Wolf-Ferrari was the son of a German father and an Italian mother.
He decided to retain both of their names, presumably to extend
his career options on either side of the Alps. Born in Venice,
he studied in Italy and later in Munich, before he returned
to his native city in 1899 at the age of twenty-three. At the
end of a career divided between his creative work and academia,
he spent the last ten years of life lecturing at the Mozarteum
in Salzburg.
Primarily an opera composer, Wolf-Ferrari is best known for
two works which have held the international stage: the comic
single-act opera Il segreto di Susanna (Susanna's
Secret, Munich, 1909) and the verismo piece, I gioielli
della Madonna (The Jewels of the Madonna, Berlin,
1911). The melodic strengths for which these operas are notable
extend also to Wolf-Ferrari's instrumental compositions,
and his achievements in the concert hall were not inconsiderable.
He was one of the first Italian composers to turn from romanticism
and towards neo-classicism. In this sense these delightful wind
concertos suit him admirably. This is urbane and civilised music,
beautifully crafted and superbly balanced.
Wolf-Ferrari organises each of these three compositions into
a four-movement layout, placing the slow movements third in
the sequence. This is not all that they have in common, since
the scoring is for chamber orchestra forces and the scale sensitive
to the demands on the soloist’s technique. The emotional character
of the music is refined and sensitive, rather than powerful
and intense.
Two of these pieces date from the early thirties, whereas the
Concertino for Cor Anglais dates from Wolf-Ferrari’s last year
and was premiered in 1955, seven years after his death. There
is little difference in the musical language adopted by the
individual pieces, since each is neo-classical in structure
while possessing a warmly romantic harmonic characteristic.
These Naxos performances are nicely rounded, and so too is the
recorded sound, though it has less detail than the SACD version
of exactly the same repertoire from the West Saxon Symphony
Orchestra on Talent (Talent SACD DOM 2929 90), which was favourably
reviewed by Jonathan Woolf in 2008:
In comparing these two recordings the really interesting thing
is the timings of the three performances, and that’s probably
where preferences will lie. The new Naxos CD takes 77 minutes
for the three works, whereas the Talent SACD takes 14 minutes
less, the biggest differences being in the oboe and bassoon
pieces, which are very much more relaxed in Rome (Naxos) than
they were in Germany. This suits the music well enough, though
it does emphasise the point that the works are best heard singly
rather than one after the other. That is exactly how the composer
intended it to be.
Terry Barfoot
see also reviews by John
Sheppard and
John Whitmore
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Andrea Tenaglia (oboe); Willian Moriconi (cor anglais); Giuseppe
Ciabocchi (bassoon)