My newspaper duties have kept me off Facebook for most of the day, thereby frustrating my desire to send a shout-out to Philadelphia composer Vittorio Giannini on the occasion of his birthday anniversary.
Giannini was born in Philadelphia in 1903. He studied at the Milan Conservatory, after which he earned his graduate degree from Juilliard. He then taught at Juilliard, the Manhattan School of Music and the Curtis Institute.
Arguably his most important contribution as an educator was the foundation in 1965 of the North Carolina School of the Arts, which he envisioned as a Juilliard of the South. The school attracted to its faculty such luminaries as Ruggiero Ricci and Janos Starker. Giannini died the year after it opened, in 1966.
He was from a family of opera singers. His father founded the Verdi Opera House in Philadelphia. One sister taught voice at the Curtis Institute of Music and the other sang at the Metropolitan Opera. Giannini himself composed 14 operas, including “Lucedia,” “The Scarlet Letter,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” and one for radio, “Beauty and the Beast.” Two, “Casanova” and “Christus,” remain unperformed.
Not surprisingly, then, in his day he was known largely for his vocal music, but his Symphony No. 3 for wind band has fared best on disc. There are seven recordings in the current catalogue, from the classic release directed by A. Clyde Roller on the Mercury label to one of the later-in-life, digital recordings of Frederick Fennell.
Daniel Spalding, music director of the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic, recorded the Symphony No. 4 with the Bournemouth Symphony, for Naxos. The companion piece is Giannini’s Piano Concerto, with Gabriela Imreh, the soloist.
Spalding will conduct the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra this Saturday, Oct. 24, at the Trenton War Memorial. The program will include Philip Glass’ “Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra” and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. You can read all about it in the Friday edition of the Trenton Times.
Imreh and Spalding with Giannini’s Piano Concerto:
Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBq2XH91HwU
Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxkBj74jgdk
His Symphony No. 3:
His Concerto Grosso:
Mario Lanza singing Giannini’s “Tell Me, Oh Blue, Blue Sky”:
Happy birthday, Vittorio Giannini!
