Montemezzi Symphony in E minor/etc.

[Alan Howe]

A twenty plus year-old recording. Does anyone know this?
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/italo-montemezzi-orchesterwerke/hnum/11942384

It's on YouTube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlFebromR7g&list=OLAK5uy_kNcxPol1uyodV-hRFhslPGcBdL6Trzq1E&index=1

[ken]

Here are all 5 tracks from this CD on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlFebromR7g&list=OLAK5uy_kNcxPol1uyodV-hRFhslPGcBdL6Trzq1E&index=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpWyxk9b9vo&list=OLAK5uy_kNcxPol1uyodV-hRFhslPGcBdL6Trzq1E&index=2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIT78m2Es1E&list=OLAK5uy_kNcxPol1uyodV-hRFhslPGcBdL6Trzq1E&index=3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcHmWiWq2MQ&list=OLAK5uy_kNcxPol1uyodV-hRFhslPGcBdL6Trzq1E&index=4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6Xz-IKTgPY&list=OLAK5uy_kNcxPol1uyodV-hRFhslPGcBdL6Trzq1E&index=5

[Mark Thomas]

It sounds like an attractive work but a very recessed recording.

[Alan Howe]

Yes, it's very odd sounding.

[terry martyn]

Mike Herman  seems to have missed this.

It sounds as if it was composed in the 1890's, but I bet it's later.   Does anyone know the date of its composition?

[eschiss1]

btw according to SBN this was originally issued on the label "Comune di Vigasio" in 2003. "Symphony in E minor: unpublished, discovered in May 2001, world premiere 9 June 2002". Which is simply wrong: it was performed in 1899. See Gazzetta musicale di Milano, vol. 1.

[Alan Howe]

I've found this somewhat oblique reference:
Sinfonia in Mi minore (inedita).Fonti e Bibl.: G. Ricordi, La nostra musica. I. M., in Musica e musicisti, LX (1905), 10, pp. 658
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/italo-montemezzi_(Dizionario-Biografico)/

Translated, this means that the Symphony is (was?) unpublished and, presumably, dates from (or before) 1905.

[eschiss1]

appears in a biography of Montemezzi in the 1905 volume (issue 10) of that magazine?

[terry martyn]

I have the CD, and it was well worth buying. A live performance of the Symphony, a brief Serenade, and a symphonic poem "Italia mia!" Yes,the sound is a somewhat recessed, but I think the recording was probably made in the  Town Hall of Vigasio,where the composer was a native.

I personally think that the Symphony dates to the end of the nineteenth century and happened to be published a few years later. It is a student work,highly Romantic, and ,at least in the opening movements,more Russian- sounding than Italian. The use of the woodwind in the first movement made me think instantly of Glazunov, and the ensuing adagio,Tchaikovsky. It is an attractive,approachable,composition,easy on the ears.

The other works were composed in the 1940s.  I would not have placed them anywhere as late as this. Mainstream late-Romantic.


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[Alan Howe]

Thanks for that review, Terry.