Alfredo Casella: Sinfonia per Orchestra, Op. 63; Italia, Op. 11

Alfredo Casella (Composer), Alun Francis (Conductor), WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln (Orchestra), WDR Sinfonie Orchester Köln (Orchestra) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Orchestra: WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, WDR Sinfonie Orchester Köln
• Conductor: Alun Francis
• Composer: Alfredo Casella
• Audio CD (August 25, 2009)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Cpo Records
• ASIN: B002CAOW0K
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #230,841 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Alfredo Who?, September 24, 2009

By 

J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Alfredo Casella: Sinfonia per Orchestra, Op. 63; Italia, Op. 11 (Audio CD)

Back when the world was young and I was a freshman in college I heard a concert that featured the Piano Trio of a composer named Alfredo Casella (1883-1947). I was blown away by it. In my innocence I thought his was a name that every classical music lover knew. It turns out the main reason that piece was on a concert at my university was that the translator into English of Casella's memoirs was a professor at the school, and indeed he was the pianist in that performance. And the university's press was the publisher. It was only later that I realized that very few people knew of Casella and even fewer knew any of his music. This was not always the case. Indeed, the symphony on the present CD was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony for the 1941 celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the orchestra's founding. (There were also commissioned works by William Walton, Zoltán Kodály, Darius Milhaud, Reinhold Gliere and Nikolai Myaskovsky as well as the orchestra's legendary conductor, Frederick Stock.) The symphony was a great success and within a short time had been played by the orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Dresden Staatskapelle and the Vienna Philharmonic. Then it more or less dropped from sight. This recording is its first. The piece, late in Casella's career, is neoclassic, somewhat astringent but both lyrical and beautifully orchestrated. It is in the usual four movements. Its second movement, Andante molto moderato quasi adagio, is particularly fine with its meltingly lovely string melodies played against expert countermelodies in brass and winds. The Scherzo is frenzied and angry but ultimately triumphant. The Rondo finale continues in that mode and brings the whole thing to a stirring conclusion.

Filling out the CD is a performance of an early work, Italia, which is possibly Casella's most often played orchestral piece. Written in 1909, it is a twenty-minute long rhapsody steeped in Italian nationalism and makes much use of Italian folksong as well as, in the final moments, Luigi Denza's 'Funiculi, Funicula'. It could hardly be more different from the Symphony in that, although one hears similar orchestration, 'Italia' is clearly designed to be a potpourri of sorts that evokes both the southern and northern Italian ethos whereas the Symphony could not immediately be recognized as Italian at all. In the almost operatic 'Italia' one experiences a Good Friday procession, a haunting English horn lament, snatches of Neapolitan song, a febrile dramatic scene and finally a joyous and rousing song.

It cannot be said that the performances of the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln under conductor Alun Francis are the last word in suavity or perfect ensemble and tuning, but one certainly gets a more than passable idea of the value of these two very different works.

Scott Morrison

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Casella sounding like himself, February 4, 2011

By 

Stephen Adams "Viola d'Amore" (London, Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Alfredo Casella: Sinfonia per Orchestra, Op. 63; Italia, Op. 11 (Audio CD)

Casella is a composer whose work has been little recorded until recently. But enough is available now - thanks mainly to CPO and Naxos - that one can get a sense of his career path. He was a skilled composer from the beginning, but he always seemed to sound like someone else. He began writing two symphonies in the style of Mahler, dabbled in impressionism, then tried a bit of avant garde futurism, and ended with most of his music sounding like post-Pulcinella Stravinsky.
The Sinfonia is an exception. I expected Stravinskian neo-classicism, but instead, the Allegro opens with a flowing legato line that unfolds in no-nonsense fashion, slightly reminiscent of Prokofiev, builds tension, then opens onto a wonderful plateau of serenity - threatened with thickening dissonance - wins out. The Andante has Brucknerian fervor, then moves into dryer climate - the B section develops over steady rhythmic figure - the A section returns, dissonance threatens as in first movement, but ends peacefully. The Scherzo has a Russian grotesque feel, pesante, then a lengthy diminuendo to elvish ending. The Finale has grandiose marcato opening, develops assiduously and maintains drive despite episodic rondo structure. A sudden adagio motif enters (from the slow movement), reaches a point of stasis, then romps to a vivace coda. It's a fine work, successful at its premiere, then forgotten probably because of hostilities with Italy during the War.
Italia is an early neo-romantic, though not Mahlerian, symphonic poem on Italian themes for vast orchestra. It could be mistaken for Respighi. Dramatic dark opening, nice English horn solo, quiet section, bassoon solo folkdance, then another slow bit turns into Funiculi, Funicula (with Denza's consent), and then into a wild ride, Tosti and others thrown in. It's overwhelming, but not really very good.