Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari - Suite Veneziana; etc. (Friedrich Haider)

Information

Composer: Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari

• Suite Veneziana in A Minor, Op. 18
• Triptychon in E Major, Op. 19
• Divertimento in D Major, Op. 20
• Arabesken for Orchestra in E Minor, Op. 22

Oviedo Filarmonía

Friedrich Haider, conductor

Date: 2022

Label: Naxos

https://www.naxos.com/CatalogueDetail/?id=8.573583

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Review

Friedrich Haider (b. 1961), an Austro-Italian conductor, is not an international headline name. His prominence has come principally from chief conductor posts in Oviedo, Spain and in Poland. His championing of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari on CD is now finding its way onto Naxos CDs (Overtures; Gioielli; Talitha; Susanna).This is the latest.

One Haider item that cries out for a Naxos reissue - and nothing to do with Wolf-Ferrari, is the ‘complete’ Richard Strauss songs with orchestra. There are something like 48 of them across 3 CDs and three hours. The singers are Edita Gruberova, Kurt Moll, Bo Skovhus, Peter Strake, Judith Horvath and Adrianne Pieczonka. This was issued by Nightingale Records in 2000 and is one of those treasures that has undeservedly slipped into oblivion.

These four works by Wolf-Ferrari are from the mid-1930s and are all unfamiliar and laden with grace. The Suite Veneziana is in four elegant movements, the second and third of which (‘Barcarola’ and ‘Notturno’) are object lessons in balancing duration with elite charm. They have a lambent quality that places them alongside Binge’s Elizabethan Serenade and Sibelius’s sighing Valse Triste and the light music from the 1920s. Deferential music, but artfully and tearfully shaped to be evocative of Venetian elegance.

The Triptychon looks again towards Venice - where Wolf-Ferrari died in 1948 - and its ‘campi’ and churches. It does not shout but makes something touchingly memorable, yet of unassuming stature, from evoking the Chiese di Venezia. Devotional, not overblown, and heavy with affectionate respect, if a little Bachian in the last two movements, the final ‘Preghiera’ deploys a solo violin as a reverent cantor. No ‘fireworks’ here.

The four-movement Divertimento is an extension or replication of the world of the Suite Veneziana. It is from the same sighingly ardent chapbook. Only in the second movement ‘Canzona Pastorale’ do things become bleached so as to drift into mannerism, routine and background music. The finale is a Rondo where ideas blow hither and thither. The French horn player seems to have Dennis Brain in mind. The overture-length single-movement Arabeschen has an Elgarian high baroque accent but otherwise unassuming charm; a certain skirling innocence is the order of the day.

The capacious and transparently structured booklet essay is by Haider himself and is in English only.

There is nothing brusque about these gentle Venetian aquarelles and they are rendered, by players and engineering team, with confident yet unassuming elegance.

 

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

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Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (January 12, 1876 – January 21, 1948) was an Italian composer and teacher. He is best known for his comic operas such as Il segreto di Susanna (1909). As well as his operas, Wolf-Ferrari wrote a number of instrumental works, mainly at the very beginning and very end of his career. He also wrote Idillio-concertino (essentially a chamber symphony), various pieces of chamber music. Wolf-Ferrari's work is not performed very widely although he is generally thought of as probably the finest writer of Italian comic opera of his time. His works often recall the opera buffa of the 18th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ermanno_Wolf-Ferrari

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Friedrich Haider (born 7 November 1961) is an Austrian conductor and pianist. He is a graduate of the Anton Bruckner Private University Linz and the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Haider had his debut in 1984 and, after various stations as an assistant, developed a repertoire at mainly smaller opera houses, which today comprises more than 60 titles and combines the most diverse subjects and styles. From 2004 to 2011, he principal conductor of the Oviedo Filarmonia in northern Spain, with which he performed 30 concert programmes and gave guest performances in Madrid, Tokyo and Paris.

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

https://www.friedrichhaider.com/en/home/

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