Guido Cantelli (conductor)
Cantelli at the NBC
Giorgio Federico Ghedini (1892-1965)
Pezzo Concertante (1931)
Alfredo Casella (1883-1947)
Paganiniana, Op. 65
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Romeo and Juliet: Fantasy Overture, TH 42, CW39
NBC Symphony Orchestra
rec. January 1949, Studio 8H, Radio City, New York
PRISTINE AUDIO PASC663 [57]
Italian conductor Guido Cantelli (1920-1956) was among the most outstanding young musicians in the immediate post-war period; his death in a Paris air-crash, robbed the world of perhaps one of the 20th-century’s great conductors. Thankfully, owing to the number of recordings he made in a short spell of six years we can judge the full complement of his gifts. A protégé of Toscanini, he was able to conduct some of the finest European and American orchestras, embracing music from the baroque through to contemporary works.
The brochure of the Toscanini Society gives us accurate judgement of Cantelli’s skills: ‘The precision and refinement of the orchestral playing, the clearly fastidious care for attack, chording and sonority, these technical achievements were guided by exquisite musical taste. All expression occurred within the framework of the composer’s instructions regarding tempo, dynamics, rhythm and phrasing, and … Cantelli had the power to achieve rubato inside the bar, so that the bar lines themselves were always equidistant.’
His musical talents were evident from an early age. He first played in his father’s military band, then at 10 he played organ in church, conducted the local choir and gave his first piano recital at 14. He studied at Milan Conservatoire with Giorgio Ghedini (who also taught Claudio Abbado) and returned to his home town in 1941 to conduct the Teatro Coccia; however, he was then called up to the army. He refused to serve in the Fascist cause and was interned in a Nazi camp at Stettin but managed to escape and his death by execution was avoided only by the capitulation of the Fascist government.
After the war, he was able to resume his musical career and conducted the Orchestra of La Scala in a programme including Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique symphony, following which he conducted widely in Europe. His major breakthrough was when Toscanini heard him in rehearsal at Milan in 1948, which led to an immediate invitation to give concerts in New York with the NBC Orchestra. He made his debut on January 19, 1949 and his second concert was broadcast live on NBC. This is the concert featured on this release from Pristine Audio, given an excellent stereo remastering by Andrew Rose.
This debut led to major engagements across the US, and in 1950 he took the La Scala Orchestra to the Edinburgh International Festival. In the 1950s, he conducted at the Lucerne, Salzburg and Venice Festivals. His death in the Paris air crash was judged to be so tragic a loss that his mentor Toscanini was never told of it. By this time, many of his recordings had appeared, most notably his Tchaikovsky Fifth Symphony, which became a best seller, as was his Beethoven Seventh Symphony with the Philharmonia Orchestra. Despite being in mono, they have been reissued and other radio concerts have appeared on diverse labels.
It is perhaps typical of Cantelli that he chose a piece by his teacher Ghedini to make his debut in America. A composer attracted to music of the baroque period, he writes in a style which combines modernity and Renaissance elegance. The opening piece by Ghedini opens with a single massive chord before the development, which is then reprised before a rather Beethovenian theme is heard, played intensely by a trio of string players - the violins of Mischa Mischakoff and Max Hollander, and the violist Carlton Cooley, which are heard in breaks, either playing together or accompanied by the orchestra hinting at a harmonic language of Frescobaldi and Gabrieli and rising to a fugue in a passage of great beauty on the violins. This is interrupted by loud passages from the brass and the orchestra, and there is a wonderful passage for solo violin, a thoughtful sequence performed beautifully with the ensemble culminating with solos from the brass.
If Ghedini is almost forgotten now, on the basis of this performance his work deserves to return to the repertoire. Intriguingly, Cantelli also introduces to the NBC radio audience another neglected Italian composer, Alfredo Casella. Dedicated to his compatriot who died just two years before, the work was quite new, premiered by Karl Bohm with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1942.
Casella’s piece starts at a brisk tempo on strings Allegro agitato, embroidered in a melodic neo-classicism, combined with passion and colour in the portrayal of Paganini’s diabolic spirit. The woodwind evoke a bird-like idea from the finale of the Guitar Concerto No. 6 in D minor, which passes to the high strings in the Polacchetta, while in the Romanza, Cantelli conjures up quite charming playing, with the elegant scurrying figures on the strings, in an idea from the Larghetto cantabile amoroso of Paganini’s La Primavera violin sonata, played superbly by Mischakoff and complemented by appealing woodwind, before the piece closes with a beautiful cello solo. In the Tarantella - taking ideas from the Tarantella in A minor - the strings generate a brisk pizzicato against chirpy woodwind - now with a theme from another Guitar Concerto, No. 4 in D minor; the vivid NBC violins then play a swirling dance which is finally picked up by the whole orchestra.
The Tchaikovsky overture, the final piece in this programme, immediately reveals the conductor’s outstanding abilities from the opening bars. It contains enormous suspended excitement; the love theme slowly opens up on the strings, assisted by the horns, and the double-basses offer a prodigious build up in both the tension and passion. It is clear here how Cantelli holds back the orchestra then allows the love theme to pour forth - yet never over dramatically; instead, he allows the music to emerge naturally and with lovely playing - most notably from the excellent woodwind, harps and trumpets – yet there is never any sense of overplaying the love drama or the passing of the two lovers. This performance is among the finest that I have heard, and especially now that this vintage recording has been so masterfully restored into Ambient Stereo by Andrew Rose.
In all, this is a superb testimony to Cantelli’s mastery, showing all his unique talents in the music of both little-known Italian masters and the Romantic Russian repertoire.
Gregor Tassie
