A belated thank you for your support, Antonio.

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Gian Francesco Malipiero - Il Finto Arlecchino; Vivaldiana; Invenzioni (Peter Maag)


Information

Composer: Gian Francesco Malipiero
  • (01-07) Sette Invenzioni
  • (08-11) Quattro invenzioni
  • (12-15) Symphonic Fragments from "Il Finto Arlecchino"
  • (16-18) Vivaldiana

Veneto Philharmonic Orchestra
Peter Maag, conductor

Date: 1992
Label: Marco Polo
https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.223397

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Review

If an authority as discriminating and as reluctant to overstate as Luigi Dallapiccola described Malipiero as ''the most important Italian composer since Verdi'', we're bound to sit up and take notice. But where should we begin? None of his 11 symphonies or 34 operas is available on record at present and besides, he has the reputation of being disconcertingly uneven as well as alarmingly prolific. But when a complete cycle of his eight string quartets appeared last year (ASV, 2/92) AW didn't find himself obliged to swallow one or two of them and spit out the remainder: ''never dull … a consistent warmth of expression … unduly neglected'' was his reaction. However, the present compilation, though almost always entertaining (even so, for reasons that will become apparent later, I wouldn't listen to the whole of it at a sitting if I were you) doesn't really add much more to the revaluation process.

Those of Malipiero's larger orchestral works that I've heard make an interesting attempt to forge a distinctively Italian symphonism, abandoning the developmental structures of sonata form for a more urbane 'conversation' (Malipiero's own word) between contrasting or related ideas, you might say that in his discourse 'by the way' or 'and that reminds me' replace the 'and therefore' and 'but on the other hand' of the Northern European symphony. Something similar, but more like a chat than a discussion, seems to take place in the two sets of Inventions, both of them derived (though the touchy composer irritably denied it) from a film score. The very first of them is wholly characteristic: a brief and steely introduction (steel manufacture was the subject of the film) gives way after only a few seconds to a light-textured, deftly scored moto perpetuo, elegantly neo-classical; then, with hardly any transition, a lyrical pastoral mood arrives, the moto perpetuo becomes more capricious, there is some charming solo string writing, and the movement is over in under three minutes. There are frequent hints of the eighteenth century (busy neo-baroque toccata figurations) and of folk music (a village fiesta seems to be brightly evoked in the last movement of the second set) and the whole is cleanly scored, tuneful and engaging. It is light music, without any pretension to it, but long before the 18 movements on this CD are over you may well be longing for something more substantial.

For the other two suites are lightweight too. The Symphonic fragments from Il finto Arlecchino (the comic middle panel of an otherwise serious trilogy of one-act operas set in Malipiero's native Venice) are not much more than agreeable pastiche—mock-Pergolesi, mostly, with a few wrong-note seasonings. And Vivaldiana is simply a sequence of eight movements from Vivaldi concertos, joined together in pairs and efficiently re-scored for an orchestra incorporating wind instruments as well as Vivaldi's strings. Pleasant, undemanding stuff listening to it, unwisely, all in one go I found myself scribbling 'so what?' in the margin. The orchestra is small and not the world's greatest, but Maag has their measure and the music's and the results are clean and neat, so is the recording.

-- Michael Oliver, Gramophone

More reviews:
ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 10
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2001/May01/Malipiero.htm
http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/m/mpl23397a.php
http://www.classicalcdreview.com/mali.htm
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Malipiero-Orchestral-Works-Gian-Francesco/dp/B00005A7KE

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gian Francesco Malipiero (18 March 1882 – 1 August 1973) was an Italian composer, musicologist, music teacher and editor. Malipiero studied mostly with Marco Enrico Bossi. In 1913, Malipiero moved to Paris, where he attended the première of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, and after that, repudiated almost all the compositions he had written up to that time. Malipiero had an ambivalent attitude towards the Austro-German musical tradition, and was strongly critical of sonata form. His orchestral works include seventeen compositions he called symphonies, of which however only eleven are numbered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gian_Francesco_Malipiero

***

Peter Maag (10 May 1919 – 16 April 2001) was a Swiss conductor and pianist. He studied piano with Czesław Marek and Alfred Cortot, and conducting with Ernest Ansermet, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Franz von Hoesslin He served as an assistant to Wilhelm Furtwängler and Ernest Ansermet before began recording for Decca in 1950. Maag's early stereophonic sound recordings for Decca were well received, and many have remained in the catalogs for decades. Other labels he recorded for include Arts, Conifer, Deutsche Grammophon, Naxos Records, Nuova Era, RCA Red Seal Records, and Vox Records.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

FLAC, tracks
Links in comment
Enjoy!

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would be grateful to you if you can give the new link for this disk.
    Thanks in advance

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Many thanks for all this Marco Polo series.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Choose one link, copy and paste it to your browser's address bar, wait a few seconds (you may need to click 'Continue' first), then click 'Free Access with Ads' / 'Get link'. Complete the steps / captchas if require.
    Guide for Linkvertise: 'Free Access with Ads' --> 'I'm interested' --> 'Install and Open ...', but quickly cancel the software download, then wait for a few seconds --> 'Get Website'

    https://link-target.net/610926/malipiero-il-finto
    or
    https://uii.io/aCa982i
    or
    https://exe.io/ingAiL

    ReplyDelete