MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW Plain text for smartphones & printers

Support us financially by purchasing this disc from

Alfredo CASELLA (1883-1947)
Divertimento per Fulvia
, Op. 64 (1940) [15:21]
Franco DONATONI (1927-2000)
Musica
for chamber orchestra (1954-55) [17:29]
Giorgio Federico GHEDINI (1892-1965)
Concerto grosso
for wind quintet and strings (1927) [20:00]
Gian Francesco MALIPIERO (1882-1973)
Oriente immaginario
(1920) [10:49]
Orchestra della Svizzera italiana/Damian Iorio
rec. Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano-Besso, Switzerland, 21-24 May 2013
NAXOS 8.573748 [63:41]

Here are four varied works for small orchestra by Italian composers. They cover quite a diverse span of styles in performances that are alert and caring.

Casella's light-hearted gifts are at work in his ten-movement war-time Divertimento per Fulvia. The score is the very antithesis of long-winded and has a neo-classical patina that brings life and youthful fluty energy. Touched with Stravinsky's Pulcinella Casella stays true to himself by drizzling feather-touch charm into the mix alongside some sweetly tuned Ravel-like shadows. By the way, Fulvia was Fulvia Casella, Alfredos daughter.

Donatoni's Musica is a longer piece and takes full advantage of the new discordant episodic angularity of the times. His sound is chill yet often tender. He allows plenty of air around what is going on in what is a busy score. It's a stern contrast with the Casella; after all Donatoni was only twenty when Casella died. The composer's favourite teacher was, it seems, one of Casellas former protigis, Goffredo Petrassi.

Ghedini's Concerto grosso for wind quintet and strings is the second oldest piece here. It fuses an evident affection for Beethoven with something of the neo-Tudor sense that you encounter in Arnold Rosner and in Warlock's Capriol. The work is in five supple movements. David Gallagher's excellent notes for the disc tell us that Ghedini wrote the introduction to the Beethoven entry published in 1963 in the Italian Enciclopedia della musica.

Naxos state that these are world premiere recordings, except the Casella. The days when Casella's name was kept alive in the catalogues only by his Violin Concerto - Gertler on Supraphon - are now well and truly behind us. That Supraphon disc included the Violin Concerto of Gian Francesco Malipiero, a composer who was an especially active agent in the musical life of Italian music during the period prior to 1920. Malipiero has been extensively recorded on Naxos so we have a pretty rounded picture. His Oriente immaginario is quite different from the other works here and is also the shortest. Across its three movements it is replete in late-romantic impressionistic oriental gestures. The orchestration is lush and fits well with similarly exotic scores by Schmitt, Pizzetti and Respighi.

The engineering has been adroitly handled.

Rob Barnett







Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing