Opera fanatics will
certainly know the name of the Italian
composer Riccardo Zandonai. He wrote
about a dozen stage works so clearly
here was a composer working to the national
script when it came to music production.
However there are occasional exceptions
to this in his catalogue. Here are two.
Konrad Dryden provides
the notes and is well placed to do so
having written 'Riccardo Zandonai -
a Biography' (Peter Lang, 1999). He
tells us that the Violin Concerto
was premiered after various vicissitudes
on 30 January 1921 when the soloist
was Remy Principe. Lyrical and euphonious
writing predominates
and the solo instrument sings in tones
both direct and hooded. The drama -
and there is some - is of the sort we
find in the violin concertos of Dvořák
and Tchaikovsky and in Sibelius in his
Cantique mood. There are
smoochily legato slidings and sidlings
as well as Arabian evenings especially
in the finale. Zandonai clearly has
both a taste and gift for reflections
on beauty which yet avoid the static
musing of Delius. There are Paganinian
fireworks too and zigeuner influences
in the finale. This is clearly not the
work of a modernist. The Zandonai concerto
can now be added to the roll-call of
delightful and chirpily vital concertos
counted alongside Glazunov, Dvorak,
Haydn Wood, Holbrooke, Moskowski and
de Boeck.
The Quadri di
Segantini were inspired by the
impressionist paintings of Giovanni
Segantini (1858-1899). With the Roman
examples of Respighi in mind Zandonai
felt confident about the project. The
music is best characterised as an essay
in folk-grandeur. There are some orchestral
roughnesses here which are not found
in the concerto. Think perhaps of Tchaikovsky's
Capriccio Italien, early Strauss
tone poems, Ludolf Nielsen's orchestral
suites and Canteloube's cantando orchestral
manner. The pictures were premiered
at Rome's Augusteo on 4 January 1932.
I love the quietly
sighing slide of the violins at 4:53
in the Aratura and the sepia-toned
saxophone (6.23). Idillio has
more of those impressionist sighs and
Canteloube-like woodwind piping in a
landscape in which Debussy's faune would
have found himself at home. There's
even a wind machine in the Ritorno
movement evoking both Debussy (La
Mer) and Ravel (Daphnis).
Meriggio is playful and bright-eyed.
Colourful nationalist
music atmospherically presented and
standing in the lineage of Dvořák
and Respighi.
Rob Barnett
Stefano Zanchetta (violin) 
