Search - Luigi Boccherini, Antonio Bazzini, Giuseppe Verdi :: Quartetti Italiani [Box Set]

Respighi and Malipiero the masterpieces, Bazzini and Zandona

Discophage | France | 12/29/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Friends, I'm back.



Boccherini: Haydn with a Spanish boisterousness. Very enjoyable - a bit repetitive maybe, so it's probably best to take in small doses, like one CD a day (there are three)



Have you ever heard of Antonio Bazzini? If you have, you must be a real specialist. I thought I was pretty knowledgeable even in the fringe composers, but that beats me. Coming to think of it, yes, he's the composer of the famous virtuoso encore "La ronde des lutins". Other than that.... The liner notes aren't too informative about Bazzini (1818-1897). He started off as a violinist, supposedly one of Europe's most famous ones, "earning favorable reviews from Robert Schumann", then retired from concert activity to dedicate himself to composing and to "fostering instrumental music in Italy, both as the director of the Milan Conservatory and as the animator of concert societies". The precise dates of the Quartets aren't even given, we are just told that "they were written in the course of almost thirty years, between 1864 and 1892, at the height of the composer's creative maturity" and that they "are probably the apex of this author's output". Checking on the famous free, user-fed Internet encyclopedia will yield some more results, including that Bazzini spent four years (1841-5) in Germany where and when he got acquainted with Schumann and Mendelssohn, giving the first private performance of the latter's Violin Concerto - and the dates of his Quartets. Many thanks anonymous contributor(s)! As both liner notes and Encyclopedia point out, the German model can be felt throughout. The first Quartet sounds like early to middle Beethoven with hints perhaps of early Schubert and Mendelssohn. It was out-of-date stylistically when he wrote it (1864), but now that such quarrels don't matter, it is enjoyable nonetheless. The 2nd (1877) sees him moving decidedly in the direction of Mendelssohn and even Tchaikovsky. The first movement of Quartet # 3 (1878) has an almost Schumanesque vehemence (or maybe it sounds like early Dvorak), and its slow movement (here in third position) is even better than that: it is superb and genuinely inspired. The opening movements of the 5th (1891) and 6th (1892) sound to me like setbacks to Mendelssohn and to the minor and anonymous mid-19th Century German Romantics, but the second (slow) movement of #5 has nice, long lyrical lines given to first violin, starting like the most lyrical Schubert or Beethoven and evolving, after another very Beethovenian fugato, in the direction of Kreisler (2:12): Lovely. The scherzo of 5 has delicious wit and its Finale exudes a nice Romantic turbulence. The scherzo of #6 sounds straight out of Mendelssohn's Midsummernight's Dream.



Anyway, even if like me you are scouring your memory trying to recognize what Bazzini reminds you of, it remains very pleasant to hear. I'd love to hear Bazzini's tone poem Francesca da Rimini. Who will be clever enough to record it alongside Tchaikovsky's?



It was indeed clever to pair the Quartets by the three opera composers together: Verdi, Puccini and Zandonai, and it is illuminating to hear Verdi's Quartet (1873) immediately after those of Bazzini. It sounds... like Verdi. It could be Traviata transposed for String Quartet, especially in its two middle movements, with Violetta's aria (2nd movement) and the brindisi (Scherzo). Puccini's Crisantemi, as pretty and eloquent as it is, is a trifle, but Zandonai's Quartet is the real find. The language has nothing revolutionary but it is very subtle and highly lyrical, lively, with catchy references to popular music in its first movement. Respighi's (another composer of operas, although he is better remember for his three famous Roman Tone Poems) two Quartets are equally suberb, displaying a rhapsodic freedom of construction, still exuding a high-strung lyricism but moving in the direction of an extended tonality. Move on in that direction and you get Janacek and Britten.



Did I say Britten ? I should say Malipiero. It is in order to hear an alternative version of his 8 magnificent String Quartets that I bought this set. There's an earlier recording by the Orpheus SQ on ASV from 1991 (G.F. Malipiero: The 8 String Quartets; it's been reissued VERY cheap by Brilliant, Complete String Quartet), and it is through this set that I discovered these superb works, that echoe Ravel's (and Stravinsky's Three Pieces at times) and forebode Britten's. Like Britten they exude a high-strung lyricism, a wonderful freedom of construction, they flush with eerie and mesmerizing tonal invention, reminiscences of folk- and dance-music, and they are mostly sunny and boisterous in mood. They were all dedicated to the great American patron Elizabeth Sprague-Coolidge, composed between 1920 and 1964, and the liner notes from the ASV set rightly contend that they are one great string quartet in 8 movements. They are arguably the most neglected among the great masterpieces in the 20th Century literature for string quartet.



This is a convenient box. Quartetto di Venezia plays with fine tonal lustre. In Malipiero they are more ample and symphonic sounding (to the point sometimes of clogging the textures), usually (but not systematically) less high-strung and gritty, and with more tonal opulence than the Orpheus SQ. That said, both versions are fine, and those with the earlier set need not to replace it with this one, all the more so as the ASV liner notes are incomparably more informative than those on Dynamic (I don't know if the Brilliant reissue has retained the ASV liner notes). But, as with any masterpiece, the serious music lover will need more than one version. With Zandonai, Respighi and Malipiero, the box will afford three great revelations, and other than those it offers hours of unpretentious enjoyment.

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