Giovanni SALVIUCCI (1907-1937)
Serenade for 9 instruments (1937) [16:41]
Salmo di David, for soorano and piano (1933) [4:45]
String Quartet in C major (1932) [21:20]
Pezzi, for violin and piano (1930) [15:32]
Pensiero nostalgico – Andante for cello and piano (1931) [2:58]
Chamber Symphony for 17 instruments (1933) [21:24]
Sabina von Walther (soprano)
Ensemble Überbrettl/Pierpaolo Maurizzi (piano)
rec 2017/18, Teatro degli Atti, Rimini; Sala dei Concerti di Palazzo Chigi Saracini, Siena, Italy
Sung text and translation included
NAXOS 8.574049 [83:05]
If one were to play the first of Giovanni Salviucci’s six Pezzi (Pieces) for violin and piano to a naive listener and asked them for a date, or a country of origin, I’d be astonished if they guessed 1930s Italy. It sounds like Elgar to me. Salviucci penned these melodic little pieces for what Giordano Montecchi described as ‘liturgical’ use in the booklet, and while there is something tranquil and nostalgic about each of them (with the exception of the more extrovert fourth piece Alla festa) it is difficult to detect any wafts of incense in this music. It’s pleasant, well-crafted and rather anonymous. In chronological terms it’s the first of six works on this generously filled Naxos album dedicated to this long-forgotten Italian who endured a tragic and untimely death from tuberculous meningitis at the age of 30. Salviucci was certainly well thought of by his peers – indeed in a letter to his teacher Alfredo Casella, Goffredo Petrassi later described him as “…the best of us all.” Salviucci’s daughter Giovanna was just nine months old at the time of his death; in time she would become Giovanna Marini, one of Italy’s most influential left-leaning singer/songwriters, and she has been instrumental in the production of this disc of her father’s music.
It is certainly possible to trace Salviucci’s development if one ignores the sequencing of the disc and plays the works in their order of composition. Salviucci composed the Pezzi at the age of 23. In all honesty they seem a little staid. The little Pensiero Nostalgico (Nostalgic Thought) followed a year later and displays more adventure in its piquant melodic line. However the String Quartet which followed in 1932 incorporates music of greater sophistication and scale. In this work one begins to acknowledge the emergence of an individual voice. The booklet note suggests a link between the propulsive rhythms of the opening Allegro moderato and the motoric energy common to much Italian music of the early 1930s Mussolini era. I really don’t hear that kind of modernism here – the quartet certainly emits a Mediterranean radiance but while its construction is taut it exudes an appealingly soft underbelly. The central Adagio molto is both yearning and songful and communicates an intensity of feeling unique on this disc. The performers seem to be a scratch quartet drawn from the personnel of the Ensemble Überbrettl but listening to their performance of what is an ornate if expressively ambiguous quartet suggests that a few more rehearsals would not have gone amiss. Despite palpable enthusiasm I don’t really feel a sense that they are truly ‘inside’ this music. The concluding Allegro vivace has a rather chaste, unassuming introduction which promises more than it delivers. A build up at 0:50 suggests a flowering of melody and counterpoint that just doesn’t materialise. The players are not helped by a rather arid, sterile production which certainly impedes the impact of music which might well have proven worthier given more auspicious recording conditions. While curious listeners will be able to derive an understanding of Salviucci’s nascent style, both performance and recorded sound are no more than serviceable.
If the early violin pieces lack the depth of feeling normally associated with sacred music, the same cannot be said for Salviucci’s four minute setting of Psalm 60 (Hear my cry, O God) from 1933. Heartfelt, serious and sincere, both the vocal line and Salviucci’s florid, bell-like counterpoint convey distinctive Italian flavours. In this little piece one can detect the influence of Ravel and especially Respighi, from the generation of Italians who preceded Salviucci; furthermore it anticipates the later vocal music of his direct contemporary Petrassi.
One gets a much clearer sense of where this composer’s music may have been going, had he lived, in the two larger scale works on the disc. Salviucci’s Chamber Symphony for 17 instruments dates from the same year as the Psalm and nothwithstanding the presence of 6 violins employs similar instrumentation to Schoenberg’s early masterpiece of the same name. However in its economy and style Salviucci’s work projects more in the way of rhythmic thrust. The Allegro first movement is obviously neo-baroque in its opening gestures, but the second subject is a rich flowing melody which weaves in and out of focus, displaying accomplished counterpoint and providing a marked contrast to the initial material. The first phrase of the Adagio hints at the Dies Irae, before an oboe abruptly takes up a decidedly Italianate melodic line. The shaping and flow of this movement brought Honegger to my mind, especially in the manner Salviucci builds its central climax prior to expertly slowing down the pulse and gradually reducing the instrumentation. The puckish Allegretto is initially dominated by the woodwinds. The writing becomes rather spare, although the strings recycle the initial material as the panel proceeds. The closing Allegro is vigorous and motoric in keeping with the Italian futurist zeitgeist, its opening astringent and bracing indeed. Embroidered amongst the busy counterpoint are some emotionally ambiguous melodic motifs for solo winds. The ending is delightfully melancholy. While one at least gets a reasonable sense of the piece, the performance by the full Ensemble Überbrettl is somewhat rough and ready, and conveys a harshness which I suspect Salviucci didn’t intend. The sound is odd – extremely dry again; at a couple of climaxes there seems to be an extraneous vibrating echo.
This new issue begins with what was Salviucci’s last composition, his Serenade for 9 instruments (four wind, trumpet and string quartet). This was first performed just four days after his death and was posthumously recognised by his peers (along with his penultimate work Alcesti for chorus and orchestra) as his finest accomplishment. Cast in three movements, this strikes the listener immediately as more abrasive, its rhythms insistently repetitive, its melody and counterpoint defiantly angular. The more I hear the Serenade (and I am more convinced by it than anything else on this album) its brittle harmonies and rhythms recall the odd little Concerto for Harpsichord and Five Instruments by Manuel de Falla (1926). In the opening Allegro molto it’s there in the way Salviucci goes off at peculiar tangents and then brings the whole edifice back into line before the next digression. It ends abruptly, seemingly in medias res. In the central Canzone the melodic content is passed around between the four wind instruments and underpinned by some rather terse counterpoint. Some of this movement seems to be tartly bitonal. The rising two note interjections from viola and cello that punctuate the elusive concluding Allegro also point to the Falla work, but Salviucci manages to take his material off in some intriguing, unexpected directions. Its ending is a total surprise. The Serenade is worth one’s time and full attention, but it really deserves a better executed and rehearsed performance than this.
And it certainly merits a better recording. This release suffers from one of the ‘dullest’ sound pictures I have encountered on recent Naxos discs. This often seems to be an issue with the label’s Italian recordings. It’s a real shame because one really wants to hear this unfamiliar music at its very best. Enterprising and ambitious as this disc is, ultimately it proves to be a missed opportunity.
Richard Hanlon
