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Tag: Italian Composers

Horszowski & Forgotten Italian Gems

Okay, I’m kind of excited about this one. Mieczyslaw Horszowski was one of the great poets of the keyboard. He also happens to be one of my favorite pianists.

On this week’s “Music from Marlboro,” we’ll hear Horzsowski perform music by…

Chopin? No.

Schumann? No.

ILDEBRANDO PIZZETTI. Yes.

Who the hell is HE?

Pizzetti was one of the composers of the “generazione dell’Ottanta” (generation of the ‘80s), contemporaries of Ottorino Respighi, all born around 1880. These artists of the post-Puccini generation largely made a name for themselves in the concert halls as opposed to the opera houses. That was a change of pace for Italy.

Pizzetti was best-known as an associate of Gabrielle d’Annunzio, providing incidental music for a number of d’Annunzio’s plays and setting “Fedra” as an opera. Pizzetti’s Piano Trio in A major, written in 1925, is big music with big things to say. There is plenty of drama, lyricism and warmth throughout the 30-minute piece, which is almost never heard. It was performed at the Marlboro Music Festival in 1968, by Pina Carmirelli, violin; Leslie Parnas, cello; and Mieczyslaw Horszowski, piano.

Horszowski, who died in 1993, just shy of his 101st birthday, had one of the longest careers of any performing artist. He was a pupil of Theodor Leschetizky, who was a pupil of Carl Czerny, who in turn was a pupil of Beethoven. Horszowski played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in public for the first time in 1901! He joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in 1942. He remained there for over 50 years, giving his last lesson a week before his death.

As if the idea of hearing Horszowski in this neglected repertoire isn’t compelling enough, we’ll also have a young Yo-Yo Ma among the personnel – alongside guitarist Javier Calderon, violinist Daniel Phillips, and violist Luigi Alberto Bianchi – in a 1976 performance of Niccolò Paganini’s Quartet No. 15 in A minor for guitar and strings.

That’s Marlboro, Italian-style, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

PHOTO: Mieczyslaw Horszowski (center) with Marlboro co-founder Rudolf Serkin and an up-and-coming Ruth Laredo

October 18, 2017
Italian Composers & the Seasons

“La generazione dell’ottanta” is a label used to describe that group of Italian composers born around 1880. By and large, they are remembered for their contributions to orchestral and instrumental music, as opposed to opera, though their contributions to the latter form were not inconsiderable. The group included Franco Alfano, Alfredo Casella, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Ildebrando Pizzetti, and the best known of the bunch, Ottorino Respighi.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll enjoy seasonal works by three of them.

Respighi wrote his “Poema autunnale,” for violin and orchestra, in 1926. He prefaced his score with the following descriptive program:

“A sweet melancholy pervades the poet’s feelings, but a joyful vintner’s song and the rhythm of a Dionysiac dance disturb his reverie. Fauns and Bacchantes disperse at the appearance of Pan, who walks alone through the fields under a gentle rain of golden leaves.”

The work is meditative, lovely and uplifting in the manner of Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending.”

For a composer who disliked sonata form, Malipiero certainly wrote a lot of symphonies – 11 numbered symphonies, in all – though largely on his own terms. Two of these were inspired by the seasons.

In the case of the Symphony No. 1, composed in 1933, the connection might be said to be analogous, as opposed to strictly programmatic. His initial plan had been to set passages from Anton Maria Lamberti’s poem, “La stagione.” Ultimately, he abandoned that design, but the idea of an annual cycle remained.

The composer subtitled the work, “In Quattro tempi, come le quattro stagioni” (“In four movements, like the four seasons”). Indeed, the first has something of a vernal flavor, with the second, according to the composer, “strong and vehement like summer,” the third autumnal, and the fourth akin to “the winter carnival season and the gaiety of snow.”

The program will open with music by Pizzetti that, while not strictly seasonal, is clearly of an autumnal cast. His “Preludio a un altro giorno” (“Prelude to Another Day”) is a fairly late piece, and rather a world-weary one, composed in 1952.

Just before writing it, Pizzetti had received a painful letter from his former teacher, Giovanni Tebaldini, then 87 and praying for death after a series of strokes left him confined to a chair, terrified to stand for fear of falling. Not surprisingly, I thought it best to listen to this one first, so that we could relax and enjoy the leaves and snow.

I hope you’ll join me for “Italian Seasoning,” tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll enjoy it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

PHOTOS: Pizzetti looking severe; Malipiero and Respighi enjoying la dolce vita

November 16, 2014

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