Nino Sevilha

As Anneleen Lenaerts proves, Nino Rota brought the same gifts to his music for harp as he did to such unforgettable film scores as The Godfather, La dolce vita and Romeo and Juliet. “What could be better than to sweep an audience away and give them a moment of pure joy?” she asks. “For me, that is Nino Rota’s most important musical message.

The concert works of film composer Nino Rota, best known for his scores for the Godfather trilogy and for a long series of films by Federico Fellini, have increasingly often been finding space in classical recording catalogs. Here's a nicely recorded rendering of Rota's two numbered symphonies, virtually unknown until perhaps the turn of the century, issued on a major British label, Chandos. Both are attractive pieces that could be profitably programmed by any symphony orchestra. They were composed in the 1930s, when Rota was as much American as Italian; he won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and studied there for several years. Both reflect the French neo-classic trends that flourished in the U.S. between the wars, and, although Rota sounds nothing like Copland, you do experience in these works an evocation of what annotator Michele Rene Mannucci aptly calls "landscape in sound." Each work is in the conventional four movements, with a slow movement placed second in the Symphony No. 1 in G major and third in the Symphony No. 2 in F major.

Although he is best known for his film scores and The Godfather in particular, Nino Rota’s concert music combines traditional tonality and forms with characteristically heartfelt melodies and appealing clarity. Contrasts abound in this selection of chamber works, from bassoon buffoonery in the Toccata to the Brahmsian eloquence of the Clarinet Sonata, and from the dramatic Improvviso and melancholy moods of the recently discovered Fantasia, to the jocular instrumental exchanges in the exquisite Trio.

When Toscanini encouraged Nino Rota to study at the Curtis Institute, where instructions by Fritz Reiner and a friendship with Aaron Copland awaited the precocious composer, it was already clear he would have a massive career. Only the direction wasn’t certain yet. It turned out to be classical music and film music, the former informing the latter. Notable when you listen to the delicious waltz Rota from War & Peace or the darkly humorous snippets from the very apropos Orchestra Rehearsal. And while the de-facto horn concertino Castel del Monte, inspired by King Frederick II’s famous medieval castle in southern Italy, isn’t technically film music, it very much sounds like music to a fantasy film of Rota’s imagining.