Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948)
Suite Veneziana, Op 18 (1935)
Triptychon, Op 19 (1936)
Divertimento, Op 20 (1936)
Arabeschen, Op 22 (1937)
Oviedo Filarmonia/Friedrich Haider
rec. 2008-2009, Oviedo, Spain
NAXOS 8.573583 [64]
Friedrich Haider (b. 1961), an Austro-Italian conductor, is not an international headline name. His prominence has come principally from chief conductor posts in Oviedo, Spain and in Poland. His championing of
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari on CD is now finding its way onto Naxos CDs (Overtures; Gioielli; Talitha; Susanna).This is the latest.
One Haider item that cries out for a Naxos reissue - and nothing to do with Wolf-Ferrari, is the ‘complete’ Richard Strauss songs with orchestra. There are something like 48 of them across 3 CDs and three hours. The singers are Edita Gruberova, Kurt Moll, Bo Skovhus, Peter Strake, Judith Horvath and Adrianne Pieczonka. This was issued by Nightingale Records in 2000 and is one of those treasures that has undeservedly slipped into oblivion.
These four works by Wolf-Ferrari are from the mid-1930s and are all unfamiliar and laden with grace. The
Suite Veneziana is in four elegant movements, the second and third of which (‘Barcarola’ and ‘Notturno’) are object lessons in balancing duration with elite charm. They have a lambent quality that places them alongside Binge’s Elizabethan Serenade and Sibelius’s sighing Valse Triste and the light music from the 1920s. Deferential music, but artfully and tearfully shaped to be evocative of Venetian elegance.
The Triptychon looks again towards Venice - where Wolf-Ferrari died in 1948 - and its ‘campi’ and churches. It does not shout but makes something touchingly memorable, yet of unassuming stature, from evoking the Chiese di Venezia. Devotional, not overblown, and heavy with affectionate respect, if a little Bachian in the last two movements, the final ‘Preghiera’ deploys a solo violin as a reverent cantor. No ‘fireworks’ here.
The four-movement Divertimento is an extension or replication of the world of the
Suite Veneziana. It is from the same sighingly ardent chapbook. Only in the second movement ‘Canzona Pastorale’ do things become bleached so as to drift into mannerism, routine and background music. The finale is a Rondo where ideas blow hither and thither. The French horn player seems to have Dennis Brain in mind. The overture-length single-movement Arabeschen has an Elgarian high baroque accent but otherwise unassuming charm; a certain skirling innocence is the order of the day.
The capacious and transparently structured booklet essay is by Haider himself and is in English only.
There is nothing brusque about these gentle Venetian aquarelles and they are rendered, by players and engineering team, with confident yet unassuming elegance.
Rob Barnett
