Dallapiccola: Sonatina Canonica - Tartiniana Seconda
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Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975): Complete Works for Violin and Piano, and for Piano The centenary of the birth of Luigi Dallapiccola prompted something of a...
Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975):
Complete Works for Violin and Piano, and for Piano
The centenary of the birth of Luigi Dallapiccola
prompted something of a reassessment of the Italian
composer whose reputation, in the three decades since
his death, has been accorded passive respect rather than
active promotion. The relatively limited extent of his
output, some four dozen works, is belied by its diversity
of expression, though following such powerful wartime
works as Canti di prigionia (1941) and the opera
Il prigioniero (1948), Dallapiccola's music tends to the
contemplative and philosophic, qualities for which his
magnum opus, the opera Ulisse, was roundly criticized
at its Berlin première in 1968. Yet his questing approach
to composition meant that there are few, if any,
unimportant or minor pieces, and, while his instrumental
works are neither especially numerous nor large-scale
in design or ambition, they do provide an illuminating
perspective on his musical thinking as a whole.
Although his earliest extant compositions date
from his eighteenth year, Dallapiccola was a relatively
slow developer who published nothing substantial until
the Partita of 1932. Perhaps not surprisingly for a
composer from Southern Europe (his formative years
were directly affected by being born in the disputed
region which, initially part of the Austrian Empire, was
absorbed by Italy in 1918), vocal music dominated his
creativity from the beginning. His earliest published
instrumental piece is the three-part cycle Inni, written
in 1935. Subtitled 'Musica per tre pianoforti', which
indicates its highly unusual scoring (though modern
technology allows the work, as here, to be recorded and
then multi-tracked by a single pianist), it opens with
something akin to a stylized Baroque prelude such as
Ravel might have essayed, proceeding to a sombre
piece whose funereal manner is checked by a constantly
shifting rhythmic emphasis and a gradually
accumulating momentum. The final movement pursues
an intensive if understated dialogue between the three
instruments, culminating in a decisive final gesture.
Dallapiccola did not essay a work for solo piano
until 1942-3, when he composed the Sonata canonica
after solo violin Caprices by Nicolò Paganini, thereby
paying homage both to an earlier age of Italian music,
and also the contrapuntal techniques of the Renaissance
and Baroque eras which exerted a profound influence
on his later compositions. The first movement begins as
a gently intricate study, before a livelier music emerges
in contrast, with the initial material briefly returning as
before. The second movement frames a dance-like idea
with overtly rhetorical flourishes, while the third is a
pensive and harmonically subtle treatment of one of
Paganini's most winsome melodies. The march-like
fourth movement then rounds off the work in a goodhumoured
and appropriately capricious fashion.
At the same time he composed the above work,
Dallapiccola was also engaged on a ballet score for
Venice. Marsia, to a scenario by Aurel Miloss, draws
on the Greek legend in which the satyr and flautist
Marsyas challenges Apollo to a contest of skill. He is
outwitted then flayed alive by the god, while the tears
of the mourners become a river bearing Marsyas's
name. The success of its first performance at La Fenice
in September 1948 prompted the composer to arrange
portions of the ballet for concert use - hence the
Frammenti sinfonici for orchestra of 1948, and the Tre
episodi for piano of 1949. The latter is so compiled as
to make an effective slow-fast-slow format away from
the ballet's directly descriptive concerns. It begins with
Angoscioso, a moody study whose undemonstrative
virtuosity infers the more impressionist piano writing of
Debussy and Ravel, building to a brief but strident
climax before the sombre close. Ostinato, dominated by
rapid repeated-note sequences, suggests early
Prokofiev in its scintillating brilliance and dynamic
range. Sereno, by turns stark and lyrical, and shot
through with an acute poignancy, brings the sequence
to a quiet though not necessarily calm conclusion.
The protracted composition of Il prigioniero gave
rise to several smaller works, not the least of which is
Due studi for violin and piano. Its genesis lies in music
for a documentary by Luigi Magnani on the life of Piero
della Francesca which never materialised, and which
Dallapiccola then reworked directly to fulfil a
commission from the Basle branch of the International
Society for Contemporary Music in 1947 (the pieces
were themselves revised as Due pezzi for orchestra the
same year). Not that the original subject-matter was
discounted: the chaste and ruminative Sarabanda draws
on the white shadings dominant in the painting of the
Queen of Sheba's procession, while the fierce and
angular Fanfara e Fuga evokes the red colouring in the
depiction of the death of Cosroe, King of Persia.
In 1952 Dallapiccola wrote what is perhaps the
most purely attractive of his instrumental works.
Quaderno musicale di Annalibera (orchestrated two
years later as Variazioni) is dedicated to the composer's
daughter on the occasion of her eighth birthday, her
name being a consequence of having being born in the
wake of Florence's liberation from German occupation.
The relaxed and engaging nature of the music belies
its very strict technical apparatus, one embodying both
the twelve-note serial thinking that the composer had
absorbed over the preceding decade, and a direct
homage to Bach. A transcription of his initials,
B flat - A - C - B natural, is given at the opening of the
first piece, Simbolo, in which serial and tonal elements
combine in a prelude of thoughtful anticipation, perhaps
the nearest Dallapiccola came to evoking the spare late
manner of Busoni. The brusque manner of Accenti leads
directly into the elegant canon of Contrapunctus
primus, then the limpid melodic flow of Linee similarly
precedes the playful Contrapunctus secundus. Fregi has
the feel of a nocturne, while Andantino amoroso e
Contrapunctus tertius has a melodic line played
forwards as well as backwards. The playful Ritmi is
followed by the sensuous Colore, then the stark Ombre,
before Quartina rounds off the suite expressively much
as it began.
The latest work here underlines Dallapiccola's
involvement with the Italian baroque, specifically the
composer Giuseppe Tartini, with whom he shared a
fascination for contrapuntal techniques such as the
present work brings out in full measure. Having
produced the divertissement Tartiniana, derived from
movements of unpublished violin concertos, in 1951,
Dallapiccola wrote a Tartiniana seconda during 1955-6.
First heard in violin and piano scoring, it was promptly
orchestrated, with the addition of a brief Intermezzo.
Both pieces differ from the Baroque and Classical
realisations of the previous Italian generation in
avoiding pastiche, as Dallapiccola was concerned not
with evoking a past era, but in what relevance its music
had for the present. The work opens with a keenly
expressive Pastorale which evokes a mood of graceful
yearning, and is followed by the rhythmically muscular
Tempo di Bourree, then the airily virtuosic Presto;
leggerissimo. The final, longest movement was also the
first to be written (as an 'Improvisation after Tartini'),
Variazioni unfolding as a sequence of contrasted
variants on the commanding theme announced at the
outset.
Richard Whitehouse
Sonatina canonica after Paganini (more info)
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I. Allegro comodo - 3:48
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II. Largo - Vivacissimo - Tempo primo - 1:28
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III. Andante sostenuto - 2:01
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IV. Alla marcia: Moderato - 2:25
3 Episodi (more info)
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I. Angoscioso - 4:22
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II. Ostinato - 3:54
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III. Sereno - 5:11
Quaderno musicale di Annalibera (more info)
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Simbolo - 3:06
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Accenti - - 0:31
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Contrapuntus primus - 1:09
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Linee - - 0:54
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Contrapunctus secundus - 0:26
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Fregi - - 1:20
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Andantino amoroso e Contrapunctus tertius - 1:20
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Ritmi - - 1:09
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Colore - - 1:18
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Ombre - 2:02
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Quartina - 1:54
Musica per 3 pianoforti, "Inni" (more info)
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I. Allegro molto sostenuto - 2:49
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II. Un poco adagio: funebre - 5:11
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III. Allegramente, ma solenne - 3:12
2 Studi (more info)
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I. Sarabanda - 5:26
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II. Fanfara e Fuga - 4:24
Tartiniana seconda (more info)
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I. Pastorale - 2:24
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II. Tempo di Bourree - 1:43
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III. Presto: leggerissimo - 1:46
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IV. Variazioni - 5:36