Martucci & Respighi

Giuseppe Martucci:
    La Canzone dei Ricordi*
    Notturno, op. 70, no. 1 for orchestra
Ottorino Respighi:
    Il Tramonto*

*Brigitte Balleys (mezzo), Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne/Jesus Lopez-Cobos
Claves CD50-9807 Total time: 50:42

Summary for the Busy Executive: Tasteful opulence.

The Martucci pieces attracted me to this disc, since I had never heard of
Martucci, let alone his music.  The Respighi, although hardly part of the
classical Top Forty, nevertheless shows up from time to time.  Martucci
belonged to the generation eclipsed by Puccini.  Like Respighi, he died
relatively young, in his fifties.  He made a fairly good career in his day
as composer, conductor (he conducted the Italian premiere of Tristan), and
academic.  The only pieces I've heard by him are on this CD, so I can't
generalize too confidently about his music.  One does hear a combination
of Puccini and Wagner - a smooth Italian lyricism with a touch of Wagnerian
harmonic spice.  The orchestra, handled more lightly than in Wagner's
typical practice, nevertheless owes much to Wagner's view of the orchestra
as an aural aurora borealis - constantly shimmering and shifting in color.

The Martucci works performed here are delicate and refined at their core.
One feels a strong pull toward the bittersweet in the Notturno, as well
as a radiant lyricism.  The music may not have as strong a profile as
Puccini's, but it's an authentic expression of personality nevertheless.
One cannot divide the sentimentality from the rest of it, but if there's
such a thing as tasteful sentimentality, then Martucci has it.  This is
even more evident in the song cycle La Canzone dei Ricordi ("song of
remembrance"), a lovely work set to some ghastly fin de siecle poetry by
one Rocco Pagliara, where the poems' persona recalls his lost love.  The
liner notes link this cycle to Mueller's Schoene Muellerin, but even
Mueller writes better than this - fewer "flowers," at any rate.  I wish I
could say that Pagliara's words serve here mainly as pegs on which to hang
notes or as a general backdrop against which one can emote.  Clearly,
however, Martucci takes a great deal of care with individual words and
matching his orchestra to the meaning of the moment.  This means merely
that Martucci thought more of the poems than I do.  The real question is
whether the settings work.  In large part, they work very well.  Martucci's
general song style derives, I think, from Wagner's Wesendonk Lieder,
particularly in their Mottl orchestrations.  The five songs all deal
with lost love (the remembrance causing present anxiety) in several stock
settings (by the river, in the woods, sailing the seas, at sunset, and so
on), and this allows Martucci musically to do some nature painting, to
REAch an emotional crest, and to dissolve into regret.  There's also a
hint of symphonic construction in the cycle, where, mirroring Pagliara's
text, the final song varies the first.  Martucci takes the themes and
accompanying figures of the first and abbreviates them or tries them in new
modes, almost phrase by phrase.  Even lacking the bold imagination of, say,
Mahler or Strauss, the songs nevertheless deliver something genuine.  For
this, I believe, we have to thank as well Swiss mezzo Brigitte Balleys,
Lopez-Cobos, and the Lausanne.  Balleys doesn't have the steadiest or
strongest voice in the world, but she communicates with both taste and
feeling, qualities echoed in Lopez-Cobos.

It turns out that Respighi studied with Martucci, although the older
composer, by his own testimony, didn't teach him much.  For me, Respighi's
work divides in two:  the capable, but very conventional post-Romanticism
of the Roman trilogy, and the bolder work based largely on Renaissance
dances and Gregorian chant.  Unfortunately, Il Tramonto (sunset), setting
an Italian translation of a Shelley poem, falls into the first category.
It is extremely well-made, expertly written for string orchestra (a version
also exists for mezzo and string quartet), and Respighi subtly varies the
accompaniment to sustain the interest of an essentially monochromatic
ensemble.  The poem, which I've never read outside of liner notes for this
piece, concerns a maid whose lover died in her arms one night and who
grows old longing for death and reunion.  The string writing gets more
interesting toward the end, especially during the apostrophe of the forlorn
maiden.  Respighi's setting is of a piece, an impressive feat - that is, he
doesn't resort to cutting it up as a kind of dramatic scena or recitative.
On the other hand, it's more mood than music.  As far as the musical ideas
go, there's very little that captures one's attention.  Respighi wrote
better than this.  Much of the impact comes down to Balleys's singing, a
bit like hearing a superior reader of poetry.  She gives all kinds of
shading to each line, without calling attention to her art.  This is my
first hearing of her, and I'd love to know how well she does Schubert or
Faure.  Lopez-Cobos and his ensemble match her refinement.

The recorded sound is both natural and lovely, very close to what you'd
hear in a mid-size concert hall.

Steve Schwartz