Martucci - The Piano Music Vol.2

Giuseppe MARTUCCI (1856-1909)

Piano Music, Volume 2

Capriccio & Serenata, Op. 57

Capriccio & Toccata, Op. 77

Fantasia, Op. 51

Six Pieces, Op. 44

Two Nocturnes, Op. 70

Francesco Caramiello (Piano)

Of the generation of post-Verdi Italian composers who tried to wean their compatriots from an exclusive diet of opera, even Busoni had to subsidise his composing with a career as piano virtuoso and educator. Giuseppe Martucci, apart from running the conservatoires of Bologna and later of Naples, was also a pianist (admired by Liszt) and a conductor of great importance, giving the Italian premieres of Wagner’s Tristan and Debussy’s Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune, among others. His piano music, like his orchestral and chamber works, shows the variety of influences that such a career would imply; but here his combination of Brahmsian elements – with Italian but personal lyricism – is often allied to a pianistic flamboyance reminding one that his piano teacher was a pupil of Thalberg. Sometimes, especially in earlier pieces like the pleasant but slight Fantasia, Op 51, there is more of pianistic gesture than substance.

The Six Pieces, Op 44, are all early: they range from an agreeable salon ‘Barcarolle and Nocturne’ via a brilliant ‘Capriccio’ and a showy ‘Pezzo fantastico’ (a recognisable Martucci tune in its midst) to the quite dreadful and unbearably protracted ‘Colore orientale’, whose laboured march rhythm infects even its more attractive middle section. By Op 57 Martucci is more himself: two enigmatic chords precede a whirling ‘Toccata’, like Scarlatti with abrupt changes of direction; the lulling ‘Serenata’ has a melody of real distinction. The real Martucci is hardly apparent in the two elegant but old-fashioned Nocturnes (Chopin, even Mendelssohn, are hinted at), but looms impressively in Op 77: in the ‘Capriccio’ two contrasted themes are resourcefully developed and then surprisingly combined; the ‘Toccata’ moves disconcer- tingly from genial humour via disquiet to obsessive tension.

Caramiello’s fondness for Martucci’s showy gestures occasionally understates his fragile but appealing melodic invention, but he plays the more brilliant pages well. His less than first class piano is rather closely recorded.'