Wolf-Ferrari:
Suite veneziana; Triptychon; Divertimento in D; Arabesken. Oviedo Filarmonía conducted
by Friedrich Haider. Naxos. $13.99.
Samuel
Barber: Sonata for Cello and Piano; Manuel de Falla: Suite Populaire Espagnole;
Ástor Piazzolla: Le Grand Tango; Tchaikovsky: Pezzo capriccioso. Miriam K. Smith, cello; Jacob Miller, piano. MSR
Classics. $14.95.
Respighi:
Antiche danze e arie per liuto; Gli Uccelli (organ versions by Rodolfo
Bellatti). Rodolfo Bellatti, organ.
Brilliant Classics. $12.99.
Listeners today who have any familiarity with Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari
likely think of him as a composer of mostly light, frothy operas, including Il segreto di Susanna, I quatro rusteghi and
Il campiello – with his I gioielli
della Madonna, one of the most barbaric of all verismo operas, being an aberration. But this portrait is
one-sided: Wolf-Ferrari did delve at times into serious matters (not merely over-the-top
melodrama), and late in life he produced a number of entirely instrumental
pieces that are notable for their emotional heft and carefully constructed
instrumentation. A Naxos re-release of four of those works in excellent
performances by the Oviedo Filarmonía under
Friedrich Haider admirably showcases this aspect of Wolf-Ferrari’s oeuvre. The CD, originally from 2010,
includes two world première recordings, Suite veneziana of 1935 and Arabesken of 1937, plus two pieces from
1936: Triptychon and Divertimento in D. The works, although
very different, share a darker sensibility than one usually encounters in
Wolf-Ferrari. Suite veneziana, in
particular, is pervaded throughout by barely contained grief that stands in
stark contrast to the sparkle and ebullience usually associated with Venice in
Wolf-Ferrari’s music. The city – which Wolf-Ferrari loved, and where he was
born and died – holds magic for him in many of his works, but in this suite in
A minor it holds only melancholy: even the concluding Alba di festa (“Festive Dawn”) is on the somber side. Arabesken is also in a minor key (E
minor), and is an impressive set of variations on a theme by Wolf-Ferrari’s
friend, Venetian painter Ettore Tito. The variations feel as if they contain
elements of suppressed power, which then emerges full force in a concluding and
very serious fugue. The two other works on this disc are in major keys but are
scarcely less intense than those in the minor. Triptychon, in E, is a church-focused and thoughtful piece with a
grief-stricken middle movement, Agli eroi
caduti (“For the Fallen Heroes”), in E-flat minor. The only music here with
some of the expected lightness of Wolf-Ferrari’s comic stage works is Divertimento in D, whose Siciliana is sad enough but whose
concluding Rondo finale shows the
composer’s more-familiar, more-playful side. These idiomatic and enthusiastic
performances, which date to 2008 and 2009, effectively display an impressively
thoughtful side of the composer.
All four offerings on an MSR Classics CD featuring young cellist Miriam
K. Smith (born 2006) and pianist Jacob Miller are on the serious side – and all
fit the warm, lush tones of Smith’s cello very well indeed. Samuel Barber’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, although an
early work with some derivative elements, retains a sense of purpose and
expressive intensity throughout, and treats the cello expansively as well as
lyrically, with the piano having more of a decorative function much of the
time. Manuel de Falla’s Suite Populaire Espagnole,
which might be expected from its title to be on the lighter side, is in fact
emotionally expressive and pervaded by lyricism that Smith and Miller emphasize
to good effect. The six short movements are in effect miniature character
pieces, with Smith and Miller nicely exploring their individuality of
expression. Within the suite, Polo,
with its emphatic piano part, and the warm and gently lilting Asturiana that follows it, are
especially engaging in this performance. Ástor Piazzolla’s Le Grand Tango is very expansive indeed, lasting almost as long as
de Falla’s six movements combined, and it very clearly demonstrates the
composer’s determination to take this form out of the dance hall and into the
concert hall. Smith loses no opportunity to showcase the work’s strength and
insistence through her highly emphatic rhythmic emphases, which give the piece
an emotional breadth well beyond what might be expected from music built around
a dance. Smith also extracts plenty of seriousness from Tchaikovsky’s Pezzo capriccioso, whose title
misleadingly makes it seem much lighter than it is. In fact, the
“capriciousness” of the work lies solely in its multiplicity of treatments of
what is essentially a simple theme: the piece is in B minor and remains somber
throughout. It appears last on the CD, as a sort of summation of or encore
after what has come before, and receives just as strong and involved a performance
as does the rest of the music heard here. The near-unremitting dark mood of the
disc is the one thing that listeners may find to be a negative: the CD is
short, not quite 50 minutes, but feels longer because of a kind of determinedly
crepuscular quality.
Respighi’s suites of reorchestrated music of the 16th and 17th centuries, Ancient Airs & Dances and The Birds, are in no way dark or gloomy, but they are given a greater sense of gravitas than usual in a set of transcriptions for organ created and performed by Rodolfo Bellatti on a Brilliant Classics CD. The organ’s vast potential for producing highly varied sounds, including ones imitative of many other instruments, seems increasingly to be tempting musicians to transcribe and arrange orchestral works for it: there is even a complete Bruckner symphonic cycle on organ that is currently in progress. In Respighi’s case, the Ancient Airs & Dances and The Birds are arrangements already, the delicacy of the original lute versions of the material lost and in some cases deliberately obscured through clever and sometimes fanciful expansion of the material into a full-orchestral version. Thus, Bellatti essentially offers an arrangement twice-removed, or a transcription of a transcription. He generally adheres rather closely to Respighi’s approach to the material, although he does move the final movement of the first of the three sets of Ancient Airs & Dances to the very last position in the grouping, thus providing a bright and rhythmically attractive conclusion. The organ was an instrument of the highest importance at the time when these original lute works were created, but the intervention of Respighi’s orchestrations places the organ versions in a different light from the one in which they would appear if they had been made directly from the original material. In fact, the organ produces a veneer of seriousness and, in the slower works, sometimes of majesty, that exists neither in the original lute pieces (which are at most bittersweet) nor in Respighi’s versions of them (which are at most melancholic). The brighter elements of these pieces tend to be toned down in Bellatti’s versions: they are not made inappropriately heavy, but neither do they take flight as Respighi has them do – and that is a specific reference to The Birds, whose quieter elements come across better than its exuberant finale. Like any arrangement or transcription, Bellatti’s versions of these pieces shed new light on them, or at least light from a different direction that therefore illuminates (and shadows) differing elements of the material. This is a CD that will be of considerable interest to listeners already familiar with Respighi’s orchestral versions of Ancient Airs & Dances and The Birds, and it is also an intriguing experiment in altered sonorities, moving the music from the delicate expressiveness of the lute, through the colorful and often full-throated sounds of a full orchestra, to the unique expressive-and-imitative potential of the organ.
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