With his tragically
early death before achieving his 33rd
birthday, Dino Ciani joined Guido Cantelli
as one of the great postwar talents
lost to Italy. The consequent mythology
has attempted to cast him as a sort
of local Dinu Lipatti – "one whom
the gods loved" and so on – though
the phenomenon seems mainly confined
to Italy itself. A quite extensive discography
has been built up, largely from performances
recorded by or for the RAI, including
a complete Beethoven sonata cycle. Of
the present two Mozart concertos, the
C major has had considerable exposure
on various labels, given the added allure
of the conductor, and was already known
to me through a RAI re-broadcast which
I taped and later burnt onto CD. I can
happily put this latter to rest. It
was not bad for what it was but the
Arts Archives remastering reveals the
recording to be excellent for its date.
I found myself speaking
up strongly for the much maligned Naples
orchestra with regard to the Maag "Figaro"
from the previous decade. By 1968 it
was already in decline and let’s face
it, neither was Sir John by that time
quite the man to do much about it. There
are numerous imprecisions, including
one that almost strangles the slow movement
at birth. But nevertheless, if you do
not investigate too closely, the orchestral
playing does have a humanity, majestic
but not heavy, which will be recognized
by those who know Barbirolli’s Pye recording
of the Jupiter symphony.
Ciani also has a radiance
of his own. He had, it seems to me,
a small but very gentle tone. I get
the idea he found it difficult to give
more weight to his right hand, and in
the forte passages the much stronger
left hand tends to dominate. This could
be a fault of the recording, but it
is difficult to see why engineering
which gives plenty of brilliance to
the orchestra should do the opposite
to the piano, and the sound is consistent
with other Ciani recordings I have heard
from different venues. Still, the match
between soloist and conductor seems
a good one. This can’t be a first choice
but piano buffs wishing to hear a pianist
who might perhaps have played a leading
role in our musical lives will be glad
to hear it.
Just how leading a
role, however, is called into question
by the D minor set down four years later.
The Turin orchestra was fundamentally
a better band but the whole symphony
orchestra is apparently used and Bellugi
appears happy to accept clotted textures
without any attempt at refining the
sound. The impression here is that Ciani
had been attempting to increase his
sound, but using a technique that led
him to force the tone. The softer moments,
particularly in the Romanze, have the
same gentle luminosity as in the earlier
performance, but much of the playing
is dominated by a hard-hitting sound
devoid of any legato. The opening of
the finale is particularly unpleasant.
Maybe it was recorded too close, though
the balance with the orchestra sounds
about right.
Ciani tended to approach
Mozart with a certain old-world flexibility.
With Barbirolli conducting this was
fine. Bellugi seems to consider his
task merely that of keeping things more
or less together. At the start of the
first movement development, for example,
Ciani enters considerably below tempo
and sounds wayward. A conductor who
was really collaborating would have
prepared this for him. Another Ciani
performance of this concerto exists
under Gavazzeni, but not a RAI production
so perhaps it was not available to Arts
Archives. Under the circumstances, maybe
this enterprising company would have
done better to follow the Barbirolli
angle rather than the Ciani one. That
same Naples concert began with Haydn
83, which Sir John recorded commercially,
and concluded with Beethoven’s Second
Symphony, which would be a Barbirolli
rarity. The orchestra is a bit rough,
but there’s plenty of character and
enough of "Glorious John"
comes through to make it worthwhile.
That said, the art
of Dino Ciani does merit further investigation.
The Brahms First Concerto would at least
establish what sort of weight of tone
he could produce, though again there
is unremarkable support from the Turin
orchestra under Fulvio Vernizzi. The
collaboration with Vittorio Gui in Beethoven
3 was a notable one, though in the re-broadcast
I heard the performance began at bar
5, so there may be a technical problem.
The missing passage could be dubbed
in without too much incongruity from
a performance Gui conducted with the
same orchestra – soloist Christoph Eschenbach
– a year later, though I hope any such
practice would be acknowledged. Another
interesting collaboration was that with
the young Riccardo Muti in Bartók
2.
Christopher Howell
for
details
Dino Ciani (piano) 
