Successful and Fulfilling 20 December

Successful and Fulfilling
On the rediscovery of the Italian symphonic tradition,
by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

Opera and especially melodrama have been considered as the main forms of Italian musical expression since the Renaissance. There is, of course, a wealth of Italian religious and chamber music going back nearly to the Middle Ages because Italy is a Roman Catholic country and until recently was divided into many small states, competing with one another for the musical offerings in their opera house, concert halls, and churches. Also within individual states there was musical competition and rivalry: due to the Italian geography -- a mountain Peninsula where transport and communications have been quite difficult until the twentieth century -- many municipalities developed into semi-independent communal republics, each with their own theatre and concert hall. For instance, in the comparatively small and hilly region of Marche (with 1.2 million residents) there were over one hundred theatres. During the unification movement in the nineteenth century, opera had the function of fostering the thirst for independence from the Austrian-Hungarian and Bourbon monarchies as well as for national unity. In Germany, a similar role was played by novels, but in Italy the level of literacy was comparatively low and transport costs were sky-high (which prevented the diffusion of written literature such a novels). Instead, there was an astonishing development of mainly commercial opera companies; a recent book (in Italian) (O mia Patria -- Storia musicale del Risorgimento tra inni, eroi e melodrammi by G Gavazzeni, A Torno and C Vitali, Dalai Editore, Milan 2011) describes this trend quite well, and rightly underlines a point not generally known even by many Italian music lovers: not only Verdi, but also Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti were perceived as composers making a contribution to the national unification movement.
Does this mean that symphonic music did not flourish? In the nineteenth century, it had a comparatively smaller role than in Germany, Britain and France. In the twentieth century -- especially in the first half -- it grew in importance in parallel with developments in the rest of Europe; also at the turn of the twentieth century, the main symphony orchestras -- eg that of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia -- were founded. There was a rapidly growing audience, the basis for several symphonic orchestras nowadays established in the country. However, as I discuss in a longer essay being published in an Italian quarterly, that wealth of repertory -- then competing with the grand symphonic compositions of eg Mahler and Bruckner -- has been until recently almost completely forgotten, often because of being erroneously associated with the social and political movements that gave rise to Fascism. Thus, for several years after World War II, it has been nearly considered like the music labeled Entartete Musik in Hitler's Germany: 'degenerate music' to be banned from theaters and concert halls. Casella, Catalani, Dallapiccola, Ghedini, Malipiero, Mancinelli, Martucci Montemezzi, Pratella, Pizzetti, Russolo and Sgambati were considered as the expression of a period that Italy and the Italians wanted to forget. The only exceptions were Respighi and Petrassi, mostly because of their world-wide reputations. The hidden accusation that they were in some way close to the Fascist regime was blatantly wrong: for example, Dallapiccola was one of thirty-six Italian university professors who resigned when the racial laws (against the Jews) were enacted. Just as a matter of curiosity, Giacomo Puccini was a composer quite active in the Fascist party until his premature death: he carried the No 2 card of the Viareggio branch of the party. But his operas have always been so popular that they have never been either stigmatized or ostracized.

Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma. Click on the image for higher resolution
I have reported already (eg in M&V on 8 April 2011 and on 4 March 2010) on the work of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma (OSR), the only fully private symphony orchestra in Europe, supported by a charity (the Fondazione Roma) and an association of subscribers and friends. Even though the OSR does not receive a dime of state or local government money, it is a ten year old institution and has ninety permanent players, expanded by musicians on a contract basis if and when required. Its season features thirty concerts -- each performed twice, on Sunday afternoons and on Monday evenings -- at rock bottom prices: 330 euros for a normal season card, but 180 euros for senior citizens (older than sixty-five) and 100 euros for students. Each season has a theme: this means special emphasis on a specific subject along with the programming of regular repertory. Last season, the theme was Gustav Mahler in the dual celebration of his birth and his death -- all Mahler's music except the huge Eighth Symphony (named the 'Symphony of a Thousand' for the number of musicians it requires) was performed.
This season the theme is the rediscovery of the Italian symphonic tradition, with the ambition of recording all the works of the major authors with an international recording label (Naxos); already a nice four CD box of Martucci's orchestral works has been issued, and a similar undertaking is well underway for Casella's scores. Independently but almost in parallel, an Italian publisher (Zecchini Editore) is commissioning a series of books on the composers: one of these, Ottorino Respighi -- Un'idea di modermità nel Novecento, reached the bookshops a few weeks ago.
In fact, the OSR had started the rediscovery before the 'Mahler year', but before placing major emphasis on such an undertaking, its creator and principal conductor, Francesco La Vecchia, wanted to sense the market's responses both by the audience and CDs buyers. It has been enthusiastic both in Rome and in recent tours in Austria and the USA.

Francesco la Vecchia. Photo © Antonio Tirocchi. Click on the image for higher resolution
Two of the initial concerts of the 'season' focused on the rediscovery; those on 16 and 17 October and on 23 and 24 October 2011. After three programs with emphasis on Dvorák, Haydn, Mozart, Prokofiev and Verdi -- viz closer to standard repertory -- the rediscovery started again with the 27-28 November and 18-19 December concerts, and continues until June 2012, alternating 'forgotten' Italian symphonies with more familiar composers and their work. I was in the audience on 16 and 23 October 2011, as well as on 28 November and 18 December. The first of the concerts focused on Sgambati and Casella. The second on Respighi and Ghedini. The third on Mancinelli and Petrassi and the fourth on Mancinelli (and Richard Strauss).
Very few Italians, even, know who Giovanni Sgambati was. In the latter part of the nineteenth century and in the first decade of the twentieth century, he founded and led what was, at that time, named 'the Roman school', as opposed to the very powerful 'Milan school'. More significantly, he belonged to the limited numbers of Wagnerian Italians. The OSR offered his Cola di Rienzo overture, a score composed for a stage drama. Although there was a written record of the performance, the score itself was considered lost until recently when the manuscript was discovered in an ancient Jesuit library. It is a comparatively short work -- twenty minutes -- but full of Wagnerian pathos. The OSR handled this rather eclectic score with Wagnerian-style leitmotive with a basically Beethoven-style approach. The work is fascinating. It is also an indication of how some Italian composers were attempting to follow paths rather different to the mainstream of the time.
Alfredo Casella is quite well known outside Italy; his life was a travel throughout several musical styles of the first part of the twentieth century. The OSR performed Introduzione. Aria e Toccata (a twenty minutes piece) and Suite per Grande Orchestra (a fifteen minute work). We are far away from Sgambati. The period is around 1930 when Casella had mastered the most advanced techniques of the time and was riding high on the international scene. Introduzione. Aria e Toccata was especially commissioned by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, then conducted by Leopold Stokowski. A very brilliant exercise with a dialogue between the woodwinds and the rest of the orchestra. Very sophisticated also was the Suite per Grande Orchestra.
In the second concert, the highlight was Ottorino Respighi's Sinfonia drammatica, a grandiose sixty minute symphony in three movements. The atmosphere is dark and tense, even in the initial Allegro energico. The symphony was premiered in Rome in 1914: we sense that some tragic event -- specifically World War I -- is approaching and hence that an era -- the belle époque -- is behind us. In La Vecchia's reading of the score, the third and final movement Allegro Impetuoso is an introduction to Armageddon: it starts in an explosive manner to end in the quiet of a desolate land.
Giorgio Federico Ghedini's Marinaresca e Baccanale is dated 1936. Italy is in its late colonial adventure: the African war to conquer Ethiopia. The war in Spain is almost a prelude to World War II. But all of this is very distant from this gentle score where Renaissance music (Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, Gabrielli) is re-written in twentieth century style.
All these scores were new to the audience and played along with more familiar music: Ravel's Bolero in the second part of the Sgambati-Casella concert and Bernstein's West Side Story Dances in that of the Respighi-Ghedini concert.
On 28 November 2011, I listened to three very interesting symphonic pieces: La Battaglia di Azio by Luigi Mancinelli and Coro dei Morti and Quattro Inni Sacri by Goffredo Petrassi. Petrassi is a very well known composer both in Italy and abroad. His Coro dei Morti (for orchestra and men's chorus) is a very introspective score based on a Giacomo Leopardi poem. More intriguing is the neo-classical Quattro Inni Sacri, a composition he wrote when he was quite young and when many authors (such as Stravinsky) were turning to rather formal symphonic structures. Quite forgotten in Italy (but there is a revival of his works in the Netherlands), Luigi Mancinelli was a well known conductor in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; quite a bit of his symphonic music was written to accompany plays. La Battaglia di Azio is a very emotional piece describing the naval battle when Anthony and Cleopatra lost their war with Caesar Augustus. It's a very effective musical description.
The final concert of this series took place on 18 December 2011. Again two compositions by Luigi Mancinelli, ten years apart: the overture Cleapatra to a five act tragedy by the Roman poet Pietro Cossa, and a tone-poem in five short parts -- Scene Veneziane. The former has a Wagnerian approach with leitmotive intertwined in a short but colossal finale. The former is the swift description in five short movements of the love story between two Venetian youngsters eloping to Chioggia and returning to Venice for their wedding party. It shows how Mancinelli (now often performed in the Netherland and Germany) was fully immersed in the cultural and musical process led by the then young Richard Strauss. Interestingly, the second part of the concert included Strauss' Vier letze Lieder (The Four Last Songs) -- too well-known a piece to be described here. Two notes are, however, required: firsty, under La Vecchia's baton, the enormous orchestra had the chamber music sonority that Strauss intended. Secondly, the debut of soprano Daniela Dessì: she had started her career as a bel canto soprano and then gradually taken up the heavy Puccini, Mascagni, Cilea and even Ponchielli operas. Now almost in her mid fifties, she received a standing ovation for her interpretation of the Four Last Songs. A real lesson on how to master her vocal talents.

Daniela Dessì. Photo © Fidelio Artist / Outomuro. Click on the image for higher resolution
Altogether, quite a successful and fulfilling experience.
The series will start again at the end of February 2012.
Copyright © 28 December 2011 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

ALFREDO CASELLA
OTTORINO RESPIGHI
GOFFREDO PETRASSI
RICHARD STRAUSS
ROME
ITALY
ORCHESTRAL MUSIC
20TH CENTURY
<< M&V home Concert reviews Handel's Messiah >>