The Two Piano Trios
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WOLF- FERRARI THE TWO PIANO TRIOS Trio Archè ERMANNO WOLF-FERRARI 1876-1948 Prelude To Neglected Originality The Two Piano Trios Dotted throughout the history of western music are a various figures who seem to elude all efforts to classify them, as though they occupied an atemporal plane, equidistant from revolutionary intent and the established genres to which the prefix Piano Trio No.1 Op.5 in D Major “neo” is often added. Certain of these musicians not only shun overt membership of 1. Allegro molto moderato 14’54 contemporary categories, but also tend to steer clear of any one creative idiom. 2. Presto - Vivace - Meno mosso - Vivace - Presto 5’50 Such was the case of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (Venice, 1876-1948), a composer who 3. Larghetto (grazioso, molto tranquillo) - deliberately avoided modernism, opting instead for linear communicative immediacy Poco mosso - Più mosso (vivace)-Larghetto 9’22 in a range of different genres that he wove together in a highly individual tapestry 4. Allegro vivace assai - Andante mosso - of language and sound. Open-minded in his approach to the past, he was reserved Tempo I - Andante Sostenuto - Tempo I 9’40 in character and totally averse to innovation as a goal in its own right, despite the surrounding ethos of competition in Europe and the drive to be ‘original’. As Piano Trio No.2 Op.7 in F sharp Major Adriana Guarnieri Corazzol has pointed out, “Wolf-Ferrari’s fellow composers were 5. Sostenuto - Adagio - Agitato - Sostenuto - Agitato 19’27 Malipiero, Casella, Pizzetti, Alfano and Respighi, yet he remained totally aloof from 6. Largo 6’30 the so-called Eighties generation, pursuing his own belief in a form of humanism 7. Lievemente mosso e tranquillo sempre 4’27 devoid of the constrictions of linear time...”. Instead of breaking radically with the past, he strove to reconcile it with the present, amalgamating a wide range of bygone Trio Archè experience in an all-encompassing lyrical vein. Francesco Comisso violin The age of Hermann Friedrich Wolf was marked by nationalism and conflict, which (violin Don Nicolau Amati, Bologna 1735) went against the grain of his own family origins. The son of the Bavarian painter August Wolf and the Venetian aristocrat Emilia Ferrari, he used both names in his Dario Destefano cello signature, thereby declaring his roots in two different cultures. As with Ferruccio (cello Giacinto Santagiuliana, Vicenza 1821) Busoni, who was also both German and Italian, the double Weltanschauung pervaded Francesco Cipolletta piano his artistic personality. German discipline blended harmoniously with a temperament that was more Venetian than simply Italian. This is particularly evident in the operas he wrote based on comedies by Carlo Goldoni and in other works, including his last, unfinished orchestral composition, Chiese di Venezia. Although he was born in Venice, for his musical studies he chose the Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich directed by Joseph von Rehinberger, a follower of Mendelssohn. Recording: at Bartok Studio, Bernareggio - MB Sound Engeneriing Raffaele Cacciola Photos by Lorena Pellegrino Cover: Teodoro Wolf-Ferrari, Salici sul lago, 1915, Padova, Galleria nuova Arcadia - Vita Trentina Editrice p & © 2018 Brilliant Classics Likewise most of his compositions were printed in Germany, where his operas soon moderato is gentle and slightly melancholy, with a cradling motif suggesting the rueful acquired a following. In Italy, on the other hand, he was largely ignored right through smile that was to become a feature of Wolf-Ferrari’s music. The handling of melody to the 1920s. also reveals echoes of Brahms, but without the latter’s depth and complexity; likewise Wolf-Ferrari was also involved in teaching, here again on two different fronts. He the wealth of harmony and the autumnal shades of the instrumental parts. The Presto directed what was then the Liceo Musicale Benedetto Marcello in Venice, and also that follows is more light-hearted, with a touch of gypsy hues that are cut short taught composition at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, a dual situation that encouraged by the central episode and the ensuing return to the light, dream-like mood typical him to reside for part of the year in Venice and the rest near Munich. Between 1915 of the composer’s later works. Next comes a Larghetto featuring serried dialogue and 1922, however, both he and Busoni opted for exile in Zurich. They were traumatic between the two string instruments that gives way to a pensive, melodious vein like years of creative silence. As the composer himself explained, “I live in Switzerland a suspended romanza above an ecstatic piano accompaniment. The joyful, dance-like because in this wretched war I have found no fatherland anywhere. I am essentially central episode (Poco mosso) momentarily mitigates the plaintive atmosphere with neutral, not out of indifference, but on account of my conflicting tides of love.” ribbons of sound that introduce a touch of nostalgia in the handling of contrast. The In his essay Considerazioni attuali sulla musica (Ticci, Siena 1943) the composer Trio ends with an attractively carefree Allegro vivace assai in which lyricism and expressed his views on coeval trends in dodecaphonic and atonal music in somewhat elegance culminate in the return of the main theme of the opening Allegro. polemical terms: “There are ‘artists’ who, instead of revealing their In form and articulation the movements are typical of the 19th century, yet they souls through their music, act like cuttlefish that hide behind the black ink they are free of the naivety that is often a feature of early works. That said, however, they squirt out, just as the former hide behind the opaque fog of their sounds”. But then do embody a certain innocence, a degree of gentleness, a sort of aristocratic levity. early 20th century musical dissent was not likely to appeal to someone who tended Antonio Guarnieri described these traits as aspects of the composer’s goodness, which towards interiority, a sort of ‘music of the spheres’ whose audibility is insubstantial: would seem to fit in with what Wolf-Ferrari himself once said: “A true work of art is “What a pity that to reach the soul music should have to engage the ears!” the fruit of love, if love is the desire to transcend the individual ego and to flow into Wolf-Ferrari focused on instrumental music at the beginning and towards the end the great, all-embracing spectrum...”. of a career that was otherwise largely devoted to opera. The two Trios for violin, cello The second Trio Op.7 is unquestionably a different sort of work, born of a and piano are early works, written at the time he was studying in Munich, or shortly contrasting intent. Although we do not know for sure where and when it was first afterwards. The first Trio in D major dates back to 1896, was premiered at the performed, it was certainly published by Rahter in Leipzig in 1901, and may well Tonkünstlerverein in Stuttgart in September of that same year and published as Op.5 have actually been composed, at least in part, before the Op.5. The three movements in 1902 by Leuckart in Leipzig. are distinctly asymmetric in length, with the first consisting of 337 dense bars lasting Divided into four carefully balanced movements, it begins with a subject that twice as long as the sum of the other two. Moreover, the idiom of the opening the composer, clearly influenced by his recent studies under Rheinberger, developed Sostenuto differs considerably from the following parts, with a prevalence of intense in sonata-like form and in passages in counterpoint. The theme then returns dynamic and rhythmic contrasts interwoven with some bitter chromatism. There unexpectedly in the Finale. The mood that prevails in the opening Allegro molto are also chords that smack of expressionism, while the piano pursues some rough descending passages in double octaves. Wolf-Ferrari’s characteristic gentleness only Founded in Turin in 2001 by surfaces here and there, interspersed with vehement outbursts, moments of anxious three acclaimed soloists, from instability, and a sense of fraught tension. It is tempting to suggest that Wolf-Ferrari the outset the Trio Archè was may have unwittingly absorbed something from his contemporary Max Reger, who involved in the international in 1902 paid him a significant compliment: “You possess something that none of us concert circuit. possesses: simplicity”. At all events, the movement is unique for Wolf-Ferrari. It is Dario Destefano and followed by two further sections that are quieter and more reassuring in the way they Francesco Cipolletta initially return to “the models and canons of the Mendelssohn-Schumann-Brahms axis”, to got together with violinist borrow the words of Alberto Cantù, with certain “elements in the classical vein”. Massimo Marin, and thereafter In all likelihood the Sostenuto was written earlier, while the two shorter movements with Francesco Comisso, each come across as more mature works. of them feeling completely at What is interesting about these Trios is the way they reveal the various stages of home playing with musicians development of a highly original musical mind. As Giulio Cogni has pointed out, who share the same love of the salient features are “elegant parsimony” and a candid “gracefulness of sound”. structure and sound. Early works they certainly are, yet they are far from immature. Instead they reveal The name of the Trio derives from the word α‘ρχη’, meaning “origin” and the artist’s character, his distinctive voice as a composer. It is curious that a musician “generating principle” in Greek, and sound is the generating principle behind the whose operas enjoyed such lasting success should have practically disappeared from group’s interests and achievements.