Malipiero

The task of picking "essential masterpieces" for a big-box collection like this is essentially futile. Sure, one could complain that restricting the vocal music to the two Gloria settings distorts Vivaldi's output severely, but any selection would cause complaints - and the compilers could point out that it was instrumental concertos that made Vivaldi popular and instrumental concertos on which his popularity rests. Furthermore, the recordings featured here, mostly by the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, are, in many cases, those that turned Vivaldi into an industry - they were the backbone of programming on NPR, the BBC, and their counterparts in other countries for years.

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.

With the large but unavoidable exception of that visionary and unpredictable maverick Malipiero, Alfredo Casella (1882-1947) was probably the foremost Italian composer of the last century who most ideally embodied Martucci's anti-verismo aspirations for his national music. And, among Casella's numerous concertante and miscellaneous orchestral works, this third and last of his three symphonies, dated 1939-40, commissioned ……..

Fanfare, Paul A. Snook, Jan-Feb 2010

Ottorino Respighi - Orchestral Works
Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra / George Hanson
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 263 MB | Full Artwork: 78 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: MDG "Gold" # 335 1030-2 | Country/Year: Germany 2001
Genre: Classical | Style: Early 20th Century

"…George Hanson, who is musical director of the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra (whose history goes back for more than 130 years) conducts these often difficult works well. The recording produces a very natural rounded sound. Overall this is an interesting disc which forms a good introduction to some of Respighi's less familiar orchestral works." ~musicweg-international

Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) belonged to the group of Italian composers (the so called ‘Generation of the ‘80s’), his contemporaries were Respighi, Malipiero and Casella. Of these composers, Respighi and Pizzetti composed relatively little for the piano, and their works for the instrument tend recall music of the past - with echoes of baroque and Gregorian chant detected in many of them. Pizzetti’s love of melody is quintessentially Italian – a predilection for song, dramatic lyricism and at time moments of great joy and passion – all components found in not only his orchestral music, but in the works for piano on these CD's. Many are exquisite miniatures, but ……