Gian Francesco Malipiero - Symphonies Vol. 1 (Antonio de Almeida)

Information

Composer: Gian Francesco Malipiero

• (01) Sinfonia del mare: Andante sostenuto
• (02-05) Symphony No. 3 "delle campane"
• (06-09) Symphony No. 4 "in memoriam"

Moscow Symphony Orchestra
Antonio de Almeida, conductor

Date: 1993
Label: Marco Polo
https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.223602

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Review

PERFORMANCE: ***** / SOUND: *****

Malipiero was one of several Italian composers who matured during the Mussolini years and suffered some postwar neglect (even though pupils like Dallapiccola spoke up for them). His large, varied output is often described as 'uneven'. Certainly his idiosyncratic approach to motivic development encourages a tendency towards inflated rhapsodising. Yet there is much of interest here. Lush orchestration and a kind of Impressionist rapture (Debussy was a key influence) are two of his great qualities. The immediately attractive symphonies Nos. 3 and 4 are generally seen as the best-sustained of his numbered symphonies. Malipiero has a flair for dark, resdess writing and for conjuring serene, Mahlerian pastoral moods from the wistful modal songs of Venetian folk music. The early, non-Romantic Sinfonia del mare of 1906 and its successor, the Sinfonie delsilenzio e de la morte, are tone poems riddled with brilliant instrumental touches. Like his late string quartets, the later symphonies attempt, with varying success, a more modernist vein, occasionally taxing the strings. The odd movement outstays its welcome. But de Almeida's steady hand and his feel for outline and contours, plus the excellent response of these Russian players (not least the brass), added to a rich, warm acoustic and fine balancing, confirm this as one of Marco Polo's best series to date.

-- Roderic Dunnett, BBC Music Magazine

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2008/Sept08/Malipiero_8570878.htm
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2008/Oct08/Malipiero_8570878.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/jul/18/classicalmusicandopera4
https://www.allmusic.com/album/gian-francesco-malipiero-symphonies-nos-3-4-sinfonia-del-mare-mw0001810116
https://www.naxos.com/reviews/reviewslist.asp?catalogueid=8.570878&languageid=EN
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gian-Francesclo-Malipiero-Symphonies-Sinfonia/dp/B001AE4PJC

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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

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Antonio de Almeida (20 January 1928 in Neuilly-sur-Seine – 18 February 1997 in Pittsburgh) was a French conductor and musicologist of Portuguese-American descent. He studied with Alberto Ginastera and Paul Hindemith, and also studied conducting with Sergei Koussevitzky, Leonard Bernstein and George Szell. He recorded for many labels, including Columbia, EMI, Erato, Naxos, Philips, RCA and Supraphon. Almeida's recordings were instrumental in restoring compositions of Ernest Chausson, Henri Duparc, Florent Schmitt and Jules Massenet to the active repertory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_de_Almeida_(conductor)

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