Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco - Piano Works (Mark Bebbington)

Information

Composer: Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco

• (01-07) Le danze del Re David, Op. 37
• (08) Questo fu il carro della morte, Op. 2
• (09-11) Alt Wien, Op. 30
• (12) I Naviganti, Op. 13
• (13-17) Piedigrotta, Op. 32

Mark Bebbington, piano
Date: 2003
Label: SOMM
https://www.somm-recordings.com/recording/piano-music-by-mario-castelnuovo-tedesco/

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Review

The selection of solo piano works assembled here are not brief sketches or vignettes. These are major compositions, the shortest among them, Questo fu il carro della morte, running to over six minutes. Le danze del Re David and Alt Wien run to over 16 minutes each, and Piedigrotta to over 20 minutes. The booklet note cites Liszt, Granados, Albéniz, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, and Ravel as models for much of this music. To my ear, some of these connections are more tenuous than others, but the Debussy link is unmistakable. I can imagine this is what Debussy might have sounded like had his muse been more Mediterranean than Gallic. It is precisely this Mediterranean influence that runs deep in Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s music, and for reasons that extend beyond the fact that he was Italian. Ingrained in him from early childhood were the traditional melodies of the Sephardic Jewish cultures that flourished throughout Spain and Portugal in the 15th century and in Italy in the 16th century. These melodies are not directly quoted; rather they have become assimilated by the composer into a subconscious but ever-present mode of expression, much in the way that Bartók’s music came to speak naturally the inflections of Magyar and Rumanian folk sources.

All of the pieces on this CD are striking and hauntingly beautiful, even if they do tend to exhibit a somewhat morbid pathology with titles like “This was death’s chariot,” “In memory of death,” and a portrait of sailors (I naviganti) escorting their human cargo (in Rachmaninoff-like manner) to an island of the dead. Given the horrors he escaped and the nightmares that must have troubled his sleep, Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s preoccupation with death, dying, and decay (or, as the booklet note colorfully puts it, “a hellish vision of a skeletal banjo-player” and “visions of skeletons, coffins, and sickles”) is not hard to understand. Yet by no means is all of this music a Lisztian La lugubre gondola or Mahlerian grotesquerie; there are fireworks, primitive savagery, and pianistic acrobatics aplenty, as in the Tarantella scura movement from Piedigrotta, which pianist Mark Bebbington describes as “the most difficult two minutes in the whole of the recital.”

I found this to be a most rewarding program, one that deserves to be heard by a much wider audience. Speaking of Mark Bebbington, here is a young British pianist making his debut recording in music that is both technically taxing and psychologically difficult to put across. From what I can hear, he is well up to both challenges. His live performances have drawn critical acclaim throughout Britain and the Continent, and his programming, which leans heavily towards 20th-century repertoire, much of it by British composers, is earning him a growing reputation. Excellent sound and very insightful notes (written mostly by Bebbington himself) contribute to making this CD highly recommended.

-- Jerry Dubins, FANFARE

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 10 / SOUND QUALITY: 7
MusicWeb International  RECORDING OF THE MONTH
https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/castelnuovo-tedesco-piano-works
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Oct04/Castel_Bebbington.htm
https://www.allmusic.com/album/piano-music-by-castelnuovo-tedesco-mw0001847147

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Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (3 April 1895 in Florence – 16 March 1968 in Beverly Hills, California) was an Italian composer, pianist and writer. He was known as one of the foremost guitar composers in the twentieth century with almost one hundred compositions for that instrument. In 1939 he immigrated to the United States and became a composer for some 200 Hollywood movies for the next fifteen years. As a teacher, Castelnuovo-Tedesco had a significant influence on other major film composers, such as Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams. He also wrote concertos for Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Castelnuovo-Tedesco

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Mark Bebbington (born 17 January 1972) is a British concert pianist. He studied at the Royal College of Music, and later studied in Paris and Italy with Aldo Ciccolini. Internationally recognised as a champion of British music in particular, Bebbington has recorded extensively for the SOMM label to critical acclaim. In addition to a series of five-star reviews in BBC Music Magazine, he has won Gramophone Editor's Choice and International Record Review's 'Outstanding' accolade. Bebbington has featured both as soloist and recitalist on BBC television and radio, and on major European television and radio networks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Bebbington
http://markbebbington.co.uk/

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