Castelnuovo- Tedesco
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95548 CASTELNUOVO- SHAKESPEARE SONNETS OP.125 AND DUETS OP.97 TEDESCO Valentina Coladonato soprano · Mirko Guadagnini tenor · Filippo Bettoschi baritone Genova Vocal Ensemble & Sibi Consoni Accademia Vocale di Genova Roberta Paraninfo conductor Claudio Proietti piano Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco 1895-1968 6. CXXIX. Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame 2’47 Shakespeare Sonnets Op.125 (first complete recording) 7. CXLVI. Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth 3’35 8. CLIV. The little Love-God, lying once asleep 2’21 CD1 50’08 9. XXVII. Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed 2’48 1. VIII. Music to hear, why hearst thou music sadly? 2’24 10. XXXV. No more be grieved at that which thou hast done 2’45 2. XVIII. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? 2’34 11. XL. Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all 3’11 3. XXIX. When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes 2’26 12. LXXI. No longer mourn for me when I am dead 3’26 4. XXX. When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 2’19 13. XLVII. Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took 2’43 5. XXXI. Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts 2’20 6. XXXII. If thou survive my well-contented day 3’00 3 Shakespeare Duets Op.97 (premiere recording) 7. LIII. What is your substance whereof are you made 3’10 14. I. Romeo and Juliet (Pavane) 3’23 8. LVII. Being your slave, what should I do but tend 2’58 15. II. Lorenzo and Jessica (Nocturne) 4’08 9. LX. Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore 1’48 16. III. Katherine and Petruchio (Burlesque) 3’54 10. LXIV. When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced 3’16 11. LXV. Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea 2’45 Valentina Coladonato soprano* * Sonnets 29, 31, 57, 73, 90, 98, 12. LXXIII. That time of year thou mayst in me behold 2’11 Mirko Guadagnini tenor ** 104, 116, 35, 40, 71, 47; Duets 1, 13. LXXXVII. Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing 3’10 Filippo Bettoschi baritone *** 2, 3 14. XC. Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now 1’57 ** Sonnets 53, 87, 97, 102, 105, 106, Genova Vocal Ensemble & Sibi Consoni 15. XCIV. They that have power to hurt, and will do none 2’43 109, 128; Duets 1, 2, 3 Accademia Vocale di Genova 16. XCVII. How like a winter hath my absence been 3’03 *** Sonnets 8, 18, 30, 32, 60, 64, 65, conducted by Roberta Paraninfo **** 17. XCVIII. From you have I been absent in the spring 1’56 146, 27 18. CII. My love is strengthen’d, though more weak in seeming 2’49 Claudio Proietti piano **** Sonnets 94, 129, 154 19. CIV. To me, fair friend, you never can be old 2’33 CD2 50’35 Genova Vocal Ensemble & Sibi Consoni Accademia Vocale di Genova 1. CV. Let not my love be called idolatry 2’57 Manuela Allemano, Luca Arrigo, Chiara Ciurlo, Lucrezia Crovo, Davide D’Ali’, 2. CVI. When in the chronicle of wasted time 2’47 Alessandra D’Ancona, Giulia Filippi, Giulia Ghiorzi, Chris Iuliano, Andrea 3. CIX. O never say that I was false of heart 3’01 Lagomarsino, Arianna Lazzari, Anna de Luca di Pietralata, Barbara Maiulli, 4. CXVI. Let me not to the marriage of true minds 3’07 Lysia Malarby, Marco Mensi, Giorgia de Palma, Alessandro Papini, Elena Papini, 5. CXXVIII. How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st 3’02 Marta Pesci, Jarianni Reinoso, Alice Quario Rondo, Simone Perotto, Emanuele Rapisarda, Anna Rocca, Greta Rossi, Laura Schintu, Gloria Sgrò, Andrea di 2 Spigno, Elena Torrini, Tomaso Valseri 3 Shakespeare Sonnets Op.125 & 3 Shakespeare compositions. Yet Castelnuovo-Tedesco also wrote for other eminent instrumentalists, Duets Op.97 including Gieseking, Heifetz, Piatigorsky and Toscanini. by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) Given his family background and the circles among which he grew up in Florence in the early years of the 20th century, Castelnuovo-Tedesco was naturally inclined In 1938 Italy’s Fascist government passed to be open-minded, polyglot and cosmopolitan. From the outset, he was particularly anti-Semitic racial laws, and the following year drawn by vocal music, furthering this interest during the years he studied with Jewish-born Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, along Pizzetti and later devoting considerable creative energy to the composition of songs with his wife Clara and their sons Pietro and based on verses by poets such as Horace, Dante, Petrarch, Cervantes, Lorca, Heine, Lorenzo, opted to emigrate to the United States. Byron, Wordsworth and Whitman. It was for Shakespeare, however, that he nurtured On this imperative journey the composer also his foremost passion, writing music for all the Songs in his plays. Published in 12 took with him a few close friends with whom volumes, these works are models of purity and elegance: totally in keeping with the he had long been in earnest conversation, poetic subtlety and linguistic versatility of the texts, they perfectly mirror the rhythms including, first and foremost, William and accents of the English language. Shakespeare. Castelnuovo-Tedesco had already Over twenty years later, “isolated and proud” in the bitter-sweet exile of Beverly written The Passionate Pilgrim. 33 Shakespeare Hills, Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote the cycle of the Shakespeare Sonnets, the first Songs (1921-1925), the orchestral overtures La four of which were quietly presented in July 1944. These were Sonnets XXX (a bisbetica domata (The Taming of the Shrew), La dodicesima notte (Twelfth Night), birthday gift for his friend Aldo Bruzzichelli), CIV, VIII and XVIII. Sonnet XXI was Il mercante di Venezia (The Merchant of Venice), Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar), Il set to music in January 1945, to be followed between 17 August and 13 October racconto d’inverno (A Winter’s Tale) composed between 1930 and 1934, and the by an astounding succession of 21 Sonnets, by which time, as the composer himself 3 Shakespeare Duets of 1937. It was thus only natural that Shakespeare should declared, “the form came easily to me and the ‘problem’ seemed to be resolved”. It continue to be his faithful companion during his American exile. was indeed a remarkable creative achievement, even for a musician of his calibre, who Castelnuovo-Tedesco was an extremely prolific composer. His oeuvre comprises seemed to compose effortlessly. By 17 April 1947, Sonnet XXVII was also ready. 210 opus numbers, including oratorios, concertos, symphonic and choral works, At this point the composer copied the entire collection out by hand in what was operas, chamber and vocal music, plus pieces for the piano and the organ. To add to become their definitive order. Then 16 years later (between 13 and 19 October to which there are a further 60 uncatalogued compositions, as well as various 1963), he added a further batch of four sonnets (XXXV, XL, LXXI, XLVII) at the transcriptions and over 200 film scores. It is thus strange that today, half a century end of the manuscript score; songs that were more intensely expressive and dramatic. since his death, he should largely be remembered for his works for the guitar. Thus the total of sonnets he set to music was ultimately 32, out of the 154 written by Granted, the repertoire for the instrument is closely connected with the name Shakespeare, and of these three were for vocal ensembles. and fame of Andrés Segovia, who commissioned and performed many of these The Shakespeare Sonnets spent most of the next fifty years slumbering in the 4 5 Library of Congress in Washington, occasionally awakened for the odd performance, in Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s handling of the Sonnets. Rather than an established formal cited from time to time in learned publications, including catalogues, and described as solution, he opts for a variety of highly-charged forms that leave no space for repetition a very special unicum in the composer’s autobiography Una vita in musica (Cadmo, of motifs or words. Each sonnet is unique because the form and figures are shaped by Fiesole, 2005). These songs, which have engaged the musicians involved in the present the underlying verse, in its turn made up of words that are also sounds, meanings and recording since 2008, are totally unknown to audiences at large. inner vibrations. The only recurring element is a coda in the piano that seems to act In 2016 Edizioni Curci printed the entire collection as part of a commendable like the unconditional resolutions that conclude each poem. Musical convention is rare, project involving all Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s unpublished works. Nevertheless, various and when it does surface is handled with irony, such that what prevails is a sense of inaccuracies in the edition suggested that we should stick to the original manuscript freedom and audacity that remains within the sphere of the Italian vocal tradition, yet version for our performance, because it promised greater verisimilitude as regards is not afraid to absorb elements from European music of the early 1900s or echoes of both the musical and the literary texts, and the order in which the individual songs the lighter, popular music that was evolving in those years in America. Castelnuovo- should be presented. Tedesco was able to assimilate these influences so that they became ingredients of his What exactly underlay Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s great love of Shakespeare? own creativity. Quite remarkable and somewhat mysterious are the 3 Sonnets he wrote Apart from the poet’s absolute greatness, he believed that the Shakespearean texts for chorus (XCIV, CXXVIII and CLIV, the last two for an ‘a cappella’ vocal ensemble) “asked for musical collaboration as a necessary element for completing the poetic in which the voice of the poet is multiplied and expanded so that it becomes choral, expression”, noting how Shakespeare’s English “is a perfectly musical language: I harmonic, on occasions contradictory, and unfailingly direct and disquieting.