Throughout the 19th century, the chamber song was one of the most common ways of writing, making and experiencing music. It involved a multitude of...

Throughout the 19th century, the chamber song was one of the most common ways of writing, making and experiencing music. It involved a multitude of poets, composers and singers, some of them professionals (theatre composers, quality musicians, opera stars), others amateurs. This repertoire has been studied especially with regards the work of the great opera composers – Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi – or the later output of the specialist Francesco Paolo Tosti, but in reality it is a very widespread phenomenon that gave rise to some worthy compositions, even though to appreciate them one should not forget that the context of their use, the nature of their performers and the very aesthetics of drawing room music called for values different from those of the theatre: spontaneity, ease, immediacy (values that also the “great opera composers” adhered to when writing for the drawing room).

Drawing on unpublished manuscripts owned by the Liszt Institute of Bologna, the soprano Barbara Vignudelli and the pianist Stefano Malferrari offer us a superb performance of this collection which presents an exemplary sample of the variety of styles and formal solutions used by composers completely outside the ranks of famous names, and yet able to compose short pieces that hold some pleasant surprises for the listener.