Mauro GIULIANI (1781-1829)
Le Rossiniane
Rossiniana No. 1, Op.119 (c.1820-1823) [15:44]
Rossiniana No. 2, Op.120 (c.1820-1823) [14:16]
Rossiniana No. 3, Op.121 (c.1820-1823) [18:17]
Rossiniana No. 4, Op.122 (c.1820-1823) [15:54]
Rossiniana No. 5, Op.123 (c.1820-1823) [12:25]
Rossiniana, No. 6, Op.124 (pub.1827/1828] [11:52]
Goran Krivokapić (guitar)
rec. September 2019, St. Paul’s Anglican Church, Newmarket, Canada
NAXOS 8.574272 [88:47]
Giuliani was by no means the only guitarist-composer to be attracted by Rossini’s operatic melodies in the first decades of the Nineteenth Century. Amongst his contemporaries who added to the repertoire for guitar through music written ‘after’ Rossini, one might mention Ferdinando Carulli (1770-1841), whose works include
Douze Ariettes Italiennes sur motifs de Rossini, a Fantaisie avec variations sur des airs de “La gazza ladra”, Op.197 and
Cinq Rondeaux sur des thêmes de Rossini, Op. 237, and Matteo Carcassi (1792-1853), composer of
Ouverture de Semiramide, Op.30, and whose ‘6 Fantasies on operatic themes’ include pieces based on
Le Compte Ory and Guillaume Tell. Or, to mention two last examples, Francesco Molino (1768-1877) whose works include a Grande Potpourri, op. 47 on themes by Rossini, and Luigi Legnani (1790-1877) who published, for example,
Coro e rondo ‘Pensa alla patria’ nell’opera ‘L’italiana in Algeri’, Op. 8 and
Motivi più favorite delle Opera ‘Zelmira e Corrodano’ da Rossini, Op. 26. Some of these works were for solo guitar, others for guitar duo, guitar and violin, guitar and piano or guitar and voice. It is a list which might be greatly extended.
Still, of all the guitar ‘versions’ from Rossini that I have heard – and over the years I have sought out many – Giuliani’s Rossiniane seem, to my ears and mind, by far the most creative, both in how they use their sources in Rossini and how the guitar is used. So much so, that I find it hard to believe that amongst the related works I haven’t heard there is anything better.
Giuliani wanted it to be realized that he was not merely transcribing ‘hits’ by Rossini. Writing to the publishing house of Artaria in September 1822 he declared “Let it never be said that taking themes and writing variations on them in my manner is just transcription, or a mere collection of various tunes by Rossini” (Quoted from the article ‘Some Newly Recovered Letters of Mauro Giuliani’, by Thomas Heck, Marco Riboni and Andreas Stevens, in Soundboard: The Journal of the Guitar Foundation of America, 38:2, 2012, pp. 13-29. Quotation from p.41. What Giuliani has done is to take a number of themes from a variety of Rossini’s operas in each Rossiniana and then, in the way he orders them, links them and introduces variations on them, creates works which have a structure and design which are not in any way Rossini’s. There is an emotional arc, a rhythmic variety to each of the resulting pieces. Rather than ‘merely’ transcribing Rossini’s music he creates a dialogue with it. (At times, he seems also to have in mind the words Rossini was setting, though one needs copies of the relevant libretti to hand to appreciate this). Giuliani’s scores frequently include footnotes identifying each ‘quotation’ from Rossini. But this process of recognition is by no means essential for the enjoyment of the six works recorded here. I can offer personal testimony here – I heard and was fascinated by some of these pieces long before I knew Rossini’s operas at all well, enjoying them thoroughly (if perhaps incompletely) simply as vivacious and tuneful music.
Mauro Giuliani (or, to give him his splendid full name, Mauro Giuseppe Sergio Pantaleo Giuliani) was born in Bisceglia on the Adriatic coast of Apulia in Southern Italy. His musical studies are thought to have taken place in the city of Barletta, on the same coast, some 14/14 miles from Bisceglie. He studied counterpoint, cello and guitar. (However, a modern biographer of Giuliani, Thomas Heck (Mauro Giuliani: A Life for the Guitar, 2013) has suggested that Mauro and his brother Nicholas may have been sent to study in Bologna). Mauro went on to play the cello to a high standard, so much so that in 1813 he was one of the cellists in the premiere of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony; yet the guitar became his main means of musical expression. Indeed, his skill on the instrument was such that at the age of 19 he set out for Northern Europe to work as a guitarist/composer. Between 1806 and 1819 he lived in Vienna, where he mixed and worked with many of the city’s leading musicians, including, along with Beethoven, figures such as Moscheles, Diabelli, Hummel, Salieri and Spohr. Within two years of arriving in Vienna he had not only established himself as the leading guitarist in the city, but had also done much to make the instrument very fashionable there. For all his success, which won him patronage and included many concerts and the publication and sale of his music, Giuliani ran up enormous debts and eventually left Vienna (a city to which he never returned) because of his financial difficulties, and made his way back to Italy.
He spent spells with his parents, then living in Trieste, and in Venice; by late in 1820 he was in Rome. Rossini, accompanied by Paganini, arrived in Rome during December 1820, for the premiere of his opera Matilde di Shabran in February 1821 at the city’s Teatro Apollo. Giuliani and Paganini were frequent visitors to the house Rossini had taken in Rome. By the 6th of February, Giuliani was writing to Giovanni Ricordi and reporting, “During my stay here in Rome, I have managed to write some pieces in a style hitherto unknown, as well as getting to know Rossini, who has favoured me with many originals from which I can arrange everything that appeals to me”. In the same letter he refers to this new music as a “Gran Pot-Pourri for guitar, known as the Rossiniana, a piece I use in my concerts”. (The use of the singular title here suggest that Giuliani was referring only to what we now know as his Op.119). The use of the word ‘Pot-Pourri’ is interesting. The word was used as a title by several of the composers Giuliani knew in Vienna, for works of a similar nature to the guitarist’s Rossiniane – as, for example, in Spohr’s Opp. 22 & 24, both of them (they are for different instrumental groups) having the title Potpourri on Themes by Mozart, and Hummel’s Op. 47, Potpourri for Piano.
Born in Belgrade, guitarist Goran Krivokapić now lives in Cologne, where he is Professor of Guitar at the city’s Hochschule für Musik. As his earlier recordings have shown, he has a virtuoso’s technique as a guitarist. He brings to these pieces, among the supreme works in the solo guitar repertoire, an absolute technical mastery, excellent judgement of dynamics and a vivid musical imagination. His readings of Le Rossiniane are rich in character, with plenty of the vivacity and theatrical spirit that befit these works. In its balance of vigour and finesse this new disc takes its place amongst the very best recordings of Le Rossiniane. Fortunately, Krivokapić’s performance is well-served by the recorded sound on this disc, for which Norbert Kraft is responsible – the unusual length of the disc, almost 89 minutes, doesn’t seem to have had any adverse effect on the sound quality. This disc also benefits from a typically learned and authoritative booklet essay by Graham Wade, part of which interestingly recounts the role played by the late Julian Bream in the twentieth-century revival of interest in Giuliani’s music, beginning with his January 1975 performance of Op.119 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Bream’s own edition of Op.119 was published by Faber Music in 1979. In his introduction, Wade tells us, Bream observes that the pieces contained in Le Rossiniane are “delightful works, full of inventive writing for the guitar, and so constructed that it is often difficult to tell where Rossini ends and Giuliani ends”. The comment endures as a shrewd judgement on the collection. Wade also provides a useful outline analysis of the themes by Rossini which are used in each of Giuliani’s creations.
The quality of the music in Le Rossiniane owes much to both Rossini and Giuliani and perhaps as much, or more, to the musical relationship (and the personal relationship which developed between the two men when they spent much time together in Rome), at the very time that Giuliani was conceiving and composing this sequence. Giuliano’s growing familiarity with Rossini’s personality surely aided his understanding of the man’s music.
Giuliani’s contacts with figures such as Beethoven, Rossini, Paganini, Hummel, Moscheles, Salieri and others would be enough to make him an interesting figure in the history of music. But even he hadn’t met (and in most cases won the friendship of) such people, the best of his own music – in which category Le Rossiniane certainly belongs – would, along with his role in the development of the classical guitar, be enough to win him a significant place in musical history.
Glyn Pursglove
