestration and an expanded harmonic vocabulary. In its rhythms and frequent alternation between major and minor modes, his music also sounds recognizably Czech. Consider the dance movements in each of these three symphonies. Although he calls them “Menuetto,” they are true scherzos (sound clip), full of harmonic and rhythmic audacities. You won’t find Beethoven’s bigness of vision here, but then you don’t find that anywhere else either. In all other respects, these are outstandingly fine works.
The symphonies have been recorded previously (most of them, anyway), but these versions from Howard Griffiths are exemplary in their stylishness and alertness to every nuance that Krommer asks for. The findings of the period instrument movement manifest in the generally swift tempos and incisive accents, but this never becomes a fetish. Excellent engineering makes this release utterly irresistible. We badly need a systematic critical edition of Krommer’s works, accompanied by a wide ranging series of recordings. In the meantime, grab this and marvel.
– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)
Ferdinand Herold: Overtures And Symphonies, Vol. 28
HÉROLD Overtures: Zampa; Le Pré aux clercs. Symphonies: No. 1 in C; No. 2 in D • Wolf-Dieter Hauschild, cond; O of Italian Switzerland • DYNAMIC 8028 (54:25)
Reissued as part of its ongoing series of “Delizie Musicali” releases, the performances on this Dynamic CD were recorded in 1998 and appeared originally as CDS 282. In that guise, the disc was reviewed in very few words but recommended by John Bauman in Fanfare 24:2.
Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold (1791–1833) has maintained a tenuous hold in the repertoire thanks mainly to the overture to his opera Zampa , and to his ballet La Fille mal gardée . Of many composers largely forgotten today we can at least say that they were renowned and celebrated in their own time, but Hérold, despite having shown early promise, never really achieved widespread recognition outside of the early 19th-century French opera and ballet circle of composers—namely, François Adrien Boieldieu and Daniel Auber—with whom he sometimes collaborated.
Hérold’s 20-plus operas and half-dozen ballets met with variable success, more of them misses than hits. But his efforts weren’t limited to the theater. Besides the two symphonies on this disc, he also wrote four piano concertos and at least three string quartets, which I have on a REM CD performed by the Annesci Quartet.
Evidence of just how popular Hérold’s Zampa Overture once was is the fact that we played it, most likely in a simplified arrangement, in my high school orchestra, which now seems like it must have been only a year or two after the piece was written. But it’s rarely performed in concert these days, despite some 25 recordings. Reacquainting myself with the piece after not having heard it in quite some time, I can understand why, and it’s not the performance that’s at fault on this CD. The overture is as banal and cliché as the libretto on which it raises the curtain, which is to say it’s pretty typical of the fluffy cotton candy melodies and jangling gallops common to much early 19th-century French opera and ballet.
Hérold’s opera Le Pré aux clercs ( The Clerks’ Meadow ) may be the composer’s last work, for it seems he died five weeks after it was premiered by the Opéra-Comique on December 15, 1832. It’s said that his premature death was hastened by the lead soprano, one Alphonsine-Virginie-Marie Dubois, who held out for more money to appear in subsequent performances. To me, that suggests she had a rather low opinion of Hérold’s music and preferred not to have her name associated with it, but for a few extra francs she was willing to hold her nose while she sang.
The words “French composer” and “19th-century symphony” don’t usually go together in the same sentence and are often scoffed at when they do, at least until the many notable and significant exceptions are pointed out, beginning with Berlioz. The fact is that the club of well-known French composers who wrote symphonies was not really all that exclusive. Members included Bizet, Gounod, Gouvy, Farrenc, Lalo, Franck, Saint-Saëns, Boëllmann, Chausson, Magnard, and, no doubt, a number of others.
Hérold also made two contributions to the genre. The first, dated 1813, was apparently composed to satisfy a requirement that all recipients of the Prix de Rome, which Hérold had won the year before, had to write a symphony to demonstrate their progress. Accordingly, it’s an academically crafted work that follows all the standard rules of layout and form. Danilo Prefumo’s album note uses the words “traditional” and “unproblematic” to describe it. Hérold’s melodic outlines, regular phrases, and harmonic progressions are strongly reminiscent of Beethoven’s pre-“Eroica” orchestral works.
Hérold’s second symphony, according to Prefumo, followed a year later, in 1814, and exhibits “a weak penchant for lyricism.” Wikipedia’s entry on the composer, however, dates the second symphony to 1815 and places its composition in Naples, where the composer had moved to from Rome for health reasons. Whichever is correct, it doesn’t change one’s perception of the score, which, now in only three movements instead of four, shows no real advance over the earlier opus.
No one will find these works challenging to the ear or difficult to comprehend, and all should find them enjoyable, even if at times they can sound a bit frivolous and superficial. But this is mostly pleasant music, well performed by Wolf-Dieter Hauschild leading his Lugano-based orchestra, and in good recorded sound. My only reservation in recommending it is that today’s (mid-June 2012) price of $12.99 at ArkivMusic and $14.99 at Amazon seems rather high for a 14-year-old reissue. But then, if for some reason, you must absolutely have the original Dynamic CD (which I do, by the way), Amazon will be happy to sell it to you as an import for $99.99. If there are any takers, I’ll sell mine for half that and keep this “Delizie Musicali” rerelease in its place.
FANFARE: Jerry Dubins
Krommer: Symphonies Nos. 1-3 / Griffiths, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana
Franz Krommer was once a highly regarded composer, but he then ceased to be remembered more quickly and disappeared more completely than any other creative musician of his generation. It was not until 1997 that the Czech musicologist Karel Padrta compiled a thorough catalogue of his works including a biographical introduction. Krommer all too long was overshadowed by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and it is only recently that his oeuvre has begun to attract increased attention. Krommer’s oeuvre focuses almost exclusively on instrumental music. In his first symphony he succeeds in forming a thoroughly individual synthesis of stylistic elements recalling Haydn and Mozart, while in his second such work he largely distances himself from these models and develops a symphonic style all of his own. The slow introduction of the first movement, which begins in forte with a gloomy D minor triadic chord, immediately presents a tone quite different from that of his early works and develops an individual sound character with a fitting continuation in the following Allegro vivace’s main movement complex distinguished by strong dynamic contrasts and constantly oscillating between major and minor. Krommer’s third symphony is comparatively conventional, which may have to do with the fact that it is based on an older source and was merely reworked for its publication.
Bloch: Schelomo & Avodath Hakodesh
Franz Danzi: Complete Symphonies / Griffiths, Svizzera Italiana Orchestra
Franz Danzi’s wind quintets tend to be the most well known of his works today and are still within the repertoire of many wind quintets. His rarely heard orchestral symphonies, which impressed Carl Maria von Weber, are also enjoyable works, enhanced by a richer palette of instrumental colors and graced with appealing Haydnesque melodies.
Françaix - Nielsen: Clarinet Concertos
Malipiero: Symphony No. 6 & Other Works / Iorio, Svizzera Italiana Orchestra
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.
