Panzarella, Barbara & Roberta Lioy
Longo, Ferroni, Cilea: Controluce
One of the many myths of musical historiography which need - at least - revising, if not outright dispelling, is the one regarding Italian instrumental music between the Baroque and the contemporary era. After centuries of splendid flourishing, with the likes of Frescobaldi, Corelli, Vivaldi, Scarlatti - to name but a few - and up to Clementi, it may seem that the Italian culture of instrumental music had turned itself into a Sleeping Beauty for approximately one and a half centuries. During that enchanted sleep, so the tradition goes, opera absorbed and exhausted all the creative energies of Italian composers. As said, this is a myth, or - to remain in the domain of Sleeping Beauty - a fairy tale; as all myths or fairy tales, it does contain a grain of truth, but is far from representing the whole picture. The true aspect of the story is that the operatic craze did really conquer the hearts and souls of most Italians in the long nineteenth century; and it is evident that the Italian peninsula gave the world some of the finest operas ever during that hundred or hundred-and-fifty years. Certainly, furthermore, the enthusiasm elicited by opera (even in terms of social and political life!) was unmatched by the interest in instrumental music. However, by no means were these phenomena universal, or without exception. First of all, there are several composers who wrote mainly or only instrumental music and who achieved universal fame, even during that period of seeming silence - Paganini is the first name which comes to mind, but there are many others, for instance among guitarists, or organists such as Morandi whose complete organ works are being issued by Da Vinci. Secondly, many operatic composers left important works also in the field of instrumental music: among them one could count Rossini, with his piano works; Verdis and Puccinis compositions for string quartet; etc. Thirdly, especially toward the end of the nineteenth century, a new generation of composers looked favourably to instrumental music and began composing major works in all of its genres. This Da Vinci Classics album encompasses four works by three Italian composers whose masterly ability and genius are worthily represented by their music. One of them is best known for one of his operas, and is in fact normally counted among the Italian operisti (Francesco Cilea); however, as we shall see, Cileas operas brought him both success and sorrow, and his response to the fiasco of his last opera encouraged him to turn his attention to other musical genres. The others, as we shall presently see, are prized for their output in its most varied forms.