Casella: Triple Concerto; Ghedini: Concerto dell'Albatro

�Ghedini�s colours are so tastefully blended and applied that I found myself listening for a second time, and a third...Casella fans will want this concerto; the Ghedini is a real bonus, though.� --MusicWeb International, 9th January 2014

�a pair of radically different mid-century triple concertos...I Pomeriggi Musicali's fine live performances are scrupulously conducted by Damian Iorio... Violinist Paolo Ghidoni and cellist Pietro Bosna adopt a lyrical approach, in contrast to the more overtly virtuosic playing from pianist Emanuela Piemonti.� --The Guardian, 21st November 2013 ****

Both Alfredo Casella and Giorgio Federico Ghedini are featured in ongoing Naxos series of orchestral works, but this is the first release to couple the two of them. The pieces have much in common�not least, both are concertos using the rare combination of piano trio and orchestra, pioneered by Beethoven�but they are also beautifully contrasted. Casella wrote his Triple Concerto for his own Trio Italiano, who performed it five hundred times on three continents in less than a decade. Ghedini�s Concerto dell�albatro adds the voice of a narrator to the piano trio and orchestra, evoking, in words from Herman Melville�s sea story Moby-Dick, a remarkable encounter with an Antarctic albatross.

Ghedini: Architetture & Contrappunti

Architetture (�Architectures�), a concerto for orchestra in seven linked sections, was the piece that catapulted the Italian composer Giorgio Federico Ghedini to fame in his home country at the late age of 48. On this disc it is coupled with two more of his finest orchestral works. The powerful atmosphere and stunning orchestral effects of Marinaresca e baccanale (�Sea Piece and Bacchanale�), written several years earlier, prove that Ghedini�s belated recognition was fully deserved. Contrappunti (�Counterpoints�), which Ghedini composed much later in life, finds him responding to the inspiration of one of his lifelong musical heroes, Beethoven.

It was with Architetture that the forty-eight year-old composer, Giorgio Federico Ghedini, belatedly found national fame, though internationally he is still unknown. Never seemingly able to make up his mind whether he wanted to be a pianist, composer or conductor, his name now resides as the mentor of outstanding Milan Conservatory composition pupils, including Lucanio Berio, and conductor students, Guido Cantelli and Claudio Abbado. Written as a �Concerto for Orchestra�, Architetture�s seven movements do not offer a showpiece in the style of Bart�k, but is replete with cells of fascinating sonority that Ghedini uses in much the same repetitive way Minimalist composers used three and more decades later.

It is often quiet, withdrawn and without that style of melodic invention to sit readily in your memory, though after replaying the disc several times I have taken a lasting affection for the work. Contrappunti (Counterpoints), came twenty years later and is unusual in having a solo string trio whose participation, seemingly, has little in common with the orchestra, and is frequently used by itself, or with the orchestra just underpinning it. In three contrasting movements, with a slow Andante misterioso surrounded by energized movements.

Ghedini had been composing long before Architetture, Marinaresca e baccanale dating from seven years earlier. It is not short of influences, as you will discover, the seascape of the first of the two movements, giving way to a punchy bacchanal, though as here performed, a long way from the promised �presto�. The Rome orchestra and their conductor, Francesco La Vecchia, are bringing Italian music to a wide international market, and if at times they reveal this is not easy music to perform, we thank them and their recording team, the last two named works here receiving their first studio recording. � David�s Review Corner, June 2013