Born in Rome, Garofalo attended the Vatican college where he
studied organ and composition. He moved to America in 1910 where
he became music director and organist at the Immaculate Conception
Church in Boston, Massachusetts, but he didn’t stay there
for long. He returned to Italy where, later in life, he taught,
one of his pupils being Ennio Morricone. Both Nikisch and Toscanini
expressed an interest in Garofalo’s work, but neither
performed any. However, after hearing this disk I can understand
why; there’s simply no substance to the music.
The Violin Concerto was written after Garofalo heard,
and had been impressed with, the very young Yehudi Menuhin.
In three movements, the first is a too long, rambling, piece
of almost a quarter of an hour, the music constantly reminding
me of Karl Goldmark’s marvellous A minor Concerto,
but it’s highly unlikely that Garofalo knew that piece.
The big problem with this Concerto is that it doesn’t
have any real personality and the thematic material is poor
and unmemorable.
The Symphony isn’t much better. Starting with an
overblown (no pun intended) brass phrase, to which the composer
adds an organ at the end, this is a kind of poor man’s
version of the I AM motive from Scriabin’s 3rdSymphony.
The music then becomes a café waltz , but without the
charm. Garofalo tries very hard to add some stress to the music
but just when you think it’s going to become dramatic
the insipid waltz returns, and goes on and on, never quite reaching
whatever deep feelings the composer has in mind for his allegro.
The slow movement starts well but descends into over-scored
mush. Then a plangent oboe tries to create some peace but a
congested woodwind passage enters the scene and a poor climax
is built. The scherzo tried hard to be Mendelssohnian
but has far too heavy a touch. It’s so laboured. The finale
strives to create a “big finish” but the piling
on of orchestral forces simply isn’t enough. As sequence
follows sequence, one feels that this is Max Reger gone dreadfully
wrong.
I don’t care about this music. I cannot engage with it.
I cannot find any redeeming features which would make me ever
want to hear this music again. The melodic material is very
poor, and totally unmemorable, the orchestration verges on the
banal and amateurish and the overall feeling of the music is
of a person who is interested in composition and has a very
slight talent. Naxos is to be thanked for so many of its recordings
and reissues but it has done too much and not everything is
of worth. This is one of their failures. One to be missed at
all costs.
Bob Briggs
see also reviews by Rob
Barnett and Nick Barnard
Sergei Stadler (violin) 
