Eugenio Visnoviz (1906-1931)

[Wheesht]

In the rich holdings of the Theatre Museum in Trieste a visitor can come across forgotten or neglected composers.
One of them is "a brilliant but tormented post-romantic pianist and composer, Eugenio Visnoviz", as the local newspaper, Il Piccolo, put it in an article in 2017. The information panel in the Theatre Museum states that it is only thanks to the composer's brother that at least some of his scores survived.
Two orchestral pieces are on Youtube, the "Hochzeitsmusik" from 1931 and Gavotta e Musette, both played by the Orchestra Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini conducted by Francesco Lanzillotta.

[Wheesht]

Just found out that his music has been published by Pizzicato Verlag Helvetia. The Italian version of their website also has a biographical entry.
CDs of his music have been produced,  but I have yet to find out where the discs are available from.

This is an announcement for a concert/lecture at the Trieste Theatre Museum in February this year:

"A leading musician of the 1920s, Eugenio Visnoviz (1906-1931) is probably the greatest composer between the two wars of a Trieste at the cultural crossroads between the world of German Romantik, Italian melos and Slavic pathos. His Musica per pianoforte, composed between 1924 and 1929, is a remarkable example of this, a collection of small aphorisms and a few more full-bodied compositions of deep expressive meditation. Even more illuminating is the corpus of Liederistica for voice and piano, 23 pieces in German, a probable stylistic link in Central European music between the worlds of Richard Strauss and Alban Berg. The tenacious focus on the world of the Lied was unleashed in a dazzling manner between autumn 1929 and September 1930. A relatively short but emotionally intense period, the penultimate year of his life represented for Visnoviz the second truly characterising phase of his compositional output. Inebriated by the aesthetics of the great classics of German poetry (Schiller, Heine, Rückert, Uhland, von Platen, among others), and fascinated by the creative freedom that the Lied form granted him, Visnoviz developed his writing somewhat. Beneath soft, persuasive vocal melodic lines, the enterprising pianist used his instrument as a deus ex machina in pushing his musical structures towards ever more complex forms, towards that style and maturity that biographically was not granted to him by his early death.
The Lumen Harmonicum Association has recently released a recording of Visnoviz's complete piano music and Lieder, performed by soprano Lucia Premerl and pianist Corrado Gulin. The conversation on Monday 19 February revolves around thisimportant research and enhancement project.
The commitment of the Lumen Harmonicum and its cultural director Massimo Favento in the work of rediscovering Visnoviz has borne numerous fruits over the years. The association has already produced 4 CDs with the entire chamber instrumental corpus (2 String Quartets, 2 Trios and 2 Quintets with piano, 1 Sonata for violin and piano) and a comprehensive biography published on the occasion of the centenary of his birth: 'La Città Musicalissima di Eugenio Visnoviz', Pizzicato (2006). Thanks to this organic and intense work of recovery, which was also presented under the auspices of the Università Popolare di Trieste, the Circolo della Cultura e delle Arti and the Società dei Concerti di Trieste, it was also possible to achieve the premiere of some symphonic works at the 'Giuseppe Verdi' Theatre in Trieste in 2012.

[Alan Howe]

On YouTube:
Hochzeitsmusik 1931: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6Lmkw18OTo
Gavotta e Musette: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSa2qqX9c4Q

[Wheesht]

Yes, thanks. The links were already in my first post about Visnoviz, though...

[Alan Howe]

Oh, apologies. I didn't spot the links. Thanks so much for finding them.

[Wheesht]

Not to worry, I rather hid them in the body of my text I must admit.

[Alan Howe]

I should have been more careful. Anyway, it's good that you found them.

[semloh]

Interesting pieces. Thank you for telling us about him, Wheesht. I wonder what on earth caused his death at such a young age. Tragic.

[Wheesht]

See this excerpt from a 2006 book about him, published in "Il Piccolo", here in translation:

Visnoviz, a perfect musician for Svevo
From 'The musical city of Eugenio Visnoviz. Studies and testimonies on the occasion of the centenary (1906-2006)' we publish an excerpt, courtesy of the author.

by MASSIMO FAVENTO


Eugenio Visnoviz does not speak, he answers in monosyllables. So says Vito Levi. He does not write. He signs very few times, softening the 'V' of his surname. He scribbles the ending of his surname without making it clear whether it should read Visnovi-tz or Visnovi-z. When, a few times, he happens to write distinctly or in block letters, the choice Visnoviz seems safer. The Triestine newspapers, to whom notes with concert announcements are surely delivered or brought by hand, get confused in a game as grotesque as it is equivocal. Often in the same article two, three lines apart, one can find the surname in both forms... 'E.V.' (it is better to quote him like this) does not write, or at least the traces of his writing have only reached us in a few fragments. Nevertheless, he composes. He composes a lot and in very few years, probably on the spur of the moment. An avalanche of music flows from his nib probably during long sleepless nights. In the morning, when he wakes up, a demon seems to be unleashed. E.V. revels in acts of musical self-harm on his own creations... and it's a good thing that his mother or Ermanno, his older brother, picks up the shreds in the bin.
'To me, frankly speaking, he seems a figure more from a novel than from the history of music, something that reminds me of Svevo's 'Senilità''. So says Piero Rattalino. Svevo in Visnovitz, or Visnoviz in Svevo?... we ask ourselves. It is difficult to move in delineating a relationship between one who is currently one of the best known 20th century writers in the world, and the other, a musician who is struggling to make a name for himself in his own city today! Yet when, on the evening of Friday 8 April 1927, Svevo is in the auditorium at the Teatro Verdi, Eugenio is on stage, the probable evoker in Italian of the Brahms's Schicksalslied on a poem by Hölderlin, that is to say, the highlight of the evening. The acclaimed pianist lends lustre to his art every other day, and three more days, in all the city's major halls and clubs.
The connection with Svevo is not meant to be a mere exercise in academia. Visnoviz could have been the main character in one of his novels: ambiguous in his identity, starting with his signature and the definition of his surname, uncertain in the few words of Italian, where the dialect would like to come out and 'graft itself in' as a protagonist in that seaside city so tied to the Mediterranean; sure and well versed in the German gothic cursive, learnt at school in very Italian Trieste; agile in disentangling himself from the most interesting texts of the great German literature that has converged in the world of the Lied, to the point of modifying them. Visnoviz moves 'devastated' by his talent that has grown and matured too quickly, condemned to live practically on the stage, for economic reasons or even... for never knowing how to say no to those who invite him!
'Dying of music...": this is perhaps the most probable answer to the riddle that hides the early and tragic death of Eugenio Visnoviz, a leading musician in Trieste, the "Città Musicalissima" of the early 20th century, a cultural crossroads between the world of German Romantik, Italian melos and Slavic pathos.
A prodigy and lion-like piano professional, Visnoviz, as a composer, was subjected to the turbulence of a volcanic creative talent that blossomed in one of the most delicate periods in music history. A champion of the prevailing Romanticism on the stage in the golden years of concert consolidation, he experienced the outbreak of the musical 'system' during the post-World War I crisis with intimate and dramatic apprehension. Practical, lucid and meticulous in his training, Visnoviz witnessed the dizzying progress of the music of his time, seeking his way with the humble attitude of one who ponders acquired values, concrete goals and attainable or imaginable utopias. He needed time.
Europe was consciously experiencing its own annihilation between Romanticism and Novecentismo, witnessing the sudden pulverisation of the musical status quo and the prodigious proliferation of new aesthetic lines. In a moment of great decadence and impetuous creativity, taedium vitae and annihilation got the better of the young, sickly and sensitive Visnoviz. 'Life is a little like illness. Unlike other diseases, life is always deadly. It bears no cure...' Italo Svevo states with Zeno in his "Conscience". And Music was perhaps the illness that led Visnoviz to his death.

[Wheesht]

A few days ago I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of the cellist, researcher and editor Massimo Favento, author of "La città musicalissima di Eugenio Visnoviz" (published on the occasion of the Visnoviz's centenary). I am now the proud owner of no fewer than 5 CDs with piano music, chamber music and lieder and will report here once I have had a chance to listen to them.

[Alan Howe]

How fascinating. We look forward to your report!

[semloh]

From the extract you've kindly reproduced above, Wheesht, I think the only thing we can say with any certainty is that Visnoviz was at the least mentally distressed. What caused this, and how it led to his death, who knows. Sad in any event.

I look forward to hearing your opinion of his music.

[Wheesht]

If my Italian was better, I'd would try to get hold of copy of Massimo Favento's book about the composer and read it with great interest, but the only things I can mention here is what the author told me, namely that Visnoviz was deeply troubled and that he composed a lot, often at night, only to tear the music to pieces in the morning. His brother would collect the pieces and put them back together again, and that is how a lot of the music has survived.

[Wheesht]

I have not had time to listen to all the Visnoviz CDs I brought home with me in depth, but what I have heard so far I found most attractive and interesting. Here is an overview of what's on the discs, unfortunately there is currently no international distributor for them.

1 CD with two Piano Trios, one in C sharp minor and one in B minor, each in four movements.
1 CD with two String Quartets, in D minor and A minor, each in three movements.
1 CD with two Piano Quintets, in F minor and G minor, each in four movements.
1 CD with piano music: Scherzo in C sharp minor and a set of 16 "Klavierstücke"
1 Double CD with Lieder (texts by German language poets), from 1929 and 1930, plus "Albumblatt per pianoforte" and "Valzer per pianoforte".

The performers are members of the ensemble Lumen Harmonicum.

[Alan Howe]

How would you describe Visnoviz's idiom?