Malipiero

A cross-section of the Italian production for cello and piano, conceived during the hazy beginning of the twentieth century, shows us how the most varied influences – coming from all sorts of styles: Gregorian, Monteverdi, operatic, German and French late-romantic, avant-gardist, Franco-Russian impressionist, French symbolist, veristic – are absorbed and remoulded, accepted and rejected, by various personalities of the world of composition. In this cultural ambience, a crucial role was played by the so-called Generation of Eighteen-Eighty, whose components, Casella, Malipiero, Pizzetti, Respighi, friends and collaborators, stood out for their pursuit of innovation and their aim to create a character peculiar to Italian music; this quest was accompanied, at least in their artistic choices, by a certain lack of political commitment. Within this recording, cellist Roberto Trainini and pianist Stella Ala Luce Pontoriero are delivering an anthology of precious musical gems as necessary testimony to the great value of some obscured and forgotten Italian early twentieth century repertoire.

Recorded in Finland, in Järvenpää near Helsinki, this disc is a tribute to five extraordinary figures in Italian music: Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973), Mario CastelnuovoTedesco (1895-1968), Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975), Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988), and Nino Rota (1911-1979); five composers whose poetic universes, although very different from one another, are permeated by a common, intense expressiveness: the same trait that runs through the works featured here and that, like a fil rouge, has oriented Sanna Vaarni along his itinerary from 1916, the date of publication of Mario CastelnuovoTedesco’s Raggio verde, to 1964, the year of Nino Rota’s enchanting Preludi.

Scherchen was one of the leading conductors in the middle part of the twentieth century, especially valued for his pioneering performances of the contemporary music of his time. He was essentially self-taught as a musician and became a violist in the Blüthner Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic when he was 16. In 1911 he was an assistant to Arnold Schoenberg in the preparation of Pierrot Lunaire for performance.

The futurists noisily proclaimed their message in Italy prior to the outbreak of World War I. Manifesto followed on manifesto, every form of violence, including war, was glorified, and anarchism, misogyny, and the destruction of everything representing tradition was preached. A few composers were also among their ranks, but Steffen Schleiermacher's latest discovery demonstrates that their works sometimes contrasted greatly with the literary pamphlets issued by this group. Steffan Schleiermacher continues his extraordinary recordings for MDG with this new CD.

A new enlightening box of mostly live and radio recordings by the intellectual among the pianists: Pietro Scarpini. ""A sterling achievement. For me, the whole series has been a voyage of discovery […] In terms of production quality and presentation. The Pietro Scarpini Edition gets my wholehearted recommendation for resuscitating the memory of a long-forgotten artist. (MusicWeb) Pietro Scarpini was called ""a pianist of prodigious capacities"" by New York Times critic Olin Downes after the performance of the Prokofiev 2nd concerto. Though he studied conducting at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, as well as composition with Casella, to whom the Busoni Op 54 is dedicated, and with Respighi, it is as a pianist that realized his ultimate talent. Scarpini was a rare combination: a highly intellectual pianist with a virtuoso technique. He was a dignified and solitary person with a serious approach to music, single-mindedly following the course of his artistic convictions without compromise.