Review By Paul Turok,Turok’s Choice,December 2009
Ildebrando Pizzetti was a refined, conservative composer who, besides operas, wrote much instrumental music as well. His Concerto dell’estate (1928), Three Symphonic Preludes to Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex (1904), the Prelude to Clitennestra (1964), Three Pieces for Orchestra: La Festa delle Panatenee (1936), all music worth hearing, are competently played by the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra under Myron Michailidis (8.572013)…
Review By François Laurent,Diapason,December 2009
8.572013_Diapason_122009_gr.pdf
Review By Arthur S. Leonard,Leonard Link,October 2009
Two of the works on the recording are billed as world premiere recordings: A suite of three pieces for orchestra from incidental music to Greek dramas, grouped under the name The Feast of the Panathenaea, and the Prelude to Pizzetti’s opera Clytemnestra. Works available in alternative recordings are Concerto dell’estate, and the three Preludes for Sophocle’s tragedy Oedipus the King. All of this music sounds very much like Respighi, with the same rich, warm orchestral sound, and the same practice of building to huge climaxes pulling in the full weight of a large romantic orchestra. The recording sounds excellent to me, and the music is enchanting, if not so memorable in terms of the themes and their working out as Respighi’s Roman Trilogy. But anybody searching for some splendid-sounding romantic music in gorgeous performances can’t go wrong with this budget Naxos release. I applaud their initiative in seeking out unusual repertory and finding good, underrecorded groups to perform it.
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Review By Bob Briggs,MusicWeb International,September 2009
The Concerto dell’estate (Summer Concerto) is a bright and sunny work—a kind of Concerto for orchestra—full of vivid colours, virtuoso instrumentation and packed with good tunes. But this is a very languid summer experience. The tempo of the music is never really very fast—I suppose that it must be too hot for rushing round. The slow movement seems to have more than a tinge of Beethoven about it (!) and the finale contains moments of darkness in the midst of the jollity. Certainly this is most unexpected. It is a beautiful piece, expertly crafted, with clear, clean textures and none of the orchestral excess which can make Respighi sometimes tiresome…a fine achievement as a performance.
The Preludes to L’edipo Re di Sofocle…are highly dramatic pieces, full of heavy emotion and spectacular orchestration…The Preludio: Clitennestra is a dramatic and nervy affair. Lots of tension and drive. I wonder if the opera lives up to the promise of this overture?
Finally, La Festa delle Panatenee (The Feast of the Panathenaea), is a suite made from incidental music to a theatrical production. These are much lighter than the rest of the programme, and, oddly, there’s more than a whiff of both Carl Nielsen and Vaughan Williams in folksong mode! It’s a delightful work and makes a suitably entertaining finish to an interesting disk.
Despite my, very slight, complaint about the sound, this is a real must-have…and this is a really good introduction to this neglected composer.
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Review By Bob McQuiston,Classical Lost and Found,July 2009
Unlike the grandiose symphonic creations of Respighi (1879–1936), Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880–1968) wrote music of great refinement closer to that of Malipiero (1882–1973) and Casella (1883–1947). That’s not to imply it’s devoid of drama. On the contrary, the orchestral selections presented here are full of emotion in keeping with Pizzetti’s stated belief that music should express life in action.
The Concerto dell-estate (Summer Concerto) dating from 1928 is an undiscovered Italian late romantic masterpiece, which the composer understandably considered his most important work. In three-movement and for a large orchestra, the concertante parts are for a variety of instrumental soloists and groups. But the emphasis is on tone color rather than virtuosity, and the mood conjured up is one of bucolic summer nature music . No wonder Pizzetti referred to it as his “pastoral symphony.”
In the first “Morning” movement one can picture some idyllic countryside with rolling green hills, colorful red barns and all sorts of farmyard animals going about their matinal routines. The activity slows as the sun beats down and the temperature rises. Then an afternoon storm clears the air, and the day ends with joyful thematic remembrances of how it all began. The following “Nocturnal” movement finds the composer in a rustic introspective frame of mind. There’s a neoclassical simplicity about the “Galliard and Finale” that ends the work. The peasant-like dance with which it begins transforms into an impressionistic landscape bathed in gorgeous Pizzettian twilight. Don’t miss out on this one!
All of the remaining selections on this disc…have ties to ancient Greece. The triptych, Tre Preludii Sinfonici per L’Edipo Re di Sofocle (Three Symphonic Preludes for Sophocle’s Oedipus Rex), was written in 1904 for a Milan production of the play, and very effectively capture it’s emotional highs. The first reflects the misery of the Theban people suffering from a terrible plague. The second is highly agitated and in keeping with such psychologically supercharged concepts as patricide and incest. The last conjures up the world of tragedy and darkness blind Oedipus finds himself in. Although there may be a tiny glimmer of hope at the very end, this must rank with some of the most harrowing music written for the theater.
The program continues with the prelude to the composer’s last opera Clitennestra (Clytemnestra), which was written between 1962 and 1964. It’s an ideal example of his ability to come up with highly dramatic music without resorting to the chromatic and orchestral excesses exhibited by many other late romantic composers (see the newsletter of 20 November 2006).
The disc concludes with three more incidental selections written for the 1936 Festa delle Panatence (The Feast of the Panathenaea) held at the Greek temples in Paestum. This was a staged series of open-air recitations based on the writings of Homer, Sophocles and several other Classical Greek authors. Pizzetti had made a study of ancient music, and while no one has any idea what it actually sounded like, he incorporated some of the modes known to exist back then into what we have here.
The lighthearted opening prelude is quite wind oriented, and one can imagine the flute as a modern day representation of the aulos so often pictured in Classical Greek art. Pentatonic and modal references abound in The “Dance for the Offering of the Peplos to Pallas Athena.” Alternately slow and fast, there’s a Delphic ambiguity about it that’s captivating. The final “March of the Procession” is appropriately ceremonious, and with encouragement from the brass, builds to a rousing conclusion. It ends this exquisite disc in cinematic fashion, but only in the best sense of that term.
It seems quite appropriate that a Greek orchestra, the Thessaloniki Sate Symphony Orchestra, is represented here, considering all the Hellenic associations present. Having appeared on only two other CDs, chances are you’ve never heard this group. But it’s a class act, and under conductor Myron Michailidis the performances are technically perfect, highly colorful and full of enthusiasm for this unusual repertoire.
The recordings are very good from the soundstage perspective, and recreate a convincing virtual image of the orchestra in a warm venue. The instrumental timbre is natural enough, but those liking crystalline highs may find the sound a bit rolled off for their tastes.
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Review By Robert R. Reilly,InsideCatholic.com,May 2009
It is a complete mystery to me how the new Naxos recording of Ildebrando Pizzetti’s Concerto dell’estate (1928) could be the first one in 40 years and the only one on CD. It is one of the most beautiful, evocative pieces of Italian orchestral music in the 20th century. It is right up there with Respighi and Malipiero. When you hear it, you will wonder, too, and be grateful for Naxos’s enterprise in getting the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra, under Myron Michailidis, to record it, along with several other Pizzetti pieces, which are receiving their recording premieres. The translation of the concerto’s name is “summer music.” What could be more fitting for this pastoral symphony? It’s magic time on Naxos 8.572013.
Review By Uncle Dave Lewis ,Allmusic.com,May 2009
This…is a riotously colorful disc of orchestral music that is splendidly well performed and benefits to a great extent from the discipline and respect for the material imposed by the conductor, not to mention the diligent Greek musicologists who worked to raise this effort. Their interest was not in Pizzetti the Italian composer, but for his significant interest in Greek subjects; ergo the inclusion of the startling (for its time) Tre Preludii Sinfonici per L’Edipo Re di Sofocle (1904) and the two world-premiere recordings: Clitennestra: Tragedia per in un preludio e due atti (1962–1964) and La Festa delle Panatenee (1936). Concerto dell’estate (1928) is included as the main work mainly due to the opportunity afforded by its long absence from the catalog; long regarded as Pizzetti’s finest orchestral piece, one would have to traverse back some four decades to find the most recent recording of it made prior to this one.
One reason for Pizzetti’s relative neglect is that it is hard to discern with twenty first century ears what made his music “modern” in the first place. Both the concerto and La Festa fall halfway stylistically between Respighi and neo-classicism, whereas the early Tre Preludii Sinfonici falls somewhere between the music of Busoni and Richard Strauss. It is true that Pizzetti was never able to shake his devotion to post-romanticism, no matter how far outside the box he thought about his music; Clitimnestra sounds like something from the 1910s, rather than the 1960s, when it was written. However, for some listeners that should be a plus, rather than a hindrance, and if the interest is there, hindered not should you be when it comes to Naxos’ Pizzetti: Concerto dell’estate.
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Review By Andrea Bedetti,guide.supereva.it,May 2009
Contro la grossolanità musicale, contro il mito del melodramma, soprattutto quello in chiave verista. Questa fu la missione musicale di Ildebrando Pizzetti (nato a Parma nel 1880 e morto a Roma nel 1968), uno dei massimi compositori italiani dello scorso secolo. Insieme con altri colleghi e musicisti della sua generazione, da Gian Francesco Malipiero ad Alfredo Casella, fino a Ottorino Respighi, Pizzetti si fece promotore di una “rinascita” della musica colta del nostro Paese in netta antitesi alle prerogative artistiche ed estetiche del melodramma verista. Ma, a differenza degli altri rappresentanti della cosiddetta “generazione dell’Ottanta”, impegnati nell’esaltare soprattutto un costrutto squisitamente strumentale, il compositore parmense cercò una nuova fase di dialogo, di comunicazione tra musica e parola.
Il suo amore per il teatro prima e l’incontro fondamentale con Gabriele D’Annunzio poi, risultarono determinanti per Ildebrando Pizzetti (che vediamo nella foto a fianco) per delineare la sua visione estetica nel rapporto tra parola e musica, intrisa di un’altissima potenza drammatica, senza la quale, sempre secondo il musicista emiliano, l’arte non ha ragione di esistere. Questa drammaticità, a suo dire, doveva essere ribadita anche nella pura musica strumentale, la quale per manifestarsi doveva «avere un contenuto nato nel conflitto per non essere mera manipolazione di suoni e rumori», come scrisse Pizzetti nel suo fondamentale articolo “Musica e dramma”, che risale all’ottobre del 1931. Tale drammaticità, tale “conflittualità” ben si evidenziano nel pregevole disco che l’etichetta Naxos ha voluto dedicare proprio ad alcune composizioni di Ildebrando Pizzetti, più precisamente quelle in cui l’autore manifestò la sua passione per la tragedia e il teatro greci.
A registrare questo compact disc ci ha pensato il direttore greco Myron Michailidis (nella foto a fianco), alla testa della “Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra”, che ha presentato quattro rare composizioni sinfoniche di Pizzetti, il “Concerto dell’estate” (1928), i “Tre Preludii Sinfonici per L’Edipo Re di Sofocle” (1904), “Clitennestra: Tragedia in un preludio e due atti” (1962–64) e “La Festa delle Panatenee: Tre pezzi per orchestra” (1936), queste ultime due in prima registrazione mondiale. Un cd ideale per comprendere al meglio quella “drammaticità” così invocata e auspicata dal compositore parmense, a cominciare dai “Tre Preludii Sinfonici per L’Edipo Re di Sofocle”, che evidenziano un carattere emotivo, mettendo in rilievo i punti di svolta salienti della celeberrima tragedia. Anche la “Clitennestra”, una delle ultime opere di Pizzetti, fa presagire, attraverso timbri cupi e desolanti, la dimensione annichilente del fato che sovrasta dei e uomini.
Ma la capacità orchestrale, la tavolozza dei mille colori e delle molteplici sfumature timbriche che Ildebrando Pizzetti era in grado di dispensare nelle sue partiture si evidenziano in quel magico brano che è il “Concerto dell’estate”, una vera e propria “sinfonia pastorale”, tributo al mondo della natura e soprattutto dei paesaggi della campagna. Questa composizione risente inevitabilmente dell’influenza di quel sinfonismo europeo del primo Novecento (soprattutto Ravel e Debussy), in cui spiccano anche elementi neoclassici, nel richiamo delle sonorità arcaiche della partitura. Myron Michailidis e la compagine orchestrale greca (nella foto di Matt Bromley si vede un momento della registrazione) riescono a fornire una prova adeguata, mettendo in rilievo quegli spunti, quei mutamenti dinamici così cari alla volontà espressiva di Pizzetti, ossia una visione musicale in grado di “svelare” più che di “raccontare”, di impregnare l’ascoltatore, più che di farlo compartecipe. Discreta anche la registrazione, con l’orchestra messa sufficientemente a fuoco dalla disposizione dei microfoni, anche se nei passaggi di maggiore congestione sonora si avvertono punti di saturazione timbrica. Buone le note di copertina (presenti anche in italiano).
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Review By Siebe Riedstra,www.opusklassiek.nl,May 2009
Van de vier rond 1880 geboren Italiaanse componisten Ottorino Respighi, Ildebrando Pizzetti, Gian Francesco Malipiero en Alfredo Casella heeft alleen Respighi de tand des tijds doorstaan. De andere drie zijn ook in hun geboorteland veroordeeld tot de geschiedenisboeken. Gelukkig hoeft dat niet te betekenen dat we van hun muziek geen kennis kunnen nemen. Het onvermoeibare label Naxos is al een tijdje bezig met dit viertal en kan daarbij wat Malipiero betreft putten uit een rijke verzameling opnames die indertijd werden gemaakt voor Marco Polo, de duurdere broer van Naxos. Deze cd is echter nieuw opgenomen en verschijnt onder het kopje 20th Century Italian Classics. Er staat ons kennelijk nog meer moois te wachten.
Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880–1968) leefde lang genoeg om van een jonge man met hemelbestormende ideeën uit te groeien tot een heer met verklaard conservatieve meningen, die hij niet onder stoelen of banken stak. Maar om bij het begin te beginnen: in operaland Italië was het rond 1900 een en al verismo wat de klok sloeg, en een componist die succes wenste te hebben kon daar maar beter rekening mee houden. Puccini, Mascagni, Ponchielli, Giordano, dat waren de mannen die het gemaakt hadden. Pizzetti zette zich hiertegen af; hij wilde een muziekdramatiek die zich weer bezig zou gaan houden met humanistische vraagstukken, niet met moord, doodslag en overspel. Zijn kennismaking en vervolgens vriendschap met de Italië’s meest beroemde – en controversiële – literator Gabriele D’Annunzio speelde daarbij een doorslaggevende rol. Pizzetti voorzag veel van D’Annunzio’s toneelstukken van muziek en ook als librettist stond de grote dichter hem bij. Wereldberoemd is hij met zijn opera’s niet geworden, maar kenners weten Debora e Jaele (door de KRO in 1994 geprogrammeerd in Utrecht) en Assassinio nella Cattedrale naar het toneelstuk van T.S.Eliot naar waarde te schatten. De muziekdramatische wereld van Pizzetti vindt zijn wortels in Wagner, Debussy en Dukas (Ariane e Barbe-bleu).
Uit het voorafgaande wordt duidelijk dat Pizzetti in de allereerste plaats een vocale componist is geweest. Zijn beste en meest originele werk vinden we in zijn scheppingen voor koor, of dat nu de grote koren uit de eerste akte van Debora e Jaele zijn of de onbegeleide Messa di Requiem, geschreven ter nagedachtenis aan zijn eerste vrouw. Intensieve studie van de koormuziek uit de renaissance in zijn conservatoriumtijd stimuleerde hem in die richting. De resultaten ervan zijn overigens uitstekend te beluisteren op een cd met de Messa en een tweetal aanvullende koorwerken op Chandos CHAN 8964, door het Deens Radiokoor o.l.v. Stefan Parkman.
Het artikel in The New Grove over Pizzetti van de hand van Pizzetti-kenner John Waterhouse is niet bepaald vriendelijk over de orkestwerken van Pizzetti. We lezen: ‘Pizzetti’s orchestral music does not, on the whole, reveal him at his best. Nevertheless the colourful incidental music for D’Annunzio’s La pisanella (best known now through the popular concert suite) reveals that the rather grey, drab orchestral palette of so many of his other works, including most of the operas, was the result of deliberate choice rather than inability to do otherwise’. Gelukkig valt het met dat groezelige orkestpalet reuze mee in de werken die we op deze cd kunnen beluisteren. Het Concerto dell’ estate (Zomerconcert) is een kleurrijk werk dat door de componist als zijn beste werk werd beschouwd dat hij zelf zijn ‘Pastorale Symfonie’ noemde. Ruim veertig jaar geleden vergastte Decca ons op een lp met dit concert en voornoemde suite uit La Pisanella door het Suisse Romande Orkest onder Lamberto Gardelli. Die opname is gelukkig opnieuw uitgebracht en gekoppeld met werken van Rota (Concerto voor strijkorkest) en Respighi (Trittico Botticelliano) verschenen op Decca Eloquence 476 9766. Heet van de naald (mei 2009) is de budget-heruitgave op Hyperion Helios van een prachtige cd die Osmo Vänskä in 1998 maakte met het BBC Scottish Symphony Orhestra (CDH55329). Daarop eveneens LaPisanella, plus de drie Sophocles-préludes, het Rondo Veneziano en Preludio a un altro giorno.
De grote verrassing van deze uitgave zit in de staart: de drie orkeststukken die in 1936 ontstonden voor een openluchtvoorstelling in Griekenland op teksten van Homerus, Sophocles en andere klassieke Griekse schrijvers. Pizzetti had net Respighi opgevolgd als directeur van de Accademia Santa Cecilia te Rome en zijn interesse in oude Griekse muziek was recentelijk gewekt. Onderzoek naar die materie stond nog in de kinderschoenen, dus is de aanwending ervan eerder folkloristisch, maar dat doet niets af aan de kwaliteit. Wonderlijk genoeg roept het klinkend resultaat herinneringen op aan Carl Nielsen, maar ja, die schreef dan ook een Helios Ouverture.
Het beluisteren van Griekse orkesten was nog niet zo lang geleden een weinig vrolijk stemmende aangelegenheid, getuige lokale opnames van werk van componisten als Kalomiris en Skalkottas waarbij je vertwijfeld je oren toestopte. Dimitri Mitropoulos week niet voor niets uit naar de Verenigde Staten. De tijden zijn veranderd. Het orkest van Thessaloniki is een uitstekend spelende formatie, dirigent Myron Michailidis heeft greep en visie op deze partituren, en de opname doet ze warm opklinken. Hoezo groezelig?
We kijken met belangstelling uit naar de opvolger; misschien La Pisanella?
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Review By David Hurwitz,ClassicsToday.com,January 2009
Ildebrando Pizzetti’s Concerto dell’estate of 1928 (really a three-movement symphony) is one of the most attractive of all early 20th-century Italian orchestral works. It hasn’t been recorded since Gardelli did it for Decca some 40 years ago, and this new version is most welcome. While Myron Michailidis chooses virtually identical tempos in the outer movements, the central nocturne runs a bit slower (but not duller) than the earlier version, at some gain in atmosphere. The recording balances, which place the woodwinds and harps relatively forward, also suit the work very well. It’s a beautiful performance, well played and atmospheric.
I have a sentimental attachment to the Oedipus Rex Symphonic Preludes: this was the very first work that I played as a percussionist with the Johns Hopkins Symphony Orchestra in my undergraduate days, and it introduced me to Pizzetti. To be honest, the cymbal part didn’t give me much to do, but it did offer me the opportunity to simply listen to a very beautiful piece that, like the Concerto dell’estate, deserves far greater currency than it enjoys. It was recorded relatively recently by Vänskä for Hyperion, quite well too, but this version is just as good, with confident horn playing and powerful climaxes.
The remaining two works receive their recording premieres. Pizzetti was basically a gentle, lyrical composer, but he could get his dander up quite effectively: witness the five-minute prelude to Clitennestra. Composed in the 1960s just before his death, you’d never know it from the harmonic style—it’s just as attractive and approachable as the Oedipus Rex music of some 60 years earlier. La Feste delle Panatenee is another tryptich that, like the work just mentioned, takes ancient Greece as its inspiration. Less somber than its predecessor, it concludes with an imposing procession that could use a touch more heft from the brass and a less prominent snare drum--but as with all of these performances conductor Michailidis and the Thessaloniki State Symphony certainly do the music justice. Strongly recommended.
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Review By David Denton, Naxos,March 2009
Apart from the colourful tone-poems of Respighi, we hear little today of the large quantity or symphonic music composed in Italy during the early 20th century.
Even the masterpieces of Malipiero and Casella are seldom performed in international concert halls, while the output of Ildebrando Pizzetti has all but vanished. Born in 1880, it was in his lifeblood to compose opera, and from the outset Pizzetti became part of the Italian faction who decried the way that music was progressing, and lodged himself as a counter-reactionary. Well into his maturity, when the Concerto dell’estate (Summer Concerto) was composed in 1928, his style harks back to the end of the nineteenth century, full of lyric grace, and sheer beauty of sound. By then he had composed only a handful of concert works, the earliest published score, L’Edipo Re di Sofocle, coming from 1904and cast in the shape of three symphonic preludes. Those take us even further back in style, and are not ‘stand alone’ preludes but make a nicely contrasted trio. Receiving its world première recording. La Festa delle Panatenee contains three pieces composed in 1936 as incidental music to readings from Greek writers, There is a stated input from Gregorian chant, yet it will be the readily pleasing film-style content that gives most satisfaction. The disc is completed by the short prelude to his last opera completed in 1964, Clitennestra (Clytemnestra), based on the bloody story from Greek mythology. It is a potent, and, by Pizzetti standards, a modern score. The Thessaloniki State Symphony, with Myron Michailidis conducting, sounds a most useful orchestra captured in effective sound engineering.
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