Luigi Mancinelli - Scene veneziane; Cleopatra (Francesco La Vecchia)

Information

Composer: Luigi Mancinelli

1. Scene veneziane: No. 1. Carnovale: Allegro brillante
2. Scene veneziane: No. 2. Dichiarazione d'amore: Andante sostenuto
3. Scene veneziane: No. 3. Fuga degli Amanti a Chioggia: Scherzo
4. Scene veneziane: No. 4. Ritorno in Gondola: Andante con moto
5. Scene veneziane: No. 5. Cerimonia e Danza di Nozze: Lento (Tempo di marcia religiosa)
6. 6 Intermezzi sinfonici per la tragedia Cleopatra: No. 1. Ouverture
7. 6 Intermezzi sinfonici per la tragedia Cleopatra: No. 3. Battaglia di Azio

Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma

Francesco La Vecchia, conductor

Date: 2013

Label: Naxos

https://www.naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=8.573074

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Review

If the name of Luigi Mancinelli rings bells with you it is probably as an operatic conductor. Like Toscanini and Barbirolli he had started as a cellist, and it may not be too fanciful to imagine that the combination of the discipline of the pit together with experience of the stringed instrument with the most singing line will have stood all three in good stead in that most complex of roles. Mancinelli conducted all over Italy before going also to Covent Garden, the Metropolitan and the Teatro Colon among other international houses.

 

You may also remember the name for his four operas but the present disc offers instead one and a half of his orchestral works. The longer work, and that presented complete, is the Scene veneziane, a Suite in five movements depicting in turn the experiences of a couple meeting at a carnival, falling in love, visiting the coastal town of Chioggia, returning by gondola and eventually marrying. The music is colourful and, as you might expect, wonderfully well orchestrated. Right from the start there are reminders of the music of Respighi although as the latter was only ten when this Suite was written perhaps it would be more correct to say that Respighi’s music reminds one of Mancinelli. Either way the results are extremely enjoyable even if it is not the kind of music that burns itself into your memory.

 

I was however looking forward even more to hearing the music deriving from incidental music to the tragedy by Pietro Cossa, Cleopatra. I have had a set of parts of the Overture for many years - wrongly entitled there as the Overture to an Opera - which looked particularly intriguing. So it proved, from its quiet opening to other sections full of sound and fury. Like all the music on the disc it could be described as overlong for its ideas, but that it is well written and that the ideas are seldom dull is undeniable. There is understandably more sound and fury in the battle scene but here too there is a real sense of drama and storytelling. This is helped by committed performances and a recording which is never less than adequate in these often heavily scored works.

 

On the evidence of this disc I would hesitate to add Mancinelli to the top ranks of Italian composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century composers, but what is included here is certainly worth exploring if you have a taste for the music of, say, Respighi or Boito.  

-- John Sheppard, MusicWeb International

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Luigi Mancinelli (5 February 1848 – 2 February 1921) was an Italian conductor, cellist and composer. His early career was in Italy, where he established a reputation in Perugia and then Bologna. After 1886 Mancinelli worked mostly in other countries, as principal conductor at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London and at the "Old Metropolitan" Opera House in New York, and in other appointments in Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. Despite his high reputation as a conductor, his compositions met with limited success, and none of them entered the regular repertoire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Mancinelli

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Francesco La Vecchia (born September 10, 1954 in Rome) is an Italian classical conductor. La Vecchia's first instrument was the classical guitar. In 1972, he founded the Boccherini Quintet, and played hundreds of concerts with this ensemble in Europe, America and Asia. He began his career as conductor in 1982, and since then has conducted more than one hundred orchestras around the world. La Vecchia was named artistic and musical director of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma in 2002. Specializing in Italian music, he has made dozens of recordings, mostly for the Naxos label.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_La_Vecchia

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