Leone Sinigaglia - Chamber Music (Various Artists)

Information

Composer: Leone Sinigaglia

• (01) Violin Sonata in G major, Op. 44
• (04) Romanze in D major for cello and piano, Op. 16 No. 1
• (05) Cavatina in G major for violin and piano, Op. 13 No. 1
• (06) Cello Sonata in C major, Op. 41

Solomia Soroka, violin
Noreen Silver, cello
Phillip Silver, piano

Date: 2011
Label: Toccata Classics
https://toccataclassics.com/product/sinigaglia-chamber-music/

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Review

It would be a pleasure to think that Leone Sinigaglia’s music might make inroads after many years of neglect. The Italian composer, who knew Brahms and was a student of Dvořák in Prague, was championed by diverse elite musicians – Furtwängler, Kreisler, Stokowski and Toscanini among them – but his compositions have long fallen into the kind of limbo that befalls many another once held in esteem. These chamber works are all heard, it seems, in premiere recordings.

The 1936 Violin Sonata was his last large-scale work – he was to die eight years later in Turin in 1944 whilst being arrested by the Nazis - Sinigaglia was Jewish. Bell peals and songful lyricism fuse with moments of gently pensive unease in broadly sonata form in the first movement. Maybe some of the passagework sounds a touch sequential but that is the only demerit, and that’s not a failing one could level at the ripe romanticism of the central slow movement. Here refined nostalgia is predicated on German models but is no less fresh for all that. The uplifting finale, albeit with a contrapuntal element – canonic imitation too – leads on to some strenuous passages amidst the elegant fluidity of the writing.

The Cello Sonata was written in 1923, contemporary therefore with the cello sonatas of Bax, Ireland and Delius. This time Sinigaglia prefers a four-movement structure, and the overall dimensions of the work are bigger than the later Violin Sonata.. The writing is quite busy at points but the slow winding down into simplicity illuminates the end of the opening movement rather touchingly. The Intermezzo is delightfully capricious, full of wit, whilst rich warmth suffuses the Adagio, a kind of barcarolle, and again rather wistful. This is a quality Sinigaglia often displays, and it is a singular one.

The small morceaux have been cleverly selected, one for each string instrument. We hear a somewhat melancholic Romanze for cello and piano, dating from 1898, and the Cavatina for violin from 1902 which reveals just the kind of lyric ease of which Sinigaglia was so astute a practitioner.

There is some but really not so very much trace of Italian folkloric writing in these string works – this was a strong component of his music but it’s less immediately apparent here. The performances are stylistically apt throughout, properly chamber-scaled, and not at all concertante-like. They make a good case for the sonatas though I can imagine rather more extravert tonal performances bringing other attributes to the fore.

Other than that, these elegant readings set a standard for future Sinigaglia performances, and I truly hope that more will follow the lead of the intrepid Solomia Soroka and Noreen and Philip Silver.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

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Leone Sinigaglia (14 August 1868 – 16 May 1944) was an Italian composer. Born in Turin, he studied at the local conservatory with Giovanni Bolzoni, and from 1894 lived in Vienna, where he associated with Johannes Brahms. From 1900 he worked in Prague with Antonín Dvořák. In the ten years that followed his return to Turin in 1901, Sinigaglia transcribed an enormous amount of popular song from the oral tradition, which included in a set of twelve Old popular songs of Piedmont. His other compositions of the same period also show a deep love for the musical spirit of his native region.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leone_Sinigaglia

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Violinist Solomia Soroka, born in L’viv, Ukraine, is among the most accomplished Ukrainian musicians of her generation. Soroka made her solo debut at age 10, playing the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the L’viv Philharmonic Orchestra, and has since appeared as soloist with that orchestra on numerous occasions. She has appeared as soloist and as chamber musician at concerts and festivals in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Italy, ... Since her U.S. debut in 1997, she has performed throughout the United States. Soroka has toured and recorded extensively with her husband, the American pianist Arthur Greene.
http://www.solomiasoroka.com/

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