Wolf-Ferrari

MUSICA ITALIANA Orchestral Works WOLF-FERRARI Karen Geoghegan bassoon BBC Philharmonic Gianandrea Noseda CHAN 10511 Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876 – 1948) Suite from the opera ‘I gioielli della Madonna’ (1911) 16:48 1 I Festa popolare 4:34 2 II Intermezzo 4:28 3 III Serenata 3:44 4 IV Danza napolitana 3:48 © Lebrecht Music & Arts Photo Library From the opera ‘I quattro rusteghi’ (1906) 5:31 5 Prelude 2:04 6 Intermezzo 3:26 Suite-Concertino in F major, Op.16 (1932)* 21:56 for bassoon and orchestra 7 I Notturno. Andante un poco mosso 9:23 8 II Strimpellata. Presto 2 :11 9 III Canzone. Andante cantabile 4:46 10 IV Finale. Andante con moto 5:26 From the opera ‘Il segreto di Susanna’ (1909) 6:25 11 Overture 2:44 12 Intermezzo 3:41 John Bradbury solo clarinet Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari 3 Wolf-Ferrari: Orchestral Works As an Italian opera composer who was The reason Italian opera houses took more successful in Germany than in his comparatively little interest in his work at From the opera ‘L’amore medico’ (1913) 13:32 own country, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari is a rare this time could have been that they were 13 Overture 7:59 phenomenon. He was born and died in Venice not ready for it. That is not to say that his 14 Intermezzo 5:33 but he made his home in or near Munich music was too progressive for them. On the Peter Dixon solo cello and most of his operas were first staged in contrary: if they were looking for something German versions in German opera houses. in the manner of Puccini or such verismo The duality in his professional life had its composers as Leoncavallo or Mascagni, From the opera ‘Il campiello’ (1936) 5:54 origins in his mixed family background – his scores such as Il segreto di Susanna must 15 Intermezzo 3:24 mother, a pianist, was Italian, his father, a have seemed hopelessly old-fashioned. Wolf- painter, was from Baden in Germany – and is Ferrari was aware of that – which is surely 16 Ritornello 2:30 reflected even in his name: Hermann Friedrich why he applied himself to a verismo opera, Wolf became Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari in his Il gioielli della Madonna, in something like From the opera ‘La dama boba’ (1939) 8:19 early twenties when he italianised his first the style of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana. name and, partly perhaps to avoid confusion In a sense, however, this was a step back 17 Overture with the Austrian composer Hugo Wolf, added rather than forward. His natural idiom was TT 79:28 his mother’s maiden name to his surname. an anticipation, by a decade or more, of the Although Wolf-Ferrari did enjoy some neo-classical style which, paradoxically, would Karen Geoghegan bassoon* success in his native country in the second be the avant-garde trend in Western music BBC Philharmonic half of his career, only one of his first six from, say, Stravinsky’s Pulcinella in 1920 to Yuri Torchinsky leader operas to reach the stage owed its initial his Rake’s Progress thirty years later. By 1925, production to an opera house in Italy. After when Gli amanti sposi was presented at La Gianandrea Noseda Cenerentola failed at La Fenice in Venice in Fenice, Venice had caught up with Wolf-Ferrari. 1900 but flourished in Bremen in 1902, the An early example of his accomplishment in next five (Le donne curiose, I quattro rusteghi, the neo-classical style is I quattro rusteghi Il segreto di Susanna, I gioielli della Madonna, (The Four Curmudgeons), the second of and L’amore medico) were all first performed his five operas based on comedies by the in Germany. Venetian classical playwright Carlo Goldoni. 4 5 First performed at the Hoftheater in Munich enjoys the occasional cigarette – is established (even without the voices of the original score) dangerously close to the waltz time that in 1906 in a German version called Die vier by her association with a delightful Mozart of how far Wolf-Ferrari was prepared to go would have been out of place in Molière’s Grobiane – and later known in English- pastiche which is heard early on in the opera for the full-scale verismo effect. And yet the Paris, it features a solo cello in one of the speaking countries, thanks to a highly on the piano and is recalled, with some Intermezzo, with its violin line drawn over most attractive of all manifestations of the successful translation by Edward J. Dent, as harmonic distractions, by the orchestra in the pizzicato accompaniment, has much that is composer’s melodic gift. School for Fathers – it is animated by a score Intermezzo. characteristic of the composer in spite of Wolf-Ferrari differed from other Italian of characteristic wit and vitality. The short If Wolf-Ferrari’s brave venture into verismo the Neapolitan melodic colouring. So has the opera composers of his day not only by Prelude, with its graceful melodic line drawn did disappointingly little for his career in Italy, ‘Serenata’, an orchestral-intermezzo version reason of his professional allegiance by muted violins or cellos over a pizzicato where it was not seen until five years after his of Rafaele’s melodious second-act serenade to to Germany but also by virtue of his accompaniment, charmingly evokes decorous death, I gioielli della Madonna (The Jewels Maliella, crafted with no little contrapuntal skill. accomplishment in music for the concert hall, eighteenth-century manners. The similarly of the Madonna) proved to be successful The ‘Danza napolitana’, described in the stage not least in a much-admired Violin Concerto scored Intermezzo reflects, in its recall of a just about everywhere else. After its first directions as ‘a regular orgy in the Apache completed two years before he died. The popular melody already heard in the first act, performance at the Kurfürstenoper in Berlin style’, is as reckless as the first movement in its Suite-Concertino in F major for bassoon the Venetian setting. in 1911 (as Der Schmuck der Madonna), it celebration of the popular idiom. and orchestra, Op. 16, one of three works While he adored Wagner and Verdi, was immediately taken up in Chicago, New Although Wolf-Ferrari was never again to featuring a solo woodwind instrument, was as models for his own work Wolf-Ferrari York and London. From there it went in embrace the verismo style, the vast expansion composed in 1933 between two Goldoni preferred composers such as Pergolesi, triumph not only to other opera houses in of resources required by I gioielli della comedies, La vedova scaltra and Il campiello. Cimarosa, Mozart and Rossini. This finds the United States and Europe but also to Madonna could not be completely reversed It is not, however, written in the Goldoni no better illustration than the brilliant little the world’s concert halls, where orchestral when he returned to comedy. His next opera, spirit. Far from treating the bassoon as the overture to the one-act comedy Il segreto excerpts continued to keep the composer’s L’amore medico (Doctor Cupid) based on comedian of the orchestra, the composer di Susanna (Susanna’s Secret), based on a reputation alive even when he was forgotten Moliere’s L’Amour médecin, could have been takes it seriously, giving it a particularly contemporary libretto by Enrico Golisciani, for everything else except the Overture to set in his familiar Goldoni manner but the interesting role in the opening ‘Notturno’. which was first performed at the Munich Il segreto di Susanna. score is actually rather more colourful than It finds its way with difficulty through the Hoftheater as Susannens Geheimnis in 1909. Set in Naples – where blacksmith that. The use of brass instruments in the nocturnal darkness evoked by lower strings A display of rare contrapuntal mastery, it Gennaro’s love for Maliella fatally tempts him stately seventeenth-century pastiche at the and expresses its apprehension in a melodic introduces four themes in quick succession to outdo his rival (the camorrista Rafaele) beginning of the Overture is an immediate line which the orchestra almost entirely with a view to presenting them all at once by stealing jewellery for her from an effigy indication of his enlarged palette. The quicker avoids. The violins twice suggest alternative towards the end. It is accomplished with such of the Madonna – I gioielli della Madonna is main section, while it is entirely characteristic ideas, on the second occasion introducing a tuneful ease and such lightness of touch, abundant in local colour. The ‘Festa popolare’, in its deft treatment of strings and woodwind, graceful minuet which the bassoon agrees however, that there is not the slightest hint a wild night with the camorra featuring an is more developed, more dramatic and more to adopt as the theme of a slower episode of a technical exercise about it. Susanna’s initially boisterous tarantella that broadens varied in material than earlier examples of before going back to the now not-quite-so- essential innocence – her secret is that she out towards the end, is a vivid demonstration its kind. As for the Intermezzo, which comes dark shadows of the beginning. 6 7 The rest of the work offers a more had adapted the last two Goldoni texts, scholarship from the South Square Trust and introducing new and adventurous repertoire conventional characterisation of the bassoon. turned to La dama boba (The Stupid Lady) the Leverhulme Foundation. During her time into its programmes has meant that many A good-humoured if faintly macabre by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega.

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