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Ghedini conducts Ghedini 8.111325 L’Olmeneta (The Elm Grove) – Concerto for orchestra and 2 concertante cellos 30:06 Ghedini conducts Ghedini 1 I Allegro molto moderato e tranquillo 7:48 ADD 2 II Caccia nell’Olmeneta (Allegro vivace) 2:46 3 III Molto adagio 11:38 4 IV Allegro quieto 7:54 Benedetto Mazzacurati and Mario Gusella, cellos Also Available: 5 Litanie alla Vergine 10:01 Marica Rizzo, soprano Giorgio Federico ‘Associazione Scarlatti’ Chorus, Naples (Elena Gubitosi, Chorus Master)

Musical Offering (after Johann Sebastian Bach) (excerpts) 33:25 6 Thema (Andante, gravemente) 1:21 GHEDINI 7 Ricercare a 3 (Andante poco mosso) 4:32 8 Canon perpetuus super thema regium (Largo) 2:04 Canones diversi: 9 I Canon a 2 (Allegro moderato) 0:35 L’Olmeneta 0 II A due violini all’unisono (Andante) 1:39 ! III Per motum contrarium (Andante marcato e mosso) 0:24 for 2 cellos and @ IV Per augmentationem, contrario motu (Pesante) 2:16 # Canon perpetuus (Allegro marcato) 2:22 orchestra Canon a 2 (Quaerendo invenietis): $ I Allegretto mosso 0:42 % II Animato 0:35 ^ III Più marcato 0:41 Litanie alla Vergine & IV Pesante 0:38 * Canon a 4 (Andante) 5:13 ( Ricercare a 6 (Andante sostenuto) 10:22 Musical Offering Orchestra Alessandro Scarlatti di Napoli • Giorgio Federico Ghedini (after J. S. Bach) Live Italian Radio recordings made in the Alessandro Scarlatti Hall of the Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella, Naples, on 28th March, 1952 8.111317 LP transfers: Ed Thompson • Audio Restoration Engineer: Andrew Lang (K&A Productions Ltd) Mazzacurati • Gusella • Rizzo Release editors: Peter Bromley and Paolo Zeccara Thanks to Marina and Victor Ledin, Michael Gray, Angelo Scottini and Massimo Bianchi Orchestra Alessandro Scarlatti di Napoli First issued in the USA in 1953 and 1954 on Colosseum CLPS 1039 (L’Olmeneta), 1044 (Musical Offering) and 1046 (Litanie) Giorgio Federico Ghedini Publishers: Universal Music Publishing Ricordi S.r.l., (tracks 1–5); Edizioni Suvini Zerboni (tracks 6–19) (1952 live recordings) 8.111325 5 8.111325 6 111325 bk Ghedini EU.qxd 2/11/08 13:24 Page 2

Giorgio Federico Ghedini (1892–1965) himself? – with violin and continuo), though this ‘There is a red herb called Glaspi and a white herb reason. Never say just “Let’s do that again”, but always composing room, luxury troubles me. Too good a piano L’Olmeneta • Litanie alla Vergine • Musical Offering after Bach recorded performance also omits the Canon a 2 (per called Egusa. They grow far apart, but beneath the blind have a stack of observations ready, and make them in distracts me with the sensuality of its sound. A tonos) and the Fuga canonica in Epidiapente. earth their roots meet and intertwine. Their leaves are purely technical terms – no flowery language. You can mediocre instrument sparks my imagination. Outer ‘Dear Giorgio, “sowed the good seed” in me.’ Decades later, after the By this time Ghedini, in his fifties, had belatedly different, but every seven years on both the same flower use an image or two, but they must always be related to simplicity kindles inner complexity… Direct external Hot off the press: good news about the undisputed Second World War, Ghedini repaid his debt to Bach with come to be acknowledged as the leading Italian blooms.’ the practical side of things: loud, less loud, bowings, stimuli (e.g. landscapes) are useless. Images left to lie success of my Litanies last night. Warm welcome from an orchestral realisation of the Musical Offering – Bach’s composer between the so-called ‘1880 generation’ – L’Olmeneta has four movements, the first two and legato, staccato and so on. Don’t worry too much about deep in the subconscious, after a long, arduous process, the public, unreserved praise from all the critics and own tribute to Frederick the Great, built on a theme Casella, Malipiero, Pizzetti and Respighi (all born last two running without a break. The brief second finds instrumental entries. Indicate them without disturbing impossible to explain, suddenly escape into the light, in musicians. And an immediate request for two more apparently extemporised by the King himself for Bach around 1880) – and Dallapiccola and Petrassi (both the two cellos jousting with two horns (and pairs of the flow. Just a look can do it. So: learn the whole score musical form. This mysterious incubation can last for performances later this month. How I wish you could to improvise on in fugue when he visited the royal born in 1904). Ghedini’s finest music has a strong other instruments) in a Hunt in the Elm Grove; but the off by heart: study, study, study.’ years… Conclusion: never make art a comfortable have heard this enchanting work of mine! So palace at Potsdam in 1747. Ghedini himself conducted kinship with ‘his’ Musical Offering: imaginative heart of the concerto is the haunting, yearning, almost ‘It is an unimaginable mystery, the creation of a career. Music is invention, always; it is divorced from transparent and pure and bright…’ the première of his version for Italian Radio in Turin orchestration and use of timbre (conductor’s nous?); Mahlerian melodic line of the long, extremely slow work of art, of the simple melodic line that is the reality, a dream, a poetic vision. You must love your The Italian composer Giorgio Federico Ghedini almost 200 years later, in 1946: unusual ensembles; inspiration from Baroque third movement. Ghedini’s recurrent ‘calmo’ marking essence of music... Melody is everything. Harmony is own art, at the price of whatever sacrifice.’ could never be accused of false modesty – but, writing ‘The Musical Offering had the success it deserved, structures, textures and even titles and subtitles – begins to feel like the calm before the storm; but though like the bottle to the wine, the frame to the painting. to his lifelong friend Giorgio Negri after the happy but one that – given the kind of music it is – I didn’t especially the concerto grosso, small solo groups it seems to rumble ever closer in the finale, the storm You need lines to create architecture... In my David Gallagher première of his Litanie alla Vergine (Litanies to the dare hope for. Everyone is asking when they can hear it alternating, contrasting and combining with larger ones. never breaks, and the work subsides into the shadowy Virgin Mary) in Bologna in 1927, Ghedini was clearly again. And with this concert I resumed my long- But in contrast to the Musical Offering’s counterpoint in mists and uneasy Ghedinian stillness from which it almost as surprised as he was proud. Success had been abandoned conducting activity. I didn’t have high incessant motion, the quintessential Ghedini germinated, its tension unresolved. Despite their a long time coming. Ghedini was almost 35, and only hopes of Ghedini the conductor. But actually I found atmosphere is one of stillness: a ‘unique, cold, hypnotic affinity, Glaspi and Egusa can never truly be united. just beginning to be recognised as a composer outside that my long years of experience and maturing, lyricism’, as the Italian music expert John C. G. Following the successful relaunch of his conducting his home city, Turin. Three years later the Litanies musically and spiritually, had perfected the gifts I Waterhouse put it – as if the serene, soaring, singing career with the Musical Offering, Ghedini took to the became his first work to be played outside Italy, showed right back at the age of seventeen. Now I’m radiance of the early Litanie alla Vergine has been podium more frequently – though he scarcely needed to cementing its pivotal rôle in the career he was fighting asking myself: why didn’t I become a conductor? Was infiltrated by a sense of unease. The mood may call to do so, even for his pocket: by the 1950s his music was to establish. that a good thing or a bad thing? Both. Good for mind Malipiero’s ‘musical mystery-plays’ – St Francis being taken up by some of the world’s greatest In his twenties Ghedini had struggled with the ‘all- composition, but bad for my… pocket. So: a good thing of Assisi (1920–21), La Cena (1927), La Passione conductors, including Celibidache (who performed consuming desire to compose: fantasising about for art.’ (1935) and Santa Eufrosina (1942) – or visionary L’Olmeneta) and Karajan, as well as Italians like writing important works, about becoming ‘somebody’; Quite apart from the question of whether so Vaughan Williams, or even more recent ‘Baltic Abbado, (whose sought-after Angelicum recording of beautiful plans, wonderful ideals... but no money: remarkable a theme could really have been invented by minimalism’; but mature Ghedini is rarely so the Concerto spirituale has never been reissued), composing doesn’t buy you bread, especially to start the King (did Bach adapt it?), the original Musical comfortable or comforting. Cantelli (another Ghedini pupil), De Sabata, Giulini and with.’ To make ends meet, he fell back on other Offering poses many musical puzzles. How are some of These qualities are epitomised in L’Olmeneta (The Muti. The recordings on this CD were made at the musical talents: he was a fine pianist, and a particularly the canons to be resolved? In what order did Bach want Elm Grove) of 1951, which found Ghedini (as he told beginning of a highly-successful tour from Naples to gifted conductor – he had burst on to the musical scene the movements to be played, and on what instruments? Giorgio Negri) ‘working like a dog’: Rome and Bologna in 1952: ‘Everyone,’ Ghedini as a precocious seventeen-year-old conducting As with other twentieth-century composers from ‘I’m going to call it “Concerto for orchestra and two observed, ‘is discovering I’m a born conductor’. Catalani’s Loreley in Novara (between Turin and Charles Koechlin to Anton Webern, Bach’s concertante cellos” – to satisfy my personal taste, to Perhaps unresolved tensions are the secret of Milan); but he found he hated the itinerant life of a contrapuntal tour-de-force stimulated Ghedini’s make it playable by the first desk of orchestral cellos Ghedini’s greatest work. The tension between performer, and gradually turned instead to teaching – orchestral individuality: he uses a variety of small, (much more practical), and to stop any of those conducting and composing. The tension between this which he turned out to be good at too: his composition usually homogeneous groups from within his unusual exhibitionist “tenors of the bow” using it as a vehicle to utterly down-to-earth advice from Ghedini to a budding pupils at the Milan Conservatory would include orchestra – including two pianos but no horns. Fuller show off their technique.’ conductor, and the subsequent mystical, almost Niccolò Castiglioni and Luciano Berio. Hopping from forces are used very sparingly, until the culminating The two anti-exhibitionist cello lines are ‘named’ in religious evocation of his compositional calling. The hotel room to hotel room in those early years, hacking four-part Canon and six-part Ricercare of the arch- Ghedini’s score as ‘Glaspi’ and ‘Egusa’, characterising tension between his near-arrogance and its antithesis, through popular operas that gave him no pleasure, form Ghedini creates: his manuscript score includes all their relationship by reference to lines from Gabriele the plain-speaking humility he shows here. Tensions Ghedini’s ‘refuge was the music of Beethoven and J. S. of Bach’s movements except the Trio Sonata D’Annunzio’s play La figlia di Iorio (The Daughter of illuminated, if not resolved, by his conclusion: Bach: I always carried their scores with me, and they (explicitly scored by Bach for flute – Frederick Iorio): ‘Never stop the orchestra without a very good

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Giorgio Federico Ghedini (1892–1965) himself? – with violin and continuo), though this ‘There is a red herb called Glaspi and a white herb reason. Never say just “Let’s do that again”, but always composing room, luxury troubles me. Too good a piano L’Olmeneta • Litanie alla Vergine • Musical Offering after Bach recorded performance also omits the Canon a 2 (per called Egusa. They grow far apart, but beneath the blind have a stack of observations ready, and make them in distracts me with the sensuality of its sound. A tonos) and the Fuga canonica in Epidiapente. earth their roots meet and intertwine. Their leaves are purely technical terms – no flowery language. You can mediocre instrument sparks my imagination. Outer ‘Dear Giorgio, “sowed the good seed” in me.’ Decades later, after the By this time Ghedini, in his fifties, had belatedly different, but every seven years on both the same flower use an image or two, but they must always be related to simplicity kindles inner complexity… Direct external Hot off the press: good news about the undisputed Second World War, Ghedini repaid his debt to Bach with come to be acknowledged as the leading Italian blooms.’ the practical side of things: loud, less loud, bowings, stimuli (e.g. landscapes) are useless. Images left to lie success of my Litanies last night. Warm welcome from an orchestral realisation of the Musical Offering – Bach’s composer between the so-called ‘1880 generation’ – L’Olmeneta has four movements, the first two and legato, staccato and so on. Don’t worry too much about deep in the subconscious, after a long, arduous process, the public, unreserved praise from all the critics and own tribute to Frederick the Great, built on a theme Casella, Malipiero, Pizzetti and Respighi (all born last two running without a break. The brief second finds instrumental entries. Indicate them without disturbing impossible to explain, suddenly escape into the light, in musicians. And an immediate request for two more apparently extemporised by the King himself for Bach around 1880) – and Dallapiccola and Petrassi (both the two cellos jousting with two horns (and pairs of the flow. Just a look can do it. So: learn the whole score musical form. This mysterious incubation can last for performances later this month. How I wish you could to improvise on in fugue when he visited the royal born in 1904). Ghedini’s finest music has a strong other instruments) in a Hunt in the Elm Grove; but the off by heart: study, study, study.’ years… Conclusion: never make art a comfortable have heard this enchanting work of mine! So palace at Potsdam in 1747. Ghedini himself conducted kinship with ‘his’ Musical Offering: imaginative heart of the concerto is the haunting, yearning, almost ‘It is an unimaginable mystery, the creation of a career. Music is invention, always; it is divorced from transparent and pure and bright…’ the première of his version for Italian Radio in Turin orchestration and use of timbre (conductor’s nous?); Mahlerian melodic line of the long, extremely slow work of art, of the simple melodic line that is the reality, a dream, a poetic vision. You must love your The Italian composer Giorgio Federico Ghedini almost 200 years later, in 1946: unusual ensembles; inspiration from Baroque third movement. Ghedini’s recurrent ‘calmo’ marking essence of music... Melody is everything. Harmony is own art, at the price of whatever sacrifice.’ could never be accused of false modesty – but, writing ‘The Musical Offering had the success it deserved, structures, textures and even titles and subtitles – begins to feel like the calm before the storm; but though like the bottle to the wine, the frame to the painting. to his lifelong friend Giorgio Negri after the happy but one that – given the kind of music it is – I didn’t especially the concerto grosso, small solo groups it seems to rumble ever closer in the finale, the storm You need lines to create architecture... In my David Gallagher première of his Litanie alla Vergine (Litanies to the dare hope for. Everyone is asking when they can hear it alternating, contrasting and combining with larger ones. never breaks, and the work subsides into the shadowy Virgin Mary) in Bologna in 1927, Ghedini was clearly again. And with this concert I resumed my long- But in contrast to the Musical Offering’s counterpoint in mists and uneasy Ghedinian stillness from which it almost as surprised as he was proud. Success had been abandoned conducting activity. I didn’t have high incessant motion, the quintessential Ghedini germinated, its tension unresolved. Despite their a long time coming. Ghedini was almost 35, and only hopes of Ghedini the conductor. But actually I found atmosphere is one of stillness: a ‘unique, cold, hypnotic affinity, Glaspi and Egusa can never truly be united. just beginning to be recognised as a composer outside that my long years of experience and maturing, lyricism’, as the Italian music expert John C. G. Following the successful relaunch of his conducting his home city, Turin. Three years later the Litanies musically and spiritually, had perfected the gifts I Waterhouse put it – as if the serene, soaring, singing career with the Musical Offering, Ghedini took to the became his first work to be played outside Italy, showed right back at the age of seventeen. Now I’m radiance of the early Litanie alla Vergine has been podium more frequently – though he scarcely needed to cementing its pivotal rôle in the career he was fighting asking myself: why didn’t I become a conductor? Was infiltrated by a sense of unease. The mood may call to do so, even for his pocket: by the 1950s his music was to establish. that a good thing or a bad thing? Both. Good for mind Malipiero’s ‘musical mystery-plays’ – St Francis being taken up by some of the world’s greatest In his twenties Ghedini had struggled with the ‘all- composition, but bad for my… pocket. So: a good thing of Assisi (1920–21), La Cena (1927), La Passione conductors, including Celibidache (who performed consuming desire to compose: fantasising about for art.’ (1935) and Santa Eufrosina (1942) – or visionary L’Olmeneta) and Karajan, as well as Italians like writing important works, about becoming ‘somebody’; Quite apart from the question of whether so Vaughan Williams, or even more recent ‘Baltic Abbado, (whose sought-after Angelicum recording of beautiful plans, wonderful ideals... but no money: remarkable a theme could really have been invented by minimalism’; but mature Ghedini is rarely so the Concerto spirituale has never been reissued), composing doesn’t buy you bread, especially to start the King (did Bach adapt it?), the original Musical comfortable or comforting. Cantelli (another Ghedini pupil), De Sabata, Giulini and with.’ To make ends meet, he fell back on other Offering poses many musical puzzles. How are some of These qualities are epitomised in L’Olmeneta (The Muti. The recordings on this CD were made at the musical talents: he was a fine pianist, and a particularly the canons to be resolved? In what order did Bach want Elm Grove) of 1951, which found Ghedini (as he told beginning of a highly-successful tour from Naples to gifted conductor – he had burst on to the musical scene the movements to be played, and on what instruments? Giorgio Negri) ‘working like a dog’: Rome and Bologna in 1952: ‘Everyone,’ Ghedini as a precocious seventeen-year-old conducting As with other twentieth-century composers from ‘I’m going to call it “Concerto for orchestra and two observed, ‘is discovering I’m a born conductor’. Catalani’s Loreley in Novara (between Turin and Charles Koechlin to Anton Webern, Bach’s concertante cellos” – to satisfy my personal taste, to Perhaps unresolved tensions are the secret of Milan); but he found he hated the itinerant life of a contrapuntal tour-de-force stimulated Ghedini’s make it playable by the first desk of orchestral cellos Ghedini’s greatest work. The tension between performer, and gradually turned instead to teaching – orchestral individuality: he uses a variety of small, (much more practical), and to stop any of those conducting and composing. The tension between this which he turned out to be good at too: his composition usually homogeneous groups from within his unusual exhibitionist “tenors of the bow” using it as a vehicle to utterly down-to-earth advice from Ghedini to a budding pupils at the Milan Conservatory would include orchestra – including two pianos but no horns. Fuller show off their technique.’ conductor, and the subsequent mystical, almost Niccolò Castiglioni and Luciano Berio. Hopping from forces are used very sparingly, until the culminating The two anti-exhibitionist cello lines are ‘named’ in religious evocation of his compositional calling. The hotel room to hotel room in those early years, hacking four-part Canon and six-part Ricercare of the arch- Ghedini’s score as ‘Glaspi’ and ‘Egusa’, characterising tension between his near-arrogance and its antithesis, through popular operas that gave him no pleasure, form Ghedini creates: his manuscript score includes all their relationship by reference to lines from Gabriele the plain-speaking humility he shows here. Tensions Ghedini’s ‘refuge was the music of Beethoven and J. S. of Bach’s movements except the Trio Sonata D’Annunzio’s play La figlia di Iorio (The Daughter of illuminated, if not resolved, by his conclusion: Bach: I always carried their scores with me, and they (explicitly scored by Bach for flute – Frederick Iorio): ‘Never stop the orchestra without a very good

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Giorgio Federico Ghedini (1892–1965) himself? – with violin and continuo), though this ‘There is a red herb called Glaspi and a white herb reason. Never say just “Let’s do that again”, but always composing room, luxury troubles me. Too good a piano L’Olmeneta • Litanie alla Vergine • Musical Offering after Bach recorded performance also omits the Canon a 2 (per called Egusa. They grow far apart, but beneath the blind have a stack of observations ready, and make them in distracts me with the sensuality of its sound. A tonos) and the Fuga canonica in Epidiapente. earth their roots meet and intertwine. Their leaves are purely technical terms – no flowery language. You can mediocre instrument sparks my imagination. Outer ‘Dear Giorgio, “sowed the good seed” in me.’ Decades later, after the By this time Ghedini, in his fifties, had belatedly different, but every seven years on both the same flower use an image or two, but they must always be related to simplicity kindles inner complexity… Direct external Hot off the press: good news about the undisputed Second World War, Ghedini repaid his debt to Bach with come to be acknowledged as the leading Italian blooms.’ the practical side of things: loud, less loud, bowings, stimuli (e.g. landscapes) are useless. Images left to lie success of my Litanies last night. Warm welcome from an orchestral realisation of the Musical Offering – Bach’s composer between the so-called ‘1880 generation’ – L’Olmeneta has four movements, the first two and legato, staccato and so on. Don’t worry too much about deep in the subconscious, after a long, arduous process, the public, unreserved praise from all the critics and own tribute to Frederick the Great, built on a theme Casella, Malipiero, Pizzetti and Respighi (all born last two running without a break. The brief second finds instrumental entries. Indicate them without disturbing impossible to explain, suddenly escape into the light, in musicians. And an immediate request for two more apparently extemporised by the King himself for Bach around 1880) – and Dallapiccola and Petrassi (both the two cellos jousting with two horns (and pairs of the flow. Just a look can do it. So: learn the whole score musical form. This mysterious incubation can last for performances later this month. How I wish you could to improvise on in fugue when he visited the royal born in 1904). Ghedini’s finest music has a strong other instruments) in a Hunt in the Elm Grove; but the off by heart: study, study, study.’ years… Conclusion: never make art a comfortable have heard this enchanting work of mine! So palace at Potsdam in 1747. Ghedini himself conducted kinship with ‘his’ Musical Offering: imaginative heart of the concerto is the haunting, yearning, almost ‘It is an unimaginable mystery, the creation of a career. Music is invention, always; it is divorced from transparent and pure and bright…’ the première of his version for Italian Radio in Turin orchestration and use of timbre (conductor’s nous?); Mahlerian melodic line of the long, extremely slow work of art, of the simple melodic line that is the reality, a dream, a poetic vision. You must love your The Italian composer Giorgio Federico Ghedini almost 200 years later, in 1946: unusual ensembles; inspiration from Baroque third movement. Ghedini’s recurrent ‘calmo’ marking essence of music... Melody is everything. Harmony is own art, at the price of whatever sacrifice.’ could never be accused of false modesty – but, writing ‘The Musical Offering had the success it deserved, structures, textures and even titles and subtitles – begins to feel like the calm before the storm; but though like the bottle to the wine, the frame to the painting. to his lifelong friend Giorgio Negri after the happy but one that – given the kind of music it is – I didn’t especially the concerto grosso, small solo groups it seems to rumble ever closer in the finale, the storm You need lines to create architecture... In my David Gallagher première of his Litanie alla Vergine (Litanies to the dare hope for. Everyone is asking when they can hear it alternating, contrasting and combining with larger ones. never breaks, and the work subsides into the shadowy Virgin Mary) in Bologna in 1927, Ghedini was clearly again. And with this concert I resumed my long- But in contrast to the Musical Offering’s counterpoint in mists and uneasy Ghedinian stillness from which it almost as surprised as he was proud. Success had been abandoned conducting activity. I didn’t have high incessant motion, the quintessential Ghedini germinated, its tension unresolved. Despite their a long time coming. Ghedini was almost 35, and only hopes of Ghedini the conductor. But actually I found atmosphere is one of stillness: a ‘unique, cold, hypnotic affinity, Glaspi and Egusa can never truly be united. just beginning to be recognised as a composer outside that my long years of experience and maturing, lyricism’, as the Italian music expert John C. G. Following the successful relaunch of his conducting his home city, Turin. Three years later the Litanies musically and spiritually, had perfected the gifts I Waterhouse put it – as if the serene, soaring, singing career with the Musical Offering, Ghedini took to the became his first work to be played outside Italy, showed right back at the age of seventeen. Now I’m radiance of the early Litanie alla Vergine has been podium more frequently – though he scarcely needed to cementing its pivotal rôle in the career he was fighting asking myself: why didn’t I become a conductor? Was infiltrated by a sense of unease. The mood may call to do so, even for his pocket: by the 1950s his music was to establish. that a good thing or a bad thing? Both. Good for mind Malipiero’s ‘musical mystery-plays’ – St Francis being taken up by some of the world’s greatest In his twenties Ghedini had struggled with the ‘all- composition, but bad for my… pocket. So: a good thing of Assisi (1920–21), La Cena (1927), La Passione conductors, including Celibidache (who performed consuming desire to compose: fantasising about for art.’ (1935) and Santa Eufrosina (1942) – or visionary L’Olmeneta) and Karajan, as well as Italians like writing important works, about becoming ‘somebody’; Quite apart from the question of whether so Vaughan Williams, or even more recent ‘Baltic Abbado, (whose sought-after Angelicum recording of beautiful plans, wonderful ideals... but no money: remarkable a theme could really have been invented by minimalism’; but mature Ghedini is rarely so the Concerto spirituale has never been reissued), composing doesn’t buy you bread, especially to start the King (did Bach adapt it?), the original Musical comfortable or comforting. Cantelli (another Ghedini pupil), De Sabata, Giulini and with.’ To make ends meet, he fell back on other Offering poses many musical puzzles. How are some of These qualities are epitomised in L’Olmeneta (The Muti. The recordings on this CD were made at the musical talents: he was a fine pianist, and a particularly the canons to be resolved? In what order did Bach want Elm Grove) of 1951, which found Ghedini (as he told beginning of a highly-successful tour from Naples to gifted conductor – he had burst on to the musical scene the movements to be played, and on what instruments? Giorgio Negri) ‘working like a dog’: Rome and Bologna in 1952: ‘Everyone,’ Ghedini as a precocious seventeen-year-old conducting As with other twentieth-century composers from ‘I’m going to call it “Concerto for orchestra and two observed, ‘is discovering I’m a born conductor’. Catalani’s Loreley in Novara (between Turin and Charles Koechlin to Anton Webern, Bach’s concertante cellos” – to satisfy my personal taste, to Perhaps unresolved tensions are the secret of Milan); but he found he hated the itinerant life of a contrapuntal tour-de-force stimulated Ghedini’s make it playable by the first desk of orchestral cellos Ghedini’s greatest work. The tension between performer, and gradually turned instead to teaching – orchestral individuality: he uses a variety of small, (much more practical), and to stop any of those conducting and composing. The tension between this which he turned out to be good at too: his composition usually homogeneous groups from within his unusual exhibitionist “tenors of the bow” using it as a vehicle to utterly down-to-earth advice from Ghedini to a budding pupils at the Milan Conservatory would include orchestra – including two pianos but no horns. Fuller show off their technique.’ conductor, and the subsequent mystical, almost Niccolò Castiglioni and Luciano Berio. Hopping from forces are used very sparingly, until the culminating The two anti-exhibitionist cello lines are ‘named’ in religious evocation of his compositional calling. The hotel room to hotel room in those early years, hacking four-part Canon and six-part Ricercare of the arch- Ghedini’s score as ‘Glaspi’ and ‘Egusa’, characterising tension between his near-arrogance and its antithesis, through popular operas that gave him no pleasure, form Ghedini creates: his manuscript score includes all their relationship by reference to lines from Gabriele the plain-speaking humility he shows here. Tensions Ghedini’s ‘refuge was the music of Beethoven and J. S. of Bach’s movements except the Trio Sonata D’Annunzio’s play La figlia di Iorio (The Daughter of illuminated, if not resolved, by his conclusion: Bach: I always carried their scores with me, and they (explicitly scored by Bach for flute – Frederick Iorio): ‘Never stop the orchestra without a very good

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Ghedini conducts Ghedini 8.111325 L’Olmeneta (The Elm Grove) – Concerto for orchestra and 2 concertante cellos 30:06 Ghedini conducts Ghedini 1 I Allegro molto moderato e tranquillo 7:48 ADD 2 II Caccia nell’Olmeneta (Allegro vivace) 2:46 3 III Molto adagio 11:38 4 IV Allegro quieto 7:54 Benedetto Mazzacurati and Mario Gusella, cellos Also Available: 5 Litanie alla Vergine 10:01 Marica Rizzo, soprano Giorgio Federico ‘Associazione Scarlatti’ Chorus, Naples (Elena Gubitosi, Chorus Master)

Musical Offering (after Johann Sebastian Bach) (excerpts) 33:25 6 Thema (Andante, gravemente) 1:21 GHEDINI 7 Ricercare a 3 (Andante poco mosso) 4:32 8 Canon perpetuus super thema regium (Largo) 2:04 Canones diversi: 9 I Canon a 2 (Allegro moderato) 0:35 L’Olmeneta 0 II A due violini all’unisono (Andante) 1:39 ! III Per motum contrarium (Andante marcato e mosso) 0:24 for 2 cellos and @ IV Per augmentationem, contrario motu (Pesante) 2:16 # Canon perpetuus (Allegro marcato) 2:22 orchestra Canon a 2 (Quaerendo invenietis): $ I Allegretto mosso 0:42 % II Animato 0:35 ^ III Più marcato 0:41 Litanie alla Vergine & IV Pesante 0:38 * Canon a 4 (Andante) 5:13 ( Ricercare a 6 (Andante sostenuto) 10:22 Musical Offering Orchestra Alessandro Scarlatti di Napoli • Giorgio Federico Ghedini (after J. S. Bach) Live Italian Radio recordings made in the Alessandro Scarlatti Hall of the Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella, Naples, on 28th March, 1952 8.111317 LP transfers: Ed Thompson • Audio Restoration Engineer: Andrew Lang (K&A Productions Ltd) Mazzacurati • Gusella • Rizzo Release editors: Peter Bromley and Paolo Zeccara Thanks to Marina and Victor Ledin, Michael Gray, Angelo Scottini and Massimo Bianchi Orchestra Alessandro Scarlatti di Napoli First issued in the USA in 1953 and 1954 on Colosseum CLPS 1039 (L’Olmeneta), 1044 (Musical Offering) and 1046 (Litanie) Giorgio Federico Ghedini Publishers: Universal Music Publishing Ricordi S.r.l., (tracks 1–5); Edizioni Suvini Zerboni (tracks 6–19) (1952 live recordings) 8.111325 5 8.111325 6 111325 bk Ghedini EU.qxd 2/11/08 13:24 Page 5

Ghedini conducts Ghedini 8.111325 L’Olmeneta (The Elm Grove) – Concerto for orchestra and 2 concertante cellos 30:06 Ghedini conducts Ghedini 1 I Allegro molto moderato e tranquillo 7:48 ADD 2 II Caccia nell’Olmeneta (Allegro vivace) 2:46 3 III Molto adagio 11:38 4 IV Allegro quieto 7:54 Benedetto Mazzacurati and Mario Gusella, cellos Also Available: 5 Litanie alla Vergine 10:01 Marica Rizzo, soprano Giorgio Federico ‘Associazione Scarlatti’ Chorus, Naples (Elena Gubitosi, Chorus Master)

Musical Offering (after Johann Sebastian Bach) (excerpts) 33:25 6 Thema (Andante, gravemente) 1:21 GHEDINI 7 Ricercare a 3 (Andante poco mosso) 4:32 8 Canon perpetuus super thema regium (Largo) 2:04 Canones diversi: 9 I Canon a 2 (Allegro moderato) 0:35 L’Olmeneta 0 II A due violini all’unisono (Andante) 1:39 ! III Per motum contrarium (Andante marcato e mosso) 0:24 for 2 cellos and @ IV Per augmentationem, contrario motu (Pesante) 2:16 # Canon perpetuus (Allegro marcato) 2:22 orchestra Canon a 2 (Quaerendo invenietis): $ I Allegretto mosso 0:42 % II Animato 0:35 ^ III Più marcato 0:41 Litanie alla Vergine & IV Pesante 0:38 * Canon a 4 (Andante) 5:13 ( Ricercare a 6 (Andante sostenuto) 10:22 Musical Offering Orchestra Alessandro Scarlatti di Napoli • Giorgio Federico Ghedini (after J. S. Bach) Live Italian Radio recordings made in the Alessandro Scarlatti Hall of the Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella, Naples, on 28th March, 1952 8.111317 LP transfers: Ed Thompson • Audio Restoration Engineer: Andrew Lang (K&A Productions Ltd) Mazzacurati • Gusella • Rizzo Release editors: Peter Bromley and Paolo Zeccara Thanks to Marina and Victor Ledin, Michael Gray, Angelo Scottini and Massimo Bianchi Orchestra Alessandro Scarlatti di Napoli First issued in the USA in 1953 and 1954 on Colosseum CLPS 1039 (L’Olmeneta), 1044 (Musical Offering) and 1046 (Litanie) Giorgio Federico Ghedini Publishers: Universal Music Publishing Ricordi S.r.l., (tracks 1–5); Edizioni Suvini Zerboni (tracks 6–19) (1952 live recordings) 8.111325 5 8.111325 6 CMYK NAXOS Historical 8.111325 Giorgio Federico Playing ADD GHEDINI Time

DISC PROHIBITED. BROADCASTING AND COPYING OF THIS COMPACT TRANSLATIONS RESERVED. UNAUTHORISED PUBLIC PERFORMANCE, RIGHTS IN THIS SOUND RECORDING, ARTWORK, TEXTS AND ALL (1892-1965) 73:32 8.111325 &

2009 Naxos Rights International Ltd. Orchestra Alessandro Scarlatti di Napoli Giorgio Federico Ghedini

L’Olmeneta (The Elm Grove) One of the finest Italian composers Concerto for orchestra and 2 concertante cellos (1951) 30:06 of the 20th century, Giorgio 1 I Allegro molto moderato e tranquillo 7:48 Federico Ghedini was almost 35 2 II Caccia nell’Olmeneta (Allegro vivace) 2:46 when his Litanie alla Vergine 3 III Molto adagio 11:38 received what he described as a 4 IV Allegro quieto 7:54 ‘warm welcome from the public, Ghedini conducts Benedetto Mazzacurati and Mario Gusella, cellos unreserved praise from all the critics and musicians’. Ghedini’s very 5 Litanie alla Vergine (1926) 10:01 individual orchestration of J. S. Marica Rizzo, soprano Bach’s Musical Offering is notable ‘Associazione Scarlatti’ Chorus, Naples for its use of a variety of small, (Elena Gubitosi, Chorus Master) usually homogeneous groups from within an orchestra including two Musical Offering (after Johann Sebastian Bach) (excerpts) (1946) 33:25 pianos but no horns. L’Olmeneta 6 Thema: (Andante, gravemente) 1:21 (The Elm Grove) of 1951 is a 7 Ricercare a 3 (Andante poco mosso) 4:32 fascinating concerto for orchestra 8 Canon perpetuus super thema regium (Largo) 2:04 and two concertante cellos which 9-@ Canones diversi 4:55 Ghedini felt were like two # Canon perpetuus (Allegro marcato) 2:22 complementary herbs, the red $ & Glaspi and the white Egusa, growing

Ghedini conducts - Canon a 2 (Quaerendo invenietis) 2:36 * Canon a 4 (Andante) 5:13 far apart but with roots intertwining ( Ricercare a 6 (Andante sostenuto) 10:22 underground. At the heart of the concerto lies a haunting, yearning, Live Italian Radio recordings made in the Alessandro Scarlatti Hall almost Mahlerian slow movement. of the Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella, Naples, on 28th March, 1952 Reissued here for the first time in more than 50 years, these are the MADE IN First issued in the USA in 1953 and 1954 on Colosseum only known surviving recordings of GERMANY CLPS 1039 (L’Olmeneta), 1044 (Musical Offering) and 1046 (Litanie) Ghedini conducting his own music.

LP transfers: Ed Thompson • Audio Restoration Engineer: Andrew Lang (K&A Productions Ltd) Release editors: Peter Bromley and Paolo Zeccara Thanks to Marina and Victor Ledin, Michael Gray, Angelo Scottini and Massimo Bianchi 8.111325 Booklet notes: David Gallagher • A complete track list can be found on page 5 of the booklet www.naxos.com

NAXOS HistoricalNAXOS Cover Photograph: Giorgio Federico Ghedini (Private Collection)