Another brilliant musical document from post-war Berlin

Quartetto Italiano: The Complete RIAS Recordings

The Quartetto Italiano was the first of the new post-war groups that inaugurated a new golden age of String Quartets: the Quartetto Italiano was formed in 1945, the Juilliard String Quartet and LaSalle Quartet in 1946, and the Janáček and Amadeus quartets in 1947. Audite here brings us three CDs worth of fabulous recordings for RIAS ("Radio in the American Sector" of Berlin). The RIAS studios were excellent, and their engineers highly accomplished, so we have (as with the Amadeus Quartet album I reviewed late last year) an excellent idea of how these musicians sounded, in this case between 1951 to 1963. The group's repertoire is interesting, especially considering the period: Donizetti, Malipiero and Cherubini provide an Italian antipasto, if I may be permitted a metaphor (pun!) in questionable taste (taste!). Their 1959 Ravel interpretation is searching, and sometimes fierce; maybe even more so than their late recordings of core repertoire. This is a standout performance, though it's perhaps less than Gallic. The early String Quartet no. 8 by Schubert, from 1963, has the characteristic QI sound of their studio recordings of the Viennese masters: it's taut and tight and intense, eschewing sentimentality and emphasizing structure over story-telling. The first of the Haydn String Quartets op. 77 is the earliest recording here, from 1951. It's sunnier and more fun (to listen to, and I expect, to play) than the more disciplined Haydn the Quartetto Italiano developed later in their recording career. These recordings are at a higher level in both sonics and interpretation than your average historic releases, and the excellent documentation and the fact that a number of the works have never been released, make this a must-listen for chamber music fans.

This album will be released on May 3, 2019.

Delightful neo-classical music from Italy

In Italy in the first half of the 20th century it would have been a natural impulse to think back to calmer and more civilized times. For the orchestral composer Italy's glories were some centuries in the past, during the hey-day of Corelli, Vivaldi and Locatelli. Thus three of our composers, Alfredo Casella, Giorgio Federico Ghedini and Gian Francesco Malipiero, shared a common neo-classical or neo-Baroque style with occasional forays into more modern passages, staying away, though from full-blown modernism. The tone is serene and humane, with much use of Baroque dance forms and rhythms, and the orchestration is open and light. Casella's Divertimento for Fulvia is an orchestral adaptation of his own Eleven Children's Pieces for piano, written as a ballet in 1940 and dedicated to his daughter. In this way it's rather similar to Villa-Lobos's Momoprecoce of 1921, an orchestration of his Carnaval das Criancas for piano, but it most closely resembles Stravinsky's 1919 pastiche of Italian Baroque music, Pulcinella. This is not to mention the closer-to-home example of Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances. Whatever the influences, this is very appealing music. Ghedini's Concerto grosso from 1927 has a similar kind of wit and simple, down-to-earth delight in melody, tempered though by slight Teutonic influences, of Beethoven and Richard Strauss especially. Malipiero's slight Imaginary Orient is atmospheric, with occasional chromatic passages denoting the Mysteries of the East, but it remains as rooted in nostalgia as Casella and Ghedini's works.

With the much younger composer Franco Donatoni's Music for Chamber Orchestra we enter a different sound world. This is delightful and appealing twelve-tone music, written after a stint at the 1954 Summer School for New Music at Darmstadt. Delightful and appealing twelve-tone music? It's true! Donatoni can thus be placed with his contemporaries Nono, Maderna and Berio, but also with the older composers on this disc, who share a common facility and Italian verve. Of the four works on the disc, all but the Casella are recording premieres, and all four are well played by the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana under Damian Iorio. This disc will be released on January 13, 2017.