Giuseppe MARTUCCI (1856-1909)
Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor, op.40 (1878)* [34:20]
La canzone dei ricordi (1887, orch.1899)** [33:33]
Gesualdo Coggi (piano)*, Silvia Pasini (mezzo)**
Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma/Francesco La Vecchia
rec. 16-18 October 2007, 17-20 January 2008, 2-3 March 2008, Auditorium Conciliazione-Orchestra
Sinfonica di Roma Studios
Italian text (**) included, English translation can be downloaded from Naxos
site
NAXOS 8.570931 [67:53]
Martucci’s First Piano Concerto came as a revelation to me. And yet, it should
not have, since this was not the first time I’d heard the piece. As performed
here, it unfolds with a leisurely ease, a perfect child of Italian pre-D’Annunzio
decadence. An expression of the world of the “scapigliati” painters Ranzoni
and Cremona, the world of the aristocratic villas still visible here and there,
particularly on the northern lakes, the “little old world” celebrated in a
cycle of novels by Fogazzaro, the major Italian 19th century novelist
after Manzoni. A world of decadence whose bright-eyed innocence had not yet
been perverted by the egotistic obsessions of D’Annunzio, a world where “the
tall plants … proffered as ever, swaying and murmuring in the wind, the poem
of shadows and of life, peace and the sweet imaginings of love” (Fogazzaro:
Daniele Cortis).
In technical terms, this is created by an orchestral and pianistic attack
that is full and rounded in fortes, never brittle, by gently caressing the
pianos and by allowing the lyrical lines to blossom in a fulsome yet tender
way. What emerges is an unusually proportioned concerto, its two outer movements
with dramatic leanings that are only a backdrop to more intimate confidences
and, conversely, a gentle slow movement that is a framework to a more mercurial
central section. All this works, I should add, because the conductor and the
truly excellent pianist interpret the piece as with one mind.
Recordings of Martucci concertos come and – more often – go. My own knowledge
of this one was based on an off-the-air performance by Pietro Spada and the
Milan RAI SO under Francesco Mander. The little-remembered Mander did good
work in Trieste and here, perhaps following the Toscanini mould – this is
a historical recording I haven’t heard – has a leaner sound, tersely dramatic,
though still allowing the lyrical lines to sing. This performance is about
three minutes shorter than the Naxos one. I was amazed that the same music
could sound so different, yet equally convincing. However, this is a piano
concerto - piano concertos have pianists and here it’s Pietro Spada. Spada
is an excellent musicologist and, ironically, it is his edition of the concerto
that Coggi and La Vecchia are using. On record, Spada was notable for a complete
cycle of Clementi’s piano music, and he plays everything with a brittle clarity
and a metronomic rigidity that does few favours even to Gradus ad Parnassum.
His perfunctory dismissal of Martucci’s yearning lyricism would be comic except
that it’s not really funny to travesty beautiful music.
However, I’m inclined to think that, even if Mander had collaborated with
a pianist worthy of the occasion, a more dramatic approach, albeit finely
brought off, would have the disadvantage that the listener might reflect that
there’s a Piano Concerto no.1 in D minor by Brahms that does all this and
better. As interpreted by Coggi and La Vecchia, the music finds its niche,
inhabiting an expressive zone not touched by other concertos, if not other
Italian ones from the same period.
The Song of Memories is possibly Martucci’s best-known work, a little
ironically given that his principal aim was to establish an Italian repertory
of purely instrumental music. With words by the decadent Neapolitan poet Pagliara
it can stand as a musical epitome of an Italian artistic movement mainly bypassed
by that country’s operatic history.
I was not entirely convinced by the mezzo-soprano chosen for La Vecchia’s
recording of Casella’s Notte di Maggio and, having seen some negative
comments by British critics, I was prepared to have similar reservations over
Silvia Pasini. Far from it, so perhaps I should start by looking at the type
of vocal response called for.
This cycle was originally written for mezzo-soprano and piano, but performances
more often use a soprano. This is because the writing goes fairly high, requiring
the sort of soaring ease which only a mezzo of the Giulietta Simionato type,
one well able to sing Santuzza, could bring off. Clearly, we are talking of
a fully operatic style of delivery, and here is the paradox of Italian 19th
century song. The composers often write piano accompaniments modelled on the
lieder of Schumann or Brahms – as Martucci initially did in this case – while
yet expecting the singer to provide an Italianate line, with all that entails.
One thing it entails is that Italian vocal teaching expects the voice to vibrate
naturally – I don’t say automatically and unthinkingly – as an expressive
device. When the generally restrained first piece occasionally soars up to
blossoming high notes, Pasini releases the operatic throb, providing a frisson
that a more tightly controlled delivery would have lacked. As proof that she
is fully in control of what she is doing, hear how she opens the second song,
“Cantava’l ruscello”, with an almost childlike clarity and practically no
vibrato. She uses such means to differentiate, in the next song, between those
parts of the text in italics and those that are not. The penultimate song
contains, starting from “O dolce notte”, one of the most glorious lyrical
effusions in Italian song, and Pasini matches it with lusciously soaring lines.
At the other extreme, the regretful, intimate last song is a model of vocal
control, capping a performance that I would describe as masterly, even great.
Here too, I had an RAI performance for comparison, by Elena Rizzieri with
the Naples Scarlatti orchestra under Nino Sanzogno. This performance, too,
shaves three or four minutes off the Naxos one. However, since Sanzogno was
conducting for a light soprano, noted for her Mozart and sounding rather soubrettish
in this music, it’s difficult to say whether his tempi were dictated by the
vocal material at hand. In any case, while I feel that La Vecchia sometimes
loses out by comparison with “historical” practitioners like Sanzogno, Rossi
or Caracciolo in Malipiero or Casella, Martucci is a different matter. The
composer had been dead since 1909, his music practically dormant. When I came
to Italy in 1975, if you mentioned the names of Martucci or Sgambati to any
self-respecting, with-it young Italian musician, his face was immediately
covered by that same look of withering scorn that mention of Parry or Stanford
evoked among young musicians in Great Britain in those years. So there was
no surviving Martucci tradition, the specific value of the music and its meaning
for today’s world has to be rediscovered. This, it seems to me, La Vecchia
has done here. If I’ve had doubts over his Malipiero and Casella, on this
showing he was born to conduct Martucci.
As is the Naxos practice in its Italian series, separate notes are provided
in Italian. In the case of Malipiero and Casella, both David Gallagher and
Marta Marullo had their own particular insights, an added value if you can
read both languages. Here, Marta Marullo’s essay is considerably more detailed
than Richard Whitehouse’s note, which, while acceptable, might have been usefully
replaced by a translation of the Italian commentary. No marks for the off-the-shelf
modern-traditional art specimen on the cover, unattributed. So many paintings
by Ranzoni, Cremona, Mosè Bianchi, and De Nittis would have set the mood better.
Christopher Howell
On this showing La Vecchia was born to conduct Martucci. A masterly, even
great, vocal performance from Silvia Pasini.
see also review by Stephen Vasta