Alfredo Casella was one of those late 19th century/early
20th century Italian composers who were more interested
in creating non-operatic music. They included Giuseppe Martucci
and Gian Francesco Malipiero as well as Casella and Ottorino
Respighi.
Although Casella spent his early years in Italy, it was to the
Paris Conservatoire that he went for his training and where
he developed an interest in French Impressionism. He possessed
imagination and technical skill in abundance. His wide musical
interests and enthusiasms embraced a love of the Late-Romantic
idiom especially the music of Mahler which influenced Casella’s
Second Symphony (Chandos CHAN 10605, see
review), Later his musical interests turned to experimentation
and he came under the influence of Stravinsky and Schoenberg
but moved on again by the time the latter composer had formulated
his 12-note system.
A notte alta, the earliest composition
here is from the closing stages of his experimental period.
It is dedicated to his wife Yvonne Müller who had been
one of his students, then his mistress and later his second
wife. One can’t help wondering what Yvonne made of this
dedication because this music is anything but warm and romantic.
It represents, according to the composer, “a winter night,
clear and cold, glacially insensible to human suffering”.
The music would seem to suggest the female and male response
to the dilemma and anguish of forbidden love.A notte alta
is not unlike Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht
- it was based on a similar idea - and the Schoenbergian influence
is felt throughout. Readers might be relieved to know, though,
that this music is not all wearisome dissonances and clash and
bash. On the contrary the harmonies and orchestrations intrigue
and hold the ear; this notwithstanding its eerie mistiness,
ghostly ostinatos - dominated by repetitive, softly touched
gong strokes in the lowest register - a masterly inspiration
- and some noisy grotesque turbulence. Peace - of a sort - is
attained at the end. Martin Roscoe’s piano part does not
obtrude but is absorbed into the fabric of the score to accentuate
its ghostliness and icy qualities. It is disturbing but memorable
music, cast in extraordinary colours. What this composer could
have contributed to the horror film genre!
Casella’s colourful and accessible Concerto for Orchestra,
completed in Rome in 1937, was dedicated to William Mengelberg
and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. The work’s
infectious enthusiasm reaches out to the listener right from
its opening bars - it does celebrate, after all, the 50th
anniversary of the Orchestra’s founding. The exuberant,
celebratory brass fanfares and joyful festivities slowly give
way to quieter more intimately romantic material. This would
not be out of place in some Hollywood romance. The second movement,
a Passacaglia, is based on a ground bass given to cellos and
basses. Above this each of the other sections of the orchestra
display their brilliance over fourteen variations; Again I could
not help but notice a certain cinematic quality about some of
the music here. The finale returns to the festive atmosphere
of the first movement alternating between high spirits and sentimental
introspection - marked Inno (or Hymn) the tune will be
recognisable to many listeners. This Concerto for Orchestra
is an appealing work; amazing that this is its premiere recording.
La donna serpente (The Serpent Woman) refers to a beautiful,
young, half-fairy Queen who is condemned to assume the shape
of a snake for 200 years. Casella, who had, at first, eschewed
opera as a musical form, was eventually attracted to Carlo Gozzi’s
dramatic fable; Wagner had used it for his early opera Die
Feen. This suite of music was formulated in 1932 shortly
after its short run. The Symphonic Fragments are organised into
two series. The first, dedicated to Fritz Reiner, opens in mysterious
melancholy to rocking cradle-song like music. It suggests some
Arabian-nights fairy-tale. Muted trumpet calls, tense vibrato
strings and furtive cellos and basses lead to an assertive march
rather like one from Prokofiev’s The Love of Three
Oranges. There’s a glowing Elgarian nobility towards
the end. The second series, dedicated to Bernardino Molinari,
has jubilant music from the opera’s Overture. The music
of the Preludio Lento middle fragment is more muted and
mournful, reflecting the dire fate of the Queen. It rises to
cataclysmic proportions at its centre-point then dies away amid
a sense of pleading coupled with the mournful figures with which
it opened. The final fragment is concerned with the King’s
heroism in saving his Queen. There’s brilliant, thunderous
battle music - you can so easily visualise steel on steel -
and a triumphant choral march. Knowing William Walton’s
fondness for things, Italian, I wonder if he was acquainted
with Casella’s work.
The adventurous listener will be very well rewarded by this
very imaginative and colourful music.
Ian Lace
Martin Roscoe (piano) 