Italian Clarinet Treasures (Busoni, Gagliano, Pilati, Gabucci, Sinigaglia, Labate, Rieti)

Italian Clarinet Treasures

Sergio Bosi (Clarinet)

Riccardo Bartoli (Piano)

Giuseppe GAGLIANO (1912-1995)

Fantasia rapsodica

Ferrucio BUSONI (1866-1924)

Solo dramatique, Op. 13

Andante con moto in E Minor, Op. 10

Mario PILATI (1903-1938)

Inquiétude, "Étude mélodique" (version for clarinet and piano)

Agostino GABUCCI (1896-1976)

28 Grandi studi tecnici e melodici da concerto in forma moderna

Antonio RICCI SIGNORINI (1867-1965)

Arabesca

Ferdinando BUSONI (1834-1909)

Rêverie pastorale

Alamiro GIAMPIERI (1893-1963)

Fantasia in B-Flat Major

Giulio BONNARD (1885-1972)

Preludio in E-Flat Major

Acquerello

Bruno LABATE (1883-1968)

Villanella (version for clarinet and piano)

Leone SINIGAGLIA (1868-1944)

12 Variazioni sopra un tema di Schubert, Op. 19 (version for clarinet and piano)

Vittorio RIETI (1898-1994)

Romanza lidica

Recorded: 3-5 July 2013 at Teatro Marchetti, Camerino, Italy

The Lost Generation

The chamber works of a generation of Italian composers who were born in the late 1800s and early 1900s are mouldering in libraries. Bringing them back into the public domain is a matter not of simply revisiting the past, but of undertaking an essential act of restoration. The reason these works suffered such shameful neglect is purely down to the historical period in which they were written, and has nothing to do with their inherent quality.

In the first half of the 19th century, instrumental music had undergone a serious decline in Italy because audiences were so overwhelmingly interested in opera, a genre invading theatres in big cities and small towns alike. There were of course home-grown instrumentalists of great renown, but while their talents were much vaunted abroad, in Italy they were essentially only appreciated in salon society—the secret gatherings of those who worshipped at the strange altar of chamber music and came together to hear both Italian musicians and European artists visiting the country. In their rare public concerts, these great players (including many great clarinettists) performed character pieces or fantasias and variations on operatic tunes, far more familiar to audiences. Composers born in the mid-1800s, however, began to return to the forms of European chamber music, as well as to the historical forms of sonata and suite, while continuing to cultivate the much-loved genres linked to opera. After almost a century in the shadows, Italian instrumental music was on the rise again and composers (including virtuoso players and teachers) were writing for a new generation of performers trained in the intervening years in Italy’s excellent conservatories. This new repertoire included works of significant musical value and, though undoubtedly tailored to local tastes, also had one eye on the new frontiers of European music, in a current that bore its most important fruit after the Second World War.

Within this narrative, however, is a ‘halfway’ generation of composers born between the 1880s and the early 1900s which seems almost to have vanished without trace, because of the historical events that scarred the period in which they were active: the two world wars and Italy’s Fascist dictatorship. In the years that followed, there was a sense of wanting to wipe away everything from that period: history, literature, art and music—and not, of course, just the music of those who wrote for clarinet, but that of such leading figures as Respighi, Casella and Malipiero.

Only now is this virtually unknown repertoire starting to be rediscovered by academics and performers as they reconsider the decades in question from a dispassionate and objective historical perspective. The works featured here—many receiving their first modern recordings—are by different composers, fall into different genres (though most are character pieces) and differ in their level of artistic value, but all are of equal historical importance.

Some are by composer-virtuosos, heirs of the 19thcentury tradition of Liverani or Cavallini, who played a role both in popularising the instrument and creating a new repertoire. We begin with a composer born much earlier than the others included here, but one far too significant to be overlooked: the Corsican Ferdinando Busoni (1834–1909), father of the much more famous Ferruccio (also represented here). As the latter wrote, ‘he drew inspiration for his clarinet works from violin music and Italian vocal music’ and, gave concerts with his pianist wife Anna and the very young Ferruccio, ‘earning wherever he went the much-deserved applause of the finest society, whose members flocked to hear him.’ Next comes the Neapolitan Mario Pilati (1903–1938), who left his mark as a composer, despite his early death. Gianandrea Gavazzeni described his music as expressing ‘a southern Baroque full of impetuosity and songlike inspiration’. The last of our composer-virtuosos was not a clarinettist but an oboist, Calabrian-born Bruno Labate (1883–1968). As principal oboe of the New York Philharmonic, he met Toscanini, who thought of him as one of the great oboists of all time. Labate was a man of diminutive stature, but his playing had a broad and radiant tone.

Next come the teachers, figures such as Alamiro Giampieri (1893–1963) from Tuscany. He was a publisher, editor, author of a major clarinet method and leader of a wind band—a critic of the day once described how, ‘as a teacher, theorist, player and innovator of his instrument he demonstrated a lively intellect and unusual perspicacity.’ His fellow Tuscan, Agostino Gabucci (1896–1976), was a soloist of worldwide renown, an esteemed chamber musician, principal clarinet in various orchestras and conservatory teacher. His vast output mostly consists of technical studies but includes a number of fantasias as well.

Also featured here are composers who were not themselves clarinettists, but who used the instrument in chamber and orchestral works, and who often worked in genres other than the strictly classical. Take, for example, Rome-born Giulio Bonnard (1885–1972), famous for the film scores he wrote from the 1930s into the postwar period, but whose chamber works were performed in concert alongside those of Debussy. Or, from Emilia Romagna, Antonio Ricci Signorini (1867–1965), a conductor who trained with the finest masters in Bologna and whose large and varied catalogue is notable for its late-Romantic influences and wonderful descriptive writing. The other composers in this category are Giuseppe Gagliano (1912–1995), the internationally renowned Sicilian conductor, whose work has long been recognised and acclaimed, and the Tuscan-born Ferruccio Busoni (1866–1924), one of the leading Italian pianists and composers of the late 19th and early 20th century, whose highly original stage, orchestral and chamber music drew on both Italian tradition and the latest trends in Central European music.

The album ends with music by two composers persecuted during the Mussolini dictatorship because of their Jewish origins—precisely the kind of artists from whom the veil of obscurity must now be lifted for good. Turin-born Leone Sinigaglia (1868–1944), a friend of both Brahms and Dvořák and with close links to Central European culture, wrote prolifically in every genre. One reviewer wrote of him, ‘There is more music in his works than there is in the whole of some of the operas currently being trumpeted: they make up a mountain of gems worthy of the sincerest recommendation to musical gourmets.’ Sinigaglia collected and studied Piedmontese folk songs, his transcriptions of which were collected in editions of extraordinary academic importance. He suffered a fatal heart attack when he was arrested as a Jew in 1944. Less tragic, if still far from happy, was the fate of Vittorio Rieti (1898–1994), born in the Egyptian city of Alexandria and forced to emigrate from wartime Italy to the US. Alfredo Casella wrote of him, ‘Young as he is, he already possesses qualities that many other composers pursue throughout their lives, without success: style, personality and such a high level of skill that, in this case, it is no exaggeration to call it mastery.’

Maria Chiara Mazzi (from naxos web site)