Noseda continues with Casella (inc. Forthcoming Casella)

[Dundonnell]

The Pizzetti Symphony is a work I have long hoped to hear.

[BFerrell]

I think other than Britten, the commissions were political. Germany, Italy and Hungary were all in fact fascist dictatorships. How did Britten get into the mix? I meant no implication that Pizzetti was in any way a fascist.   It was the time he lived in and composers are notoriously naive about politics and politicians (pace Shostakovich). Mussolini was a great supporter of the arts. In fact, Mussolini did many great things for Italy until he cozied up to Hitler. Pizzetti was a magnificent composer and a fine man whose music I love very much. I would love to hear the Symphony some day.

[earlebn]

You can hear the Pizzetti Symphony in a rather extraordinary performance by the original conductor and orchestra on a recent Japanese CD: Altus ALT103. It's a double CD that comes with what I assume were the other 1940 commissions: Strauss's Festmusik, Ibert's Ouverture de Fete, Veress's First Symphony, and a piece by the local composer Hidemaro Konoye. As to Pizzetti, he engaged eagerly with the fascist regime at the highest level, and received all its most prestigious honours. His politics were already ultra-nationalist before WWI, like those of so many Italian intellectuals of his generation, especially those associated (as he was) with Gabriele D'Annunzio.

[alberto]

By the way Hidemaro Konoye, pupil of Reger and d'Indy, and himself a member of the imperial family and brother of a (prime?)minister, was the first ever to record Mahler's Fourth (Tokyo, 1930).
As to Pizzetti, as far as I have read, I never read about him as an ardent fascist. He received the most prestigious honours by the Republic of Italy after 1945.
Even Toscanini was still in 1920 nationalist and favourable to D'Annunzio enterprises: he conducted a concert for D'Annunzio and his henchmen in Fiume, a contended city occupied by the "poet-soldier" and his troops. Montemezzi and Sinigaglia (himself later sadly a Nazis victim) attended.
In 1933 or 1934 Pizzetti's Second Quartet was premiered by the Busch Quartet in the Italian holiday residence of Toscanini (who has given up conducting in Italy for political reasons).In the small audience Toscanini, Pizzetti, Elisabeth Sprague Coolidge, Fritz Busch, Mieczislaw Horszowsky, Rudolf Serkin, Sinigaglia, Enrico Mainardi........On that occasion Pizzetti and two of the Busch performed the Composer's Piano Trio.

[Dundonnell]

Given the disgrace suffered by composers like Casella himself and Mascagni at the end of the Second World War Pizzetti seems to have been, at least, more successful in managing to have separated himself from association with Fascism.

The sad truth of the matter is that virtually every Italian composer active in the 1920s and 1930s, to a greater or lesser extent, gave support to or benefited from the endorsement of Mussolini's government, including those who would later profess to have been resolutely anti-Fascist. This is not intended as a criticism of those composers per se but a commentary on an exceptionally difficult period in Italian history and on the compromises most people make in circumstances which are, at best, mixed and cloudy.

[earlebn]

Critical assaults on Casella for the allegedly fascist content of his music did not really get under way until the the mid-1960s, long after his death (in 1947). The immediate post-war years are a fascinating grey zone, in which reputations (such as Pizzetti's) could indeed be re-made. Quite how Pizzetti managed the transition from fascism (the regime made him a member of the Accademia d'Italia, among other honours: the highest it could bestow on an artist) to his later status as the grand old man of the Christian Democrat establishment is a story that has never been told, and one that would doubtless shed a great deal of light on the political and artistic compromises of post-war Italian musical history. Compromise is not a word I would use of Italian composers in the 1930s. What is rarely acknowledged is the way in which fascism created something of a paradise for Casella, Pizzetti, Malipiero and co. The regime introduced massive state subsidies for arts organisations (most famously the various festivals), and took especial care of its younger talents. No curbs were placed on modernist daring; indeed, it was encouraged. Figures like Dallapiccola and Petrassi responded with enthusiasm. Casella, it should be made clear, shouted the fascist content of his own music from the rooftops.

[eschiss1]

Does it (the Pizzetti) sound more like A major or minor? The score seems to suggest A minor (key of the first movement, of course, not the finale, being important here) despite an unadorned "in la" designation. One has this with some other scores as well, of about the same time and the late 19th century too (Widor 1). But I've only seen the score...

[Dundonnell]

Critical assaults on Casella for the allegedly fascist content of his music did not really get under way until the the mid-1960s, long after his death (in 1947). The immediate post-war years are a fascinating grey zone, in which reputations (such as Pizzetti's) could indeed be re-made. Quite how Pizzetti managed the transition from fascism (the regime made him a member of the Accademia d'Italia, among other honours: the highest it could bestow on an artist) to his later status as the grand old man of the Christian Democrat establishment is a story that has never been told, and one that would doubtless shed a great deal of light on the political and artistic compromises of post-war Italian musical history. Compromise is not a word I would use of Italian composers in the 1930s. What is rarely acknowledged is the way in which fascism created something of a paradise for Casella, Pizzetti, Malipiero and co. The regime introduced massive state subsidies for arts organisations (most famously the various festivals), and took especial care of its younger talents. No curbs were placed on modernist daring; indeed, it was encouraged. Figures like Dallapiccola and Petrassi responded with enthusiasm. Casella, it should be made clear, shouted the fascist content of his own music from the rooftops.

I am not sure that this is the correct place to continue this discussion. It might be better placed in a separate thread

The only point I would wish to make here in response to your very sound post is that my use of the word "compromise" referred to the attack by Respighi, Pizzetti, Zandonai and others on 'modernist' tendencies in music in December 1932. Casella and Malipiero seem to have regarded this as a coded attack on them. The difficulties Malipero got into over the opera "La Favola del Figlio Cambioto" and his dedication of his next opera "Giulio Cesare" to Mussolini seemed to me an indication of his willingness to 'bend with the wind'.

[BFerrell]

They were all pro-Mussolini but not fascists or antisemetic.

[earlebn]

I think I could find you an Italian composer who was both a fascist and an anti-Semite. Try Francesco Santoliquido. Dundonnell is right about Malipiero. There was a period in the early-to-mid 1930s when he clearly felt that he needed to start writing music that was more obviously fascistic. As well as the opera Giulio Cesare there are the orchestral Inni. Both works were dedicated to Mussolini. The spur for this change of direction may well have been the bad experiences in 1932 and 1934 to which Dundonnell refers. But I wanted to say something about the Pizzetti Symphony. Though the Japanese performance is not great (the conductor, one Gaetano Comelli, pulls the tempi about something rotten, the orchestra is ropey, and the sound rough), the piece emerges as - to my mind - easily the most interesting of Pizzetti's large-scale pieces of the 30s and 40s in classical forms. I can imagine a recording by Noseda and the BBC Phil making a real splash. Let's hope it's next on his list.

[Dundonnell]

If you have not yet invested in the newly released Chandos disc of the Concerto for Orchestra, "A notte alta" and the Symphonic Fragments from 'La donna sepente' can I recommend the disc with all possible enthusiasm

I have waited decades to hear the Concerto for Orchestra and it is every bit as fine and invigorating a piece as I had expected. In Casella's later neo-classical style, the Concerto is not however in any way a 'dry' work but is truly festive in celebration of the Concertgebouw Orchestra's 50th anniversary.

With the familiar superlative Chandos engineering  'A notte alta' is performed by Martin Roscoe and Noseda with a real, tangible sense of nocturnal atmosphere. It really is an amazing work, albeit in a style which Casella did not remain with for long.

Noseda has these pieces under total command and it is very much to be hoped that he goes on to record more Italian music for Chandos: Malipiero and Pizzetti, in particular.

[JeremyMHolmes]

And for those of you who want to hear Noseda conduct Casella in concert, on November 3rd he will conduct the 3rd Symphony with the BBC Phil in Manchester 

[alberto]

Maybe that performance could be preliminary to a recording (so, it would be the third recording of Casella Third Symphony in a short span of time....).