Malipiero

Gian Francesco Malipiero led a long, busy and prolific life. His vast output includes numerous works in every genre but the most significant part of it is to be found in his operas, his symphonies and his eight string quartets.His string quartets may still be more telling than the symphonies……Recommended with any reservations.

Hubert Culot @ Musicweb-International.com

In the dark years of the Nazi-Fascist period, when the light of the end was still far off, Malipiero completed a long-awaited undertaking: an edition of the complete works of Claudio Monteverdi. Its last volume, the sixteenth, came out in 1942 at the height of the war. The edition contained the sacred production that the publisher Vincenti had assembled in the collection Messa a 4 voci et salmi (1650). Quartetto Sincronie’s choice to include an arrangement of Monteverdi’s Mass, alternating the parts with Malipiero’s work, is yet another example of reinvention-creation that Malipiero would likely have appreciated. In the composers’ poetics, instruments are asked to sing as voices, and so the opposite—voices translated to instruments—is fitting.

This release couples Gian Francesco Malipiero’s two contrasting violin concertos with the world premiere recording of his kaleidoscopic orchestral work Per una favola cavalleresca, evoking legendary scenes of love, tournaments, battles, moonbeams and heroes. Malipiero’s First Violin Concerto is one of his most beautiful and joyful works, a remarkable achievement for a composer who is said to have played the violin badly in his youth. His Second Violin Concerto, written 30 years later, sounds astonishingly different on a first hearing, but reveals itself to be inspired by the same lyrical impulse as the earlier concerto.

Ettore Gracis achieves a milestone here in the disparate work that is probably Malipiero's finest dramatic effort. What's astonishing is that this is a live recording. The performance standard of the Fenice company is extraordinary which means you turn your attention to the emotion-wrenching drama of the opera where you're not conscious of the technique. Malipiero was highly-original, quirky, eccentric, and inspired all at once. There's been no one ….

a customer @ amazon.com

I am very happy to have taken a chance and picked this up. Malipiero's string quartets are tonal and full of drama, yet avoid bland melodies or redundancy. In listening to these 8 works I was reminded a little of Bartok's first two quartets (before the full-on angular innovations), as well as the Debussy/Ravel quartets (Malipiero apparently spent a bit of time in Paris). While it would be debatable to suggest these works are in the same league as those, listeners who enjoy this medium with occasional dissonant spice will warm to these…..

410 @ Amazon.com

The Dialoghi were composed between 1955 and 1957 and involve various instrumental groupings, from two pianos (Dialogo 2) and voice and two piano (Dialogo 3) to Concerto for Two Pianos (Dialogo 7) and Chamber Orchestra (Dialogo 1). The order of numbering does not exactly replicate the order of composition, which apparently followed a rising order of instrumental forces, from two pianos to large orchestra. The Dialogues are not all of concertante nature ……..

Gianfrancesco Malipiero (1882-1973), harboured particular affection for his Concerto No. 1 for Violin, that he “finished composing” on 10th March 1932. Malipiero considered his solo concertos composed in the fertile years “prayers.” (We refer not only to the Concerto for Cello but also to the felicitous Concerto No. 1 for Violin composed in 1933, to the first two Concertos for Piano, respectively written in 1934 and 1937 and to the Concerto a tre – for violin, cello and piano – composed in 1938.)