ALESSANDRO MARANgONI

25years
Key Releases
|
May 2012
Alessandro
Marangoni
Plays Castelnuovo-Tedesco
‘There’s a fascinating connection between Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s elusive Italian way – the singing, the brightness, the sunniness
– and the American […] way of composing. The music is often very spectacular, very brilliant […] It’s certainly not intellectual
music, like Busoni; it’s more voluptuary, more romantic, like a great river flowing with that sense of never-endingness. It’s very
theatrical music … in the piano concertos, as well as the sunshine, there are melodies of great sadness, great emotion.’
Mario CASTELNUOVO-TEDESCO (1895-1968)
Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2
Four Dances from ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’
Malmö Symphony Orchestra • Andrew Mogrelia
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s two Piano Concertos form a contrasting pair.
Concerto No 1, written in 1927, is a vivid and witty example of his romantic
spirit, exquisite melodies and rich yet transparent orchestration. Concerto
No 2, composed a decade later, is a darker, more dramatic and virtuosic
work. The deeply-felt and dreamlike slow movement and passionate finale
are tinged with bleak moments of sombre agitation, suggestive of unfolding
tragic events with the imminent introduction of the Fascist Racial Laws that
led Castelnuovo-Tedesco to seek exile in the USA in 1939. The Four Dances
from ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’, part of the composer’s recurring fascination for
the art of Shakespeare, are atmospheric, richly characterised and hugely
enjoyable. This is their first performance and recording.
Booklet notes in English
Catalogue No: 8.572823
Total Playing Time: 01:16:43
7
Listen on www.naxos.com
Listen to an excerpt from Piano Concerto No. 2:
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P L AY
About Alessandro Marangoni
Born in Italy in 1979, Alessandro Marangoni studied piano with Marco Vincenzi at the Università di Pavia, where he was awarded the diploma with
honours (summa cum laude). He continued his studies at the Scuola di Musica in Fiesole with Maria Tipo and Pietro De Maria. Besides his musical
studies he was awarded an honours degree in philosophy at the Università di Pavia with a thesis on Fernando Liuzzi’s philosophy of music. He
was also a merit student of the Almo Collegio Borromeo, Pavia, one of the oldest and most important European university colleges. The recipient
of several national and international awards, including the prestigious Amici di Milano International Prize for Music, Alessandro Marangoni has
appeared in many important musical events in Europe, both as a soloist and as a chamber musician, including Rome (Accademia di Santa Cecilia),
Florence (Accademia della Crusca), Venice (Teatro La Fenice), Ischia (the Walton Foundation), Cittadella in Assisi, Teatro Verdi in Trieste, Engadiner
Internationale Kammermusik-Festspiele, Sagra Musicale Umbra, the Italian Cultural Institute in London, the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan, St John’s
College, Cambridge, and the Universidad Católica de Chile. As a chamber musician he has collaborated with some of the most important Italian
musical personalities and ensembles, including Mario Ancillotti, Vittorio Ceccanti, Daria Masiero, Stefano Parrino, Quirino Principe, Carlo Zardo and
the Nuovo Quartetto Italiano. He has played to great public and critical acclaim in Spain with the Málaga Philharmonic Orchestra and in Bratislava
with the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Aldo Ceccato. He has also given more than a hundred concerts for the Second Life virtual
platform. He has recently started an artistic collaboration with the Italian actress Valentina Cortese. He plays the piano for the Trio Albatros, with
which he has won acclaim all over the world. In 2007 Alessandro Marangoni made a recording for La Bottega Discantica of piano works by the
great Italian conductor Victor de Sabata. For the 40th anniversary of the latter’s death he played in a recital at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, with
Daniel Barenboim. He is recording the complete piano works by Rossini (Péchés de vieillesse) and Clementi’s Gradus ad Parnassum for Naxos. He
teaches piano and chamber music in several masterclasses in Europe and South America.
© 2012 Naxos Rights International Limited
Key Releases | 1
Key Releases
|
May 2012
Alessandro
Marangoni
Talks to Jeremy Siepmann
A
ll musicians engage with the notes. And for some that is
enough. Alessandro Marangoni engages with the composer in
the round, cultivating, without really trying, the human being behind
the notes. Rossini, for instance – one of his greatest loves – he
regards as a kind of uncle. His performances thereby take on the
character, for him, of conversations. Like many musicians, he can
hardly remember a time when music wasn’t central to his life. Or
indeed when his future was in doubt. ‘From the very beginning,’ he
says, ‘I had this will, this desire, to become a musician. My head
seemed to be full of music all day long.’ What he does recall, quite
vividly, is the occasion that revealed his destiny.
special kind of approach to playing the keyboard – a very warm,
predominantly joyful, very sunny way of singing. These things, of
course, are very hard to talk about but there is, nevertheless, I think,
an audible connection linking Italian keyboard composers from
Scarlatti to Clementi right through to Busoni. It may have something
to do with Italian landscapes, or Italian song, or even Italian food! I
think, in this case, particularly of Rossini, whose way of writing for
the piano is very Italian. But as I say, it’s really very difficult, maybe
impossible, to describe. There are some particular marks, but many
of these, like so much in music, are mysterious and really can’t be
fruitfully approached in a scientific way.’
‘I remember when my parents first took me to a concert, and I
remember that a choir was singing Rossini. It’s very, very clear in
my memory. I think I was five or six years old at the time. At the
beginning I started to cry and shortly after that I asked my parents
to buy me a piano. Happily, they did. But when it arrived, I was
disappointed because I was expecting a piano with pipes! I was
obviously a bit confused (I also loved the sound of the organ).’
For all his subsequent association with Italian composers,
Marangoni’s development had most of its roots in northern
traditions. ‘From the time of my studies onwards, my technique, my
outlook as a musician, my perspectives on style, have been based
on the classics: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin – I’ve played a
lot of Chopin – but also a lot of Scarlatti, Clementi and Schubert.
These provide the very foundation of piano playing. When you can
really play these well, the instrument is yours; you are a pianist.
From these, we learn all the possibilities of the instrument. Even
when I play contemporary music I’m aware of my great debt to
them.’
Lucky in his teachers, he had early and invaluable guidance from
Marco Vincenzi, a pupil of the great Neapolitan pianist Maria Tipo.
Later he would follow suit. By his own account, she changed his
life. ‘She taught me a lot of important things about music and
above all a great love for the sheer sonority of the piano. She told
me many times “you have to caress the instrument.” She not only
taught me many important things about music and technique; just
as importantly, in a way, she taught me new ways to practice. She
released me as both man and musician. She also transmitted to me
the essence of the Italian classics. I learned a lot of Scarlatti, for
instance, and a lot of Clementi. Also, what we might call the Italian
school. It was at around this time, also, when I was in my early 20s,
that I began to record, most notably music by Rossini (the complete
piano works) and Victor de Sabata.’
Is there, I wondered, any kind of binding overall quality which would
help to clarify if not define an ‘Italian school’, in the same loose
way that we talk about a ‘Germanic school’, a ‘French school’, a
‘Russian’ or a ‘Spanish’ school? What, if anything, connects the
piano music of Clementi, Rossini, Busoni, Victor de Sabata and
Castelnuovo-Tedesco? ‘I think one of the most important aspects
of the tradition is a particularly Italian way of singing at the piano.
The Italian approach to melody is largely determined, of course,
by the heritage of opera. And at the piano this translates into a
© 2012 Naxos Rights International Limited
As well as being a soloist, Marangoni is a dedicated chamber
player. For him, though, the two are not separate entities but
complementary parts of whole experience. ‘I think chamber music is
not only a wonderful thing in itself but a very valuable experience for
the soloist. I love sharing my feelings with my colleagues in chamber
music, to talk about music, to learn from the experience of others, I
love the exchange of ideas. There’s something so exhilarating about
discovering and exploring new ideas, new concepts, together. It’s a
beautiful thing. And when I’m alone at the piano, I find it colouring
my attitudes, my flexibility of mind, revealing wonderful things about
the conversational nature of music – the amount of dialogue that lies
beneath the surface of the notes. Going to the other extreme, my
experience of chamber music has likewise enriched my experience
in concertos, which I almost always approach now as though they
were a kind of large scale chamber music – especially in Mozart
and Beethoven and Mendelssohn. But this is very much more than
just a dialogue, it’s a three-way interchange between myself, the
conductor and the orchestra. In chamber music, you also learn
to vary your sound in accordance with the nature and character
of other instruments, as you exchange ideas and feelings and
Alessandro Marangoni Talks to Jeremy Siepmann | 2
Key Releases
states of mind. Chamber music expands your reach – expressively,
dramatically, psychologically.’
Like all true artists, Marangoni is a tireless and enthusiastic learner –
never more so, though it might seem ironic, than when he teaches.
‘I’m very lucky to be teaching now at the Materia conservatory, in
the south of Italy, which has a lot of wonderful pupils. One of the
great joys of teaching, for me, is precisely, as you say, that one
learns so much! It’s quite incredible. The experience of teaching has
taught me a lot about myself and the way I play, that I might never
have been aware of otherwise. To transmit in a scientific way what I
feel and want from music, I have to analyse, as much for myself as
for my pupils. In doing so, I discover ever more about the will of the
composers as revealed in the texts of their compositions.’
From composers in general, we turned to the man of the hour, as far
as this interview was concerned. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was
championed in his day by the likes of Toscanini, Jascha Heifetz,
Andrés Segovia, Gregor Piatigorsky and other luminaries, but to
a large degree, his celebrity died with him. To most, today, he is
a largely if not entirely unknown quantity. How then, I wondered,
would Marangoni describe his piano music to the experienced
layman coming to it for the first time? ‘The first word to come to
my mind would be “sparkling”. There’s a fascinating connection
between his elusive Italian way – the singing, the brightness, the
sunniness – and the American (more specifically, the Hollywood)
way of composing. Castelnuovo-Tedesco lived a lot in the States,
hence the double influence. The music is often very spectacular,
very brilliant – especially his way of writing for orchestra. I’m thinking
now especially – and appropriately! – of his piano concertos. It’s
certainly not intellectual music, like Busoni, for instance; it’s more
voluptuary, more romantic, like a great river flowing with that sense
of never-endingness. It’s very theatrical music. For example, in the
piano concertos, as well as the sunshine, there are melodies of great
sadness, great emotion. His music is definitely influenced by the
great Hebraic tradition (he was from a Jewish family), with incredibly
long melodies, expressing a deep melancholy. But there’s also, as in
the final movements of both concertos, both piano concertos, that
is, a great explosion of sparkling brightness – again, very theatrical.’
Small wonder that he was an outstanding orchestrator – one of
the many things that made him such a successful and influential
film composer. Unsurprisingly, as Marangoni says, this is reflected
in his piano music, which is notably ‘well-scored’. ‘It is. He uses
lots of colours. Like Beethoven, he treats the piano basically as an
orchestra, though without Beethoven’s occasional awkwardness,
which always arose from purely musical purposes. In some ways,
too, it’s quite Mendelssohnian. Very, very clear while also very
difficult, from a purely pianistic point of view. It’s certainly idiomatic
(he was a great pianist himself) but often in a very challenging way. I
must say, these concertos are by no means easy to play!’
Castelnuovo-Tedesco was steeped in literature, most obviously
in Shakespeare. Is there a ‘literary’, programmatic, theatrical
element in his piano music? Any allusive literary headings? ‘Well
the theatrical element I’ve already mentioned. And often there does
seem to be a strong sense of narrative, where you can really hear
the music as a story. Sometimes the narrative element is quite
explicit, as in the solo piano work Evangélion, a collection of 24
little pieces relating the story of Jesus as told to the children, where
the narrative is unfurled in a very dramatic way. CastelnuovoTedesco was a great lover of literature, most famously perhaps of
Shakespeare. For example, the four dances that I discovered – and
I have to thank Lisbeth Castelnuovo-Tedesco, his niece, who gave
© 2012 Naxos Rights International Limited
|
May 2012
me the manuscript – are based directly on Love’s Labour’s Lost
by Shakespeare. And here there’s a great sense of English regality
combined with a sparkling sense of dance. … Also in the concertos,
especially in the first movements, you feel this great sense of
dancing, almost like the choreographing of a story.’
And in the concertos, does Marangoni have any favourite moments
that particularly attract him? ‘I really like the third movement of the
First Concerto very much. It’s one of those river-like movements,
with an exciting coda. And it makes a great effect. The Second
Concerto is bigger in its orchestration, more theatrical, even more
gigantic, in the character of the writing. I also like the cadenzas a
lot, particularly in the First Concerto. But in the Second Concerto
too, he wrote a wonderful cadenza – with a great melody, very slow
and singing, and this leads into a dolce oboe solo which forms a
connection between the end of the cadenza and the return of the
orchestra.’
Recording the concertos was a pleasure, but for Marangoni, as
probably for most recording artists, the pleasure was tinged with a
lurking frustration built in to the process itself. Very few performers
don’t miss an audience. But most find some way of minimising the
sensation. ‘When I record in the studio I often look directly at the
microphone, through which, and beyond, lies my audience: the
whole world may be listening! Yet in the studio you are basically
alone. Sometimes I feel a bit paralysed by this. I miss the warmth
of the public. A recording is certainly an artistic production, but of
a special kind, in that it basically preserves a single moment, so
to speak. It’s like a picture or a painting, you know? It exists at a
remove from the greater reality. But the fact is that as performers,
interpreters, musicians, we evolve – and our performances naturally
evolve with us. And this can happen faster than many people
realise, I think. Often, after only an hour, I feel I’d like to rerecord
the piece a different way. What I feel happy about in the studio on
the day I may feel very unhappy about a year later. As a painting of
your life, of your innermost feelings, at a certain time, of course it’s
an interesting thing to have, but at the same time there’ll always be
something frustrating about it.’
Musically, mentally and physically, Marangoni is an artist on the
move. ‘I like travelling very much, and I love bringing my music to
all the different continents, and to discover cultures which are new
to me. I think the career of a musician is a fantastic opportunity. I
haven’t got a detailed plan yet, but one thing I’d very much like is
somehow to transcend existing traditions of performance to help
to bring new audiences to music, people who for one reason or
another haven’t yet discovered its wonders and its endless variety
– especially all the great numbers of young people.’
His highest aspirations, however, transcend not only traditions but
audiences themselves. Again like all true artists, he is radiantly
conscious of the incalculable privilege of being a musician. ‘I just
love it that I can be a servant of the great composers throughout the
centuries, to be constantly in touch with some of the greatest minds
and spirits of all mankind, and always to be learning from them. …
With such a fantastic instrument as the piano, and the company
of the great composers, I feel as though I’m on a perpetual and
extraordinary voyage.’
And no-one is more conscious than Marangoni that he is one of a
great multitude of living artists who feel exactly the same. Music is
the essence of both community and hope.
Alessandro Marangoni Talks to Jeremy Siepmann | 3
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About Andrew Mogrelia
Andrew Mogrelia has had a varied career of concerts, recording and work with major dance
companies. He has conducted many ensembles including BBC orchestras, Birmingham
Contemporary Music Group, Noord Nederlands Orkest, Dutch Radio and Residentie
orchestras, the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonic, Nashville Symphony
and Empyrean Ensemble (USA), Queensland and West Australian Symphony Orchestra,
Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, Orchestra Victoria and the Australian Youth
Orchestra’s Music Camp. He has worked with the English National, Dutch National, Finnish
National, Norwegian National ballets, Netherlands Dance Theatre, Birmingham Royal
Ballet, Australian Ballet, West Australian Ballet and American Ballet Theater. He has served
as conductor-in-residence at Birmingham Conservatoire (1992–2002), co-music director at
Dutch National Ballet (1992–1994), music director and principal conductor of San Francisco
Ballet (2003–2005), leading the orchestra’s thirtieth anniversary concert (2005), and music
director of the Conservatory Orchestra in San Francisco (2005–2012), where he directed a
residency for composer John Adams in 2007, conducting Harmonielehre in the composer’s
presence. He has an extensive discography for Naxos/Marco Polo, with his complete
Sleeping Beauty (8.550490–92) acclaimed as a ‘clear first choice’ by Gramophone. He has
been principal guest conductor of the Queensland Ballet since 2008 and guest conducts
the orchestras in Brisbane and Canberra as well as ensembles in Europe.
About Malmö Symphony Orchestra
The Malmö Symphony Orchestra (MSO) consists of a hundred highly talented musicians
who demonstrate their skills in a wide range of concerts. In the summer of 2008 the
MSO founded a youth orchestra, the MSO Ung (MSO Young) with talented young string
musicians, entrusted in the 2009/2010 season with the chamber music series featuring
MSO musicians as soloists. The Naxos and BIS record labels have brought the orchestra
to a worldwide audience and several of its recordings have gained international awards,
such as the Cannes Classical Award and Diapason d’Or. The MSO’s recording of Berwald’s
Symphonies, under the direction of Sixten Ehrling, was nominated for a Gramophone
award, and a release of music by the American composer Charles Ives (Naxos 8.559370)
was Editor’s Choice/Recording of the Month in October 2008, also in Gramophone. The
recordings of Franz Schmidt’s Symphonies (Naxos) with former principal conductor Vassily
Sinaisky have won similar praise in Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. Sinaisky is now
honorary conductor of the MSO, and Marc Soustrot was appointed principal conductor
from the season 2011/2012.
© 2012 Naxos Rights International Limited
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