Salvatore Messina, Nino Rota, Paolo Pessina

20th Century Italian String Music

Orchestra Sinfonica Adriatica, Paolo Pessina

 

 

Salvatore Messina (1876-1930)

La Beffa a Don Chisciotte, transcription en forme de Suite pour orchestre à cordes de Paolo Pessina *

 

Nino Rota (1911-1979)

Concerto pour cordes

 

Paolo Pessina (1969-)

Concertango, op. 55 *

 

* Premières mondiales discographiques

 

 

Salvatore Messina composed the opera La beffa a Don Chisciotte, with a libretto by Ettore Romagnoli, between 1926 and 1930. The composer's untimely death did not allow him to complete the orchestration of the score. For this reason the opera, already selected as the winning composition of the competition announced in 1929 by the Rome Royal Opera House, could not be awarded the first prize by the jury, at that time chaired by Pietro Mascagni. With this work Salvatore Messina ended his successful career both as composer and conductor, from the Bolshoy Theatre in Moscow to the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. His place in musical life at the beginning of the twentieth century is witnessed by the esteem he enjoyed among the musicians of his time such as Umberto Giordano, Gino Marinuzzi, and Franco Alfano, and by his collaboration with the music publisher Ricordi. His works were also valued by Jules Massenet, Giacomo Puccini, and Richard Strauss, and by writers, among others Maeterlinck and Tagore, some of whose verses he also set to music for voice and piano. The revival and promotion of music by this Sicilian master now offers the opportunity to evaluate once again an important part of Italian musical heritage. This recording is also meant to fill a vacuum in the history of music and to rescue a delightful opera from oblivion. This disc contains excerpts from the opera, which I have transcribed to form an instrumental suite.

 

For the first movement, Andantino mosso, I have selected the passionate Spanish-style love-song of Pedrillo, "Una rosa ti lanciai". The suite continues with my instrumental arrangement of the aria "Io tornai soletto a casa", Andantino affettuoso, and then with the duet between Pedrillo and Manuela, "La Madonna è tanto buona", Act I, Scene 2 of the original opera, marked Con Passione-Moderato, emphasizing the contrasting temperaments of the two characters. The fourth movement of the suite is more than an arrangement: with three themes taken from Scenes 6 and 7, I have composed an extended Scherzo. The fifth movement, Adagio, is a pure arrangement of the scene "O Dulcinea!" where Don Quixote addresses his beloved, unaware of the joke being played on him (Act II, Scene 2). The sixth movement originates from the Pantomima and ballet that opens the second act. The seventh and last movement, Finale, is the final part of Scene 8, "…e apparirà con loro", which also ends the whole opera in Messina's original score.

 

Born in 1911 in Milan to a musical family, Nino Rota was as a child perceived to have prodigious musical ability. Composer, pianist, conductor and musicologist, he established himself as the leading figure in Italian film music. During his career he produced more than 150 soundtracks, in addition to many other works not expressly associated with the cinema.

 

The Concerto for Strings, composed between 1964-65, making considerable use of chromaticism both in melody and harmony, is in four movements, thematically interconnected, as in cyclical form. It opens with a Prelude that is moderately restless and nostalgic with a second contrasting, rhythmical and expressive section. The Scherzo, with two solo sections, exploits the ambiguity of a ternary theme with binary accents. The Aria begins softly and dreamily before increasing in emotional intensity in the middle section. The initial descending bass accompaniment is a clear tribute to the well-known Air from Bach's Orchestral Suite No.3 in D major, the so-called Air on the G string. The Finale, Allegrissimo, calls for precise and brilliant playing from the whole string section. In conclusion the remark of Fellini may be quoted, on the death of his friend Nino Rota: "… he has just disappeared, he has not died …"

 

Concertango originates from the idea of combining the baroque form of the concerto grosso, characterized by the alternation of solos and tutti, with the typical rhythms and sounds of the Argentinian dance. At first it may appear both anachronistic and paradoxical to force these two together. Instead, I firmly believe that in both genres we can find contact points, easily recognisable when you listen to this music. The use of ostinato, largely employed by eighteenth-century composers, is now enjoying new popularity, perhaps because it reproduces the repetitive automatism of modern life, or for the great need of continuity and stability particularly felt in our global and still fragmented society. The Intro(duction) Misterioso juxtaposes a free melody of the first violins with a basso ostinato played pizzicato by the cellos and double basses on a steady underlay of semiquavers. The ghosts of two tutelary deities of eighteenth-century music flutter in the second movement. A sort of first Tempo di Concerto grosso ended by a fugato, written in the manner of a modern Vivaldi and Bach respectively. The following Premiertango is the first piece that openly reflects the nostalgia of the Latin-American dance. The central movement Amortango is linked to the preceding one through the explicit rhythms of the accompaniment, its emotional impact and the introduction of the solo violin, which is then repeated by all the strings. Intermezzo italiano is meant to give the whole composition an unlimited geographical connotation. Through this music and the following Tangonero-Maladie, I have intended to affirm the universality of the soul of Tango, which permeates also gypsy music (hence the natural fusion with the gypsy mood of the last piece but one). Finaltango, introduced by a solemn and recitative section, leads to a long ostinato where the variations are set free through the syncopated, expressive and passionate high sections of the strings, always alternating solo and tutti, as already exposed at the beginning, and in the title. To summarise, I have written music that I would have liked to listen to, music which is dedicated to people like me who are enthusiastic about life, love the almost tragic and passionate soul of Tango and, at the same time, are able to play (not only music) without excess, a characteristic of the Baroque, or perhaps of the universal man …

 

 

 

Nino Rota a certes disparu, mais il n’est pas mort, disait Fellini au décès de son ami et collègue, auteur de quelques 150 musiques de film et de nombreuses partitions de musique « pure », sans programme. Ainsi ce Concerto pour cordes, un assez troublant moment de chromatismes, de frottements, de malaises harmoniques délibérés, de nuages fuyants, tels que l’on pourrait les rencontrer chez Bartók ou Chostakovitch mais avec une pointe de chianti en plus : nous ne pouvons qu’enjoindre l’aimable lecteur d’accorder à Rota le titre de « véritable compositeur », un pas que l’on hésite toujours un peu à franchir dans le cas de musiciens ayant fait toute leur carrière dans le cinéma.

 

Salvatore Messina, lui, n’eut pas même le temps d’achever l’orchestration de son opéra La beffa a Don Chisciotte écrit entre 1926 et l’année de sa mort,1930. Pourtant l’ouvrage était déjà désigné pour remporter le prix du Concours de l’Opéra de Rome cuvée 1929 ; Mascagni, président du jury, ne put donc décerner le prix au compositeur absent pour cause de décomposition… Massenet, Puccini, Strauss tenaient Messina en haute estime : ne snobez donc pas cette Suite extraite des passages orchestraux de cet opéra.

 

Enfin, le Concertango de Paolo Pessina allie spirituellement le style du tango avec l’écriture du concerto grosso baroque ; l’esprit tragique de l’un semble se moquer de l’esprit rigoureux de l’autre ! C’est le compositeur lui-même, Paolo Pessina, qui dirige les trois ouvrages.

 

 

 

 

 

Antoine Forqueray, Michel Forqueray, Jean-Baptiste Forqueray

The Forqueray Family - Chamber Music for Harpsichord & Viola da Gamba

Magdalena Malec, Soetkin Elbers, Christoph Urbanetz, Sara Ruiz Martinez

 

 

Michel Forqueray (1681–1757)

Prélude de Forcroy

Musette "N’espère plus, jeune Lisette"

Le Papillon et La Rose

 

 

Antoine Forqueray (1672–1745)

Suite en ré mineur

La La Borde. Allemande - La Forqueray - La Cottin - La Bellmont - La Portugaise - La Couperin

Suite en sol majeur

La Bouron - La Mandoline - La du Breüil - La Leclair - La Buisson. Chaconne

Suite en ut mineur

La Rameau - La Guignon - La Léon–Sarabande - La Boisson - La Montigni - La Silva - Jupiter

Musette

Allemande

La Marella

La d’Aubonne – Sarabande

 

Jean-Baptiste Forqueray (1699–1782)

La Angrave

La du Vaucel

La Morangis ou La Plissay – Chaconne

 

Magdalena Malec, clavecin

Soetkin Elbers, soprano

Christoph Urbanetz & Sara Ruiz Martinez, violes de gambe

 

Une dynastie qui joua un rôle essentiel dans la vie musicale française des 17e et 18e siècles et compta de nombreux gambistes, clavecinistes et organistes. Le plus célèbre, Antoine, "musicien ordinaire de la Chambre du Roi" doit à son fils Jean-Baptiste la publication de ses œuvres et était considéré de son vivant comme l'égal de Marin Marais.

Une interprétation enthousiasmante par de jeunes musiciens formés à l'école de Vittorio Ghielmi.

 

 

 

This 2CD set aims to give the listener a good idea of the range of music composed by a remarkable musical dynasty, the Forqueray family. They were a family of organists, viol players and harpsichordists. They were every bit as remarkable as the other great musical dynasties, the Bendas, Stamitzs, Bachs, and the Strauss family.

The most famous member of the Forqueray family (their Johann Sebastian) was Antoine, who was born in 1672, a virtuoso gambist. His output forms the backbone of the French repertoire for this instrument. None of his music was published during his lifetime, and his son Jean-Baptiste (born 1699), another viol player, devoted his time to publishing his father's works. Michel, born in 1681, and Nicolas-Gilles, born in 1703, were superb keyboard players.

This set offers a rare chance to hear the music of all four composers, centred around characterful suites for harpsichord and viole da gamba but including songs.

 

 

 

 

 

Mendelssohn, Moszkowski, Mozart, Schulhoff

Louis Schizgebel-Wang Récital

Louis Schizgebel-Wang, Orchestre de Chambre de Genève

 

 

 

Felix Mendelssohn

Concerto pour piano & orchestre n° 2 en ré mineur

 

Moritz Moszkowski

Mélodie, op. 18

Etude n° 11 en la bémol majeur, op. 72 (de Quinze études de virtuosité "Per aspera", op. 72)

Etincelles, op. 36 n° 6 (de Huit morceaux caractéristiques, op. 36)

En automne, op. 36 n° 4 (de Huit morceaux caractéristiques, op. 36)

Caprice espagnol, op. 37

 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Sonate n° 9 en ré majeur, KV 311 (284c)

 

Erwin Schulhoff

Cinq Etudes de jazz

I. Charleston - II. Blues - III. Chanson - IV. Tango - V. Toccata sur le Shimmy "Kitten on the keys" de Zez Confrey

 

 

Pianiste sino-suisse Louis Schizgebel-Wang (né en 1987) remporta en 2005, à l’âge de 18 ans, le Second Prix du Concours de Genève (le Premier ne fut pas attribué), ainsi que le « Coup de cœur Breguet » destiné à sponsoriser le premier disque de l’heureux élu. Disque que voici, dans lequel notre soliste évite soigneusement l’écueil des « grands tubes » ; ainsi, c’est le Concerto en ré mineur de Mendelssohn plutôt que le célèbre Concerto en sol mineur ; ce sont encore des pièces de Moszkowski, c’est aussi une sonate de Mozart parmi les plus confidentielles, et le programme s’achève sur les étonnantes Cinq Etudes de jazz du malheureux Erwin Schulhoff, disparu dans un camp de concentration. Ces pièces datent de 1926, alors que Schulhoff jouissait d’une renommée internationale en tant que pianiste et compositeur « crossover », lui qui alliait si souvent le jazz dans son écriture, à la fois légère et raffinée, d’apparence simple et pourtant bigrement complexe harmoniquement.

Bravo à Schizgebel-Wang d’avoir choisi ce programme hors des sentiers battus et souhaitons-lui une belle carrière.
 

 

 

 

 

 

Antony Pitts

Seven Letters and other Choral Works

Tonus Perigrinus, Antony Pitts

 

 

Adoro te

The Lord's Prayer

The First and Last

Seven Letters

O Love

O Wisdom of God

O Holy of Holies

Amen

 

Anthony Pitts is still a young composer (he was born in 1969), his voice is strongly distinctive, and he most definitely has a bright future; in fact his music has already been premiered in London, Amsterdam and Berlin.

Pitts' sound world is very ingenious combining the jazz idiom within a tight structure of traditional musical form and responding to the sacred texts with fervour and absolute honesty. The disc includes eight choral works composed between 1991 and 2000, and Seven Letters, the central work of the album. This composition is presumed to be the only choral setting of St. John's condemnation of the first century church in Asia Minor, which at the time was indulging in almost every form of sin and vice imaginable.

Each letter is performed by one of the seven members of Tonus Peregrinus over a cyclical choral background which systematically intensifies as the piece moves through the seven letters of the musical scale. As the work unfolds, the listener is gradually gripped by both the spiritual and musical content, until he is raised to a visionary level that helps him perceive the apocalyptic nature of St. John's indictment.

The other pieces are all typical of Pitts' approach; an intricate, multifaceted fabric of voluptuous sonorities. The Tonus Peregrinus, formed by Pitts' himself in 1990, have already gained a strong reputation worldwide for their musical achievements. The ensemble's recording of Part's Passio won a Cannes Classical Award in 2004. This is a disc to treasure.

 

 

 

Antony Pitts est producteur à la BBC depuis une douzaine d’années, ce qui ne l’empêche pas de composer et de remporter de nombreuses distinctions internationales, en particulier pour ses œuvres chorales – dans la lignée des grands musiciens de chœur anglaise – que chantent tous les plus grands ensembles britanniques et continentaux. 

Son langage musical, tonal mais pas trop, moderne sans être radical-boulézien, beau sans jamais être “facile”, se situe sur une ligne tracée entre Holst et Britten en passant par Vaughan Williams, Byrd, Pärt, Tallis, et certains quartiers de Harlem – une ligne singulièrement courbe, certes, mais parfaitement continue pour peu que l’on veuille bien la suivre. C'est Anthony Pitts en personne qui dirige le chœur Tonus Peregrinus, qu'il a fondé en 1990.

 

 

 

Children of our Time

Schola Cantorum Oxford

 

 

Sir Michael Tippett (1905–1998)

Negro Spirituals, extraits de "A child of our time"

(Steal away - Nobody knows - Go down, Moses - By and by - Deep river)

 

Antony Pitts (1969-)

Thou knowest my lying down, extrait des Three Easter Anthems

Nicholas O'Neill (1970-)

Ave verum corpus

 

 

Ruth Byrchmore (1966-)

In the silence of the night

(Echo - Song - Mirage)

Mark Edgley Smith (1955-)

Five Madrigals to poems by e e cummings

 

 

Eugénio Manuel Rodrigues (1961-)

Eres…

Francis Pott (1957-)

Amore langueo

 

 

Sir Michael Tippett was one of the giants of British twentieth-century music. Where other musicians compromised or faltered—in matters of politics, style, or self-expression—Tippett did not. But that, in itself, would not be enough to guarantee a composer’s place in history. Sir Michael, however, also involved himself unfailingly with any endeavour which spoke of honesty, realism, and nurture. Quite aside from his major contributions to the musical canon, Michael identified with modernity and respect for tradition in equal measure. In that sense Schola Cantorum of Oxford has never had a more endearing nor a more willing patron. This recording was intended as a ninetieth birthday tribute to Britain’s leading composer. Events overtook the CD’s release, however, and it is now offered as a posthumous testament to Tippett’s unfailing belief in the restorative power of new music, while also offering a performance of one of his greatest additions to the choral canon. In the oratorio A Child of our Time, the Five Negro Spirituals are not designed to be sung as a sequence. For that reason the five spirituals have been interwoven with the other pieces on this recording—pieces written by composers who were all born well after the composition of A Child of our Time and who could therefore collectively be described as ‘children of Sir Michael’s time’.

 

 

Tippett began his oratorio A Child of our Time as the Second World War broke out and its composition gave the composer a creative outlet for his pacifism (he was later imprisoned as a conscientious objector). Central to the oratorio are the Five Negro Spirituals which function in a similar manner to the chorales in Bach’s Passions. In 1958 Tippett extracted the spirituals from the oratorio and re-scored them for voices alone. The genius of these arrangements lies in Tippett’s ability to take orchestral accompaniments and to make them work as vocal lines. The effect is a grand one in which Tippett retains the directness of expression of the spirituals while lovingly adorning each one with musical gestures which were very much of his own time.

Thou knowest my lying down by Antony Pitts is the central panel of a triptych of Easter anthems for twelve voices. The twelve voices are subdivided into two: a higher group sings the complete text with a continuously rising chromatic scale on top of the texture, while a lower group elaborates a simple four-bar chaconne with a repeated ‘Hallelujah’. The conflict of these two ideas is worked out in harmonies that are sometimes transparently consonant, sometimes rich and strange. The soloistic vocal lines give shape to the overall rhythmic motion of the piece, converging from time to time like a giant wave rising out of the sea.

 

Ave verum corpus by Nicholas O’Neill is an eight-voice response to a celebrated sacred text which places the sacrament of Communion in the context of Christ’s death. The work grows from a single note which is gradually adorned by upper voices and is thereafter transformed into a motif which suggests its own static harmonies within the whole choir. Gradually the music paints the anguish of Christ’s suffering within the context of human redemption. However, although the music is ultimately optimistic, in that it starts and finishes at one with itself, the only other unisons within the motet occur at the words ‘homine’ (‘mankind’) and ‘examine’ (‘trial’).

Ruth Byrchmore’s In the silence of the night comprises three settings of poems by Christina Rossetti. Rossetti’s work has been a lifelong source of inspiration to Byrchmore, particularly in terms of its bleakness, passion, and integrity. The meditative, sparse, and slow unfolding of ‘Echo’ pours into the impassioned homophonic plea at the opening of ‘Song’. ‘Mirage’ adds a restless, linear full-stop to the whole.

 

While in most verse the poetic voice—although not necessarily identifiable—is at least single (or clearly divided in dialogue), the poetry of E E Cummings can give the impression in its more fractured and waywardly punctuated moments of two or more voices struggling to say different things at once. It was this built-in counterpoint while first led Mark Edgley Smith to consider setting Cummings’s poems chorally. The Five Madrigals to poems by e e cummings form a palindrome in terms of the style of the five movements. At the centre lies the simple lyric ‘love is more thicker than forget’ which was the first of the movements to be written. The description of these pieces as ‘madrigals’ may be taken (with a nod in the direction of sixteenth-century models) to indicate a more contrapuntal, virtuosic approach than might be suggested by the term ‘choruses’.

Eres … is a setting of a love poem (Testamento de Otoño) by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. The poem’s obvious parallel is with the Song of Songs in that it deals ecstatically with the appreciation of the human form in mundane and spiritual ways simultaneously. The minimalist setting by the Portuguese composer Eugénio Manuel Rodrigues is spacious and mysterious; it culminates in a representation of the wind passing through the branches of a tree.

 

Francis Pott’s Amore langueo is a large-scale work for unaccompanied double choir and solo vocal quartet. It sets a fifteenth-century English lyric with a Latin refrain—indeed the refrain ‘Amore langueo’ (‘I am faint with love’) underlies the majority of the music in the piece. In terms of its scoring there are obvious English precursors from the beginning of the twentieth century in Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (for double string orchestra and string quartet) and Vaughan Williams’s Mass in G minor (also for double choir and solo vocal quartet). However, although the undulating harmonies of Amore langueo frequently share more in common with the music of Arnold Bax and E J Moeran than with Vaughan Williams, there is a clarity and transparency about the music that Pott gives to the solo quartet in particular that binds this intricate setting to some of the most simple and directly affecting English music of the twentieth century.

 

 

'...you may confidently invest in this disc. Its musical rewards are ample' (Fanfare, USA)

 

'This disc offers considerable rewards in an admittedly parochial field, and also preserves a delectable snap-shot of the Schola Cantorum of Oxford on outstanding form, over a decade ago' (International Record Review)

'Here's a vital and beautifully performed collection of modern a cappella choral music from a most excellent choir with a considerable recording history ... It's not a surprise that Mr Summerly and his choir can handle fiendishly difficult modern music with all of the skill, authority and pleasing sound they bring to early music. Hyperion comes through again with a superior booklet and enviable recording quality' (American Record Guide)

 

 

 

 

La Schola Cantorum d'Oxford est le chœur de chambre de Oxford, une formation fondée en 1960 et toujours en pleine activité. De nombreuses grandes voix britanniques sont passées par ce chœur en tant que jeunes chanteurs pour faire par la suite une carrière internationale comme, entre autres, Emma Kirkby, Ian Bostridge ; tandis que de nombreux compositeurs se sont bousculés pour leur écrire des œuvres qu’ils dirigeaient parfois eux-mêmes : Britten, Tippett et Stravinski, par exemple…

Les œuvres ici présentées (en dehors du Tippett) font partie du palmarès d’un concours de composition que le chœur organisa en 1994. Des pièces dans la grande tradition chorale britannique, héritée de Holst, Tippett, Britten qui eux-mêmes la tenaient des élisabéthains. Le tout est, on s’en doute, chanté à la perfection absolue.