Nicolas Flagello

[Dundonnell]

There has been some sporadic discussion of Nicolas Flagello over the past couple of years, mainly in connection with his beautiful Violin Concerto, but there are a growing number of Flagello's works now on disc. Naxos have issued the First Symphony(he wrote two), the Piano Concerto No.1 (there are three), the Missa Sinfonica(coupled with the Arnold Rosner Symphony No.5-which I know deeply divides opinion among members of this site ) and a number of other orchestral works.

Flagello, who was born in 1928 and died in 1994 but stopping composing as a result of ill-health in 1985, is, I suppose, the natural successor of Samuel Barber as an American composer of profoundly romantic music. I have just been listening to a Naxos Historical Recording of his "Passion of Martin Luther King" but the work on that cd which really struck me was "The Land", a richly evocative setting of Tennyson's poetry. It is quite amazing the way in which Flagello gets a small orchestral ensemble of four woodwind, piano, celeste and a group of strings to produce a sound which continuously fools one into imaging that a full orchestra must be accompanying the baritone soloist(Ezio Flagello, the composer's brother). That demonstrates a considerable mastery of orchestration.

There is an excellent Flagello website http://www.flagello.com/

He is a composer whose merits now convince me that he is a man of real substance and that his early death was a real tragedy.

[minacciosa]

I consider Flagello's Symphony No.1 to be among the top five American symphonies, and certain one of the 20th century's greatest.