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jowcol
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« on: August 16, 2012, 05:23:55 pm »

Concerto for Piano, Strings, Timpani, and Percussion, Op. 69 by Alfredo Casella (1943)

Gary Graffman, Soloist
ORTF, Conducted by  F Mannino
Radio broadcast, April 29, 1966

From the collection of Karl Miller


This is a very lively work, some great rhythms.  My only regret is that Gary Graffman does not stand out very well in the mix, and given his talent, that is a shame.  Nonetheless, the music is very engaging.

Wikipedia Bio for Alfredo Casella

Alfredo Casella (25 July 1883 – 5 March 1947) was an Italian composer, pianist and conductor.

Life and career
Casella was born in Turin; his family included many musicians; his grandfather, a friend of Paganini's, was first cello in the San Carlo Theatre in Lisbon and eventually was soloist in the Royal Chapel in Turin. Alfredo's father Carlo Casella was also a professional cellist, as were Carlo's brothers Cesare and Gioacchino; his mother was a pianist, and gave the boy his first music lessons.

Alfredo entered the Conservatoire de Paris in 1896 to study piano under Louis Diémer and composition under Gabriel Fauré; in these classes, George Enescu and Maurice Ravel were among his fellow students. During his Parisian period, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, and Manuel de Falla were acquaintances, and he was in contact with Ferruccio Busoni, Gustav Mahler, and Richard Strauss as well.

Casella developed a deep admiration for Debussy's output after hearing Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune in 1898, but pursued a more romantic vein (stemming from Strauss and Mahler) in his own writing of this period, rather than turning to impressionism. His first symphony of 1905 is from this time, and it is with this work that Casella made his debut as a conductor when he led the symphony's premiere in Monte Carlo in 1908.

Back in Italy during World War I, he began teaching piano at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. From 1927 to 1929, Casella was the principal conductor of the Boston Pops, where he was succeeded by Arthur Fiedler.[1] He was one of the best-known Italian piano virtuosos of his generation, and together with Arturo Bonucci (cello) and Alberto Poltronieri (violin), he formed the Trio Italiano in 1930. This group played to great acclaim in Europe and America. His stature as a pianist and his work with the Trio gave rise to some of his best known compositions, including A Notte Alta, the Sonatina, Nove Pezzi, and the Six Studies, Op. 70, for piano. For the Trio to play on tour, he wrote the Sonata a Tre and the Triple Concerto.

Casella had his biggest success with the ballet La Giara, set to a scenario by Pirandello; other notable works include Italia, the Concerto Romano, Partita and Scarlattiana for Piano and Orchestra, the Violin and Cello Concerti, Paganiniana, and the Concerto for Piano, Strings, Timpani and Percussion. Amongst his chamber works, both Cello Sonatas are played with some frequency, as is the very beautiful late Harp Sonata, and the music for Flute and Piano. Casella also made live-recording player piano music rolls for the Aeolian Duo-Art system, all of which survive today and can be heard. In 1923, together with Gabriele D'Annunzio and Gian Francesco Malipiero from Venice, he founded an association to promote the spread of modern Italian music, the "Corporation of the New Music".

The resurrection of Vivaldi's works in the 20th century is mostly thanks to the efforts of Casella, who in 1939, organised the now historic Vivaldi Week, in which the poet Ezra Pound was also involved. Since then, Vivaldi's compositions have enjoyed almost universal success, and the advent of historically informed performance has catapulted him to stardom once again. In 1947, the Venetian businessman Antonio Fanna founded the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi, with the composer Malipiero as its artistic director, with the purpose of promoting Vivaldi's music and putting out new editions of his works. Casella's work on behalf of his Italian Baroque musical ancestors put him at the centre of the early 20th Century Neoclassical revival in music, and influenced his own compositions profoundly. His editions of Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven's piano works, alongside with many others, proved extremely influential on the musical taste and performance style of Italian players in the following generations[2].

Usually the generazione dell'ottanta ("generation of '80"), including Casella himself, Malipiero, Respighi, Pizzetti, and Alfano — all composers born around 1880, the post-Puccini generation — concentrated on writing instrumental works, rather than the operas in which Puccini and his musical forebears had specialised. Members of this generation were the dominant figures in Italian music after Puccini's death in 1924; they had their counterparts in Italian literature and painting. Casella, who was especially passionate about painting, accumulated an important collection of art and sculptures. He was perhaps the most "international" in outlook and stylistic influences of the generazione dell'ottanta, owing at least in part to his early musical training in Paris and the circle in which he lived and worked while there. He died in Rome.

Casella's students included Clotilde Coulombe, Maria Curcio, Francesco Mander, Maurice Ohana, Robin Orr, Primož Ramovš, Nino Rota, Maria Tipo, and Camillo Togni.
Casella was married to Yvonne Müller. Their granddaughter is actress Daria Nicolodi and their great-granddaughter is actress Asia Argento.[3][4]

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« Reply #1 on: August 17, 2012, 01:45:24 pm »

Music of Goffredo Petrassi

1. Quartet

Parrenin String Quartet
Radio broadcast, date unknown.

2-4:  Petrassi  Concerto pour Orchestre I'm not sure which of the 8 concerti for orchestra this is...
Orch Philh;  Cond. R. Benzi
Radio broadcast, April 18, 1972.

From the collection of Karl Miller

Of the two works-- I'd say the quartet is much more cerebral, while the Concerto for Orchestra is much more lyrical.  Your mileage may vary.


Wikipedia Bio: 

Goffredo Petrassi (16 July 1904 – 3 March 2003) was an Italian composer of modern classical music, conductor, and teacher. He is considered one of the most influential Italian composers of the twentieth century.[1]

Life
Petrassi was born at Zagarolo, near Rome. At the age of 15 he began to work at a music shop to supply his family's financial needs, and became fascinated by music. In 1928, he entered the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome to study organ and composition. In 1934, composer Alfredo Casella conducted Petrassi's Partita for orchestra at the ISCM festival in Amsterdam.

Later, Petrassi became musical director of the opera house La Fenice, and from 1959 taught composition at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory and at the Salzburg Mozarteum. Petrassi had many famous students, including Franco Donatoni, Aldo Clementi, Cornelius Cardew, Ennio Morricone, Karl Korte, Norma Beecroft, Mario Bertoncini, Ernesto Rubin de Cervin, Eric Salzman, Kenneth Leighton, Peter Maxwell Davies, Michael Dellaira, Armando Santiago, and Richard Teitelbaum. Petrassi died in Rome at the age of 98.

Music
Petrassi's early work was part of an attempt by several Italian composers to create a national "Italian" revival in classical music, corresponding to the romantic work of Germans such as Richard Wagner. During this time, his work was characteristically neoclassical in style, influenced by Bartók, Hindemith and Stravinsky.

In later years, Petrassi's open musical mind and acute personality led him to experiment with different post-Webernian influences and a wide range of poetic materials, from Latin hymns to Ariosto's La follia d'Orlando and Cervantes' Ritratto di Don Chisciotte. All these influences are present in a remarkable series of eight Concerti for Orchestra which he composed between the late 1930s and the late 1970s.













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« Reply #2 on: January 16, 2013, 10:23:40 am »

MUSIC OF GIAN FRANCESCO MALIPIERO


From the collection of Karl Miller
Radio Broadcasts, dates unknown unless state otherwise.

In the downloads section, I have links to both a "master" Malipiero folder, and individual links.




 
***************************************************************************
SYMPHONIES 1-3


Symphony 1:  “Four Seasons”
1. Quasi Andante, sereno
2. Allegro
3.  Lento
4.  Allegro quasi allegretto
Rome Radio Orchestra, Goffredo Petrassi

Symphony 2: “Sinfonia Elegiaca”
5. Allegro Non Troppo
6. Lento Non Troppo
7. Mosso
8. Lento
Maggio Musicale Symphony Orchestra Florentino/ Manno Wolf-Ferrari(?)

Symphony 3:  “The Bells”

9. Allegro Moderato
10.  Andante molto moderato
11. Vivace
12. Lento, andante sostenuto

RAI Rome Symphony Orchestra
Ettore Gracis

*********************************************************************************

SYMPHONIES 3,4 and 6:



1-5 Symphony 3  “the Bells ) with Radio intro/Outro
CBS Symphony Orchestra, Bernard Herrman, Conductor
(US premiere)

6-11  Symphony 4 “In Memoriam”

6. Radio Into
7.  Allegro Moderato
8. Lento funebre
9.  Allegro
10.  Lento
11. Radio Outro
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Serge Koussevitzky
March 2, 1948

12-17:  Symphony 6 “For Strings”

12. Radio Intro
13-16: Symphony 6 (no movement info)
17. Radio Outro
Scarlatti Orchestra Naples/ Franco Caracciolo

***********************************************************************

SYMPHONIES 7,8,10


Symphony 7
Allegro
Allegro quasi Andante
Allegro Ipmetuoso
Lento
Rome Radio Orchestra
Dmitri Mitropoulos

Symphony 8:  SInfonia Brevis
Piu tosto lento
Allegro
Non troppo lento
RAI Milan/Mario Rossi

Symphony 10 “Sinfonia Antropo”
Lento-andante
Tranquillo
Mosso;
Mosso, molto vivace-un poco
South West German Radio Orchestra
Zdenek Macal

************************************************************************************


OTHER SYMPHONIES OF MALIPIERO:



1-6:  Symphony 11
Hilversum Radio Symphony Orchestra
Jean Fournet

7-17:  Sinfonia dell Zodiac
RAI Symphony Orchestra Turin/Bruno Maderna

18-19 Sinfonia inUn Tempo
RAI Symphony Orchestra Rome/ Armando la Rosa Parodi


************************************************************************


CONCERTI:


1-3: Dialog No. 6 for Harpsichord and Orchestra[/u]
Isabelle Nef, Harpsichord
RAI Milan Symphony Orchestra/Fulvio Vernizzi

4-6: Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra

Resing and Mette, pianos
Strasbourg Symphony Orchestra/Martin?

7-11: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra
Masimo Pradella (sp?) Cello
RAI Scarlatti Orchestra Naples/Decinto Cremian (sp?)
12+: Violin Concerto
Allegro con spriito, Lento ma non troppo, Allegro
Andre Gertler, violin
RAI Symphony Orchestra Turin/Fernando Previtali


*********************************************************

LA PASSIONE AND MORE:


1 Intro
2-8: La Passione
9: Outro
Tenors, Carlo Franzini and Gianfranco Manganotti Baritone, Claudio Strudthoff Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano della RAI Coro di Milano della RAI Conductor, Nino Sanzogno Chorus Master, Giulio Bertola Thanks to dafrieze
RIA Milan Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Conducted by Nino Sanzono
Radio Broadcast, Date Unknown.

10-12: Pause Del Silenzio
Turin Radio Orchestra/ Bruno Maderna
Radio Broadcast, date unknown

13.  Serenata Mattutia
Scarlatti Orchestra of Naples
Franco Coracciolo

************************************************************************************
ORCHESTRAL WORKS:



1-4: Canataiallla Madrigalesca for String Orchestra
RAI Rome Orchestra
Nino Sanzono
Radio Broadcast, Date Unknown.

5+  Fantasia Concertante for Violin, Cello, Piano and Orchestra

(soloists announced—you need to figure them out)
1st movement for string, 2nd for violin, 3rd for cello, 4th for Piano.
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
David Zinman
Radio Broadcast, Date Unknown.


***************************************************************


THE GOLDEN ASS AND SONGS



1-8. L’Asino d’Oro (de Apuleio)
Sesto  Bruscantini, baritone
RAI Symphone Orchestra Rome / Sergui Celibidache

9+: Sette Canzoni
Ester Ovelli, soprano; Florindo Andreolli, tenor;
Sesto Bruscantini, baritone
RAI Rome Chorus and Orchestra/ Mario Rossi


****************************************************************************



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« Reply #3 on: January 16, 2013, 10:24:46 am »


Wiki Bio for Malipiero (Excerpts)

Life
Early years


Born in Venice into an aristocratic family, the grandson of the opera composer Francesco Malipiero, Gian Francesco Malipiero was prevented by family troubles from pursuing his musical education in a consistent manner. His father separated from his mother in 1893 and took Gian Francesco to Trieste, Berlin and eventually to Vienna. The young Malipiero and his father broke up their relationship bitterly, and in 1899 Malipiero returned to his mother's home in Venice, where he entered the Liceo Musicale.

After stopping counterpoint lessons with the composer, organist and pedagogue Marco Enrico Bossi, Malipiero continued studying on his own by copying out music by such composers as Claudio Monteverdi and Girolamo Frescobaldi from the Biblioteca Marciana, in Venice, thereby beginning a lifelong commitment to Italian music of that period.[1] In 1904 he went to Bologna and sought out Bossi to continue his studies, at the Bologna Liceo Musicale ("Music High School"). After graduating, Malipiero became an assistant to the blind composer Antonio Smareglia.
Musical career

In 1905 Malipiero returned to Venice, but from 1906 and 1909 was often in Berlin,  following Max Bruch classes. Later, in 1913, Malipiero moved to Paris, where he became acquainted with compositions by Ravel, Debussy, De Falla, Schoenberg, Berg. Most importantly, he attended the première of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, soon after meeting Alfredo Casella and Gabriele d'Annunzio. He described the experience as an awakening "from a long and dangerous lethargy".After that, he repudiated almost all the compositions he had written up to that time, with the exception of Impressioni dal vero  At that time he won four composition prizes at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, by entering five compositions under five different pseudonyms[citation needed].

In 1917, due to the Italian defeat at Caporetto, he was forced to flee from Venice and settled in Rome.

In 1923, he joined with Alfredo Casella and Gabriele D'Annunzio in creating the Corporazione delle Nuove Musiche. Malipiero was on good terms with Benito Mussolini until he set Pirandello's libretto La favola del figlio cambiato, earning the condemnation of the fascists. Malipiero dedicated his next opera, Giulio Cesare, to Mussolini, but this did not help him.

He was a professor of composition at the Parma Conservatory from 1921 to 1924. In 1932 he became professor of composition at the then Venice Liceo Musicale, which he directed from 1939 to 1952. Among others, he taught Luigi Nono and his own nephew Riccardo Malipiero.

After permanently settling in the little town of Asolo in 1923, Malipiero began the editorial work for which he would become best known, a complete edition of all of Claudio Monteverdi's oeuvre, from 1926 to 1942, and after 1952, editing much of Vivaldi's concerti at the Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi.
Compositions

Malipiero had an ambivalent attitude towards the musical tradition dominated by Austro-German composers, and instead insisted on the rediscovery of pre-19th century Italian music.

His orchestral works include seventeen compositions he called symphonies, of which however only eleven are numbered. The first was composed in 1933, when Malipiero was already over fifty years old. Prior to that, Malipiero had written several important orchestral pieces but avoided the word "sinfonia" (symphony) almost completely. This was due to his rejection of the Austro-German symphonic tradition. The only exceptions to that are the three compositions Sinfonia degli eroi (1905), Sinfonia del mare (1906) and Sinfonie del silenzio e della morte (1909–1910). In such early works, the label "symphony" should not, however, be interpreted as indicating works in the Beethovenian or Brahmsian symphonic style, but more as symphonic poems.

When asked in the mid-1950s by the British encyclopedia The World of Music, Malipiero listed as his most important compositions the following pieces[citation needed]:

    Pause del Silenzio for the orchestra, composed in 1917
    Rispetti e Strambotti for the chamber music, composed in 1920
    L'Orfeide for the stage, composed between 1918 and 1922, and first performed in 1924
    La Passione, a mystery play composed in 1935
    his nine symphonies, composed between 1933 and 1955 (he would compose additional symphonies in the years after this list was made)

He regarded Impressioni dal vero, for orchestra, as his earliest work of lasting importance.
Musical theory and style

Even if Malipiero rarely, if ever, dealt with dodecaphony, he was strongly critical of sonata form and, in general, of standard thematic development in composition. He declared:
“    

Quote
As a matter of fact I rejected the easy game of thematic development because I was fed up with it and it bored me to death. Once one finds a theme, turns it around, dismembers it and blows it up, it is not very difficult to assemble the first movement of a symphony (or a sonata) that will be amusing for amateurs and also satisfy the lack of sensitivity of the knowledgeable.
   

Malipiero's musical language is characterized by an extreme formal freedom; he always renounced the academic discipline of variation, preferring the more anarchic expression of song, and he avoided falling into program music descriptivism. Until the first half of the 1950s, Malipiero remained tied to diatonism, maintaining a connection with the pre-19th century Italian instrumental music and Gregorian chant, moving then slowly to increasingly eerie and tense territories that put him closer to total chromaticism. He did not abandon his previous style but he reinvented it. In his latest pages, it is possible to recognize suggestions from his pupils Luigi Nono and Bruno Maderna.[citation needed]

His compositions are based on free, non-thematic passages as much as in thematic composition, and seldom do movements end in the keys in which they started.

When Malipiero approached the symphony, he did not do so in the so-called post-Beethovenian sense, and for this reason authors rather described his works as "sinfonias" (the Italian term), to emphasize Malipiero's fundamentally Italian, anti-Germanic approach. He remarked:
“    

Quote
The Italian symphony is a free kind of poem in several parts which follow one another capriciously, obeying only those mysterious laws that instinct recognizes.
   ”

As Ernest Ansermet once declared,
Quote
"these symphonies are not thematic but 'motivic': that is to say Malipiero uses melodic motifs like everyone else [...] they generate other motifs, they reappear, but they do not carry the musical discourse -they are, rather, carried by it".


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« Reply #4 on: January 16, 2013, 01:38:47 pm »


  jowcol, Many many thanks for your huge uploads. Really wonderful to me :)   Atsushi
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« Reply #5 on: January 16, 2013, 02:51:24 pm »


  jowcol, Many many thanks for your huge uploads. Really wonderful to me :)   Atsushi
Yes indeed - quite superb, thanks !
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« Reply #6 on: January 16, 2013, 03:45:31 pm »

Amazing collection of Malipiero works :o :) :)

It includes two works not in my catalogue of Malipiero's compositions: the "Sette Canzoni" and the "Canatarialla Madrigaliesca". I shall need to look for dates for these.

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« Reply #7 on: January 16, 2013, 04:17:40 pm »

Right....the "Cantari alla madrigalesca" appears to be an arrangement for string orchestra of the String Quartet No.3 of 1931.
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« Reply #8 on: January 16, 2013, 07:14:20 pm »

Quote
It includes two works not in my catalogue of Malipiero's compositions: the "Sette Canzoni" and the "Canatarialla Madrigaliesca". I shall need to look for dates for these.

"Sette Canzoni" is Part Two (of three) of "L'Orfeida."
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kyjo
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« Reply #9 on: January 16, 2013, 07:46:45 pm »

Thanks from me as well for the Malipiero pieces, Jowcol :) They are especially welcome since the Naxos/Marco Polo recordings of the symphonies are unfortunately rather inadequate.
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« Reply #10 on: January 16, 2013, 09:49:17 pm »

Thanks for the information about "Sette Canzoni", Maris :)

I agree about the inadequacy of the performances of the Naxos/Marco Polo recordings. No doubt the performances provided today are more idiomatic. Sadly, the sound quality of a few of the earlier symphonies(No.4 in particular) is as one might expect, given their age. I do hasten to add that most of the recordings are however perfectly acceptable.
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« Reply #11 on: January 17, 2013, 12:04:15 am »

The Moscow SO (which is really not that great of an orchestra, considering it is based in such a major city) in Italian music.....not a very potent combination, I am afraid :(

Colin, your post made me realize that I had misspelled "inadequate" in my previous post ::)
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« Reply #12 on: January 17, 2013, 01:14:57 am »

if you thought that collection  was impressive, I'm sitting on a much larger collection of a much more overlooked American composer that I hope to get to in the next couple of weeks, courtesy of Karl. 

Thanks for the additional details.. it looks like we now have most of of the works he considered important either in part or in whole.
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kyjo
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« Reply #13 on: January 17, 2013, 01:28:28 am »

if you thought that collection  was impressive, I'm sitting on a much larger collection of a much more overlooked American composer that I hope to get to in the next couple of weeks, courtesy of Karl. 

Ooooh.....the suspense ;D
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« Reply #14 on: January 17, 2013, 01:32:32 am »

Malipiero wrote an immense amount of music and much of it is still unrecorded. One piece to which I have referred before are the "Concerti" for orchestra of 1931.
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