Alfredo CASELLA (1883-1947)
Divertimento per
Fulvia, Op. 64 (1940) [15:21]
Franco DONATONI (1927-2000)
Musica for
chamber orchestra (1954-55) [17:29]
Giorgio Federico GHEDINI (1892-1965)
Concerto
grosso for wind quintet and strings (1927) [20:00]
Gian Francesco MALIPIERO (1882-1973)
Oriente
immaginario (1920) [10:49]
Orchestra della Svizzera italiana/Damian Iorio
rec. Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano-Besso, Switzerland, 21-24 May
2013
NAXOS 8.573748 [63:41]
Here are four varied works for small orchestra by Italian composers. They
cover quite a diverse span of styles in performances that are alert and
caring.
Casella's light-hearted gifts are at work in his ten-movement
war-time Divertimento per Fulvia. The score is the very antithesis
of long-winded and has a neo-classical patina that brings life and youthful
fluty energy. Touched with Stravinsky's Pulcinella Casella
stays true to himself by drizzling feather-touch charm into the mix
alongside some sweetly tuned Ravel-like shadows. By the way, Fulvia was
Fulvia Casella, Alfredo’s daughter.
Donatoni's Musica is a longer piece and takes full
advantage of the new discordant episodic angularity of the times. His sound
is chill yet often tender. He allows plenty of air around what is going on
in what is a busy score. It's a stern contrast with the Casella;
after all Donatoni was only twenty when Casella died. The composer's
favourite teacher was, it seems, one of Casella’s former protégés, Goffredo Petrassi.
Ghedini's Concerto grosso for wind quintet and strings is
the second oldest piece here. It fuses an evident affection for Beethoven
with something of the neo-Tudor sense that you encounter in
Arnold Rosner and in Warlock's Capriol. The work is in
five supple movements. David Gallagher's excellent notes for the disc
tell us that Ghedini wrote the introduction to the Beethoven entry published
in 1963 in the Italian Enciclopedia della musica.
Naxos state that these are world premiere recordings, except the Casella.
The days when Casella's name was kept alive in the catalogues only by
his Violin Concerto - Gertler on Supraphon - are now well and truly behind
us. That Supraphon disc included the Violin Concerto of Gian Francesco
Malipiero, a composer who was an especially active agent in the musical life
of Italian music during the period prior to 1920. Malipiero has been
extensively recorded on Naxos so we have a pretty rounded picture. His
Oriente immaginario is quite different from the other works here
and is also the shortest. Across its three movements it is replete in
late-romantic impressionistic oriental gestures. The orchestration is lush
and fits well with similarly exotic scores by Schmitt, Pizzetti and Respighi.
The engineering has been adroitly handled.
Rob Barnett
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