Any cellist seeking new repertoire, and any listener in search of Romantic cello sonatas beyond Brahms, will alight upon this album with enthusiasm. Although Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) studied under Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) at the Conservatoire in Florence during the early years of the 20th century, their paths diverged when the Jewish Castelnuovo-Tedesco had to emigrate to the US in 1938. Back in 1921 Pizzetti had composed a Cello Sonata thematically unified across it's three movements, with an 'agitated and anguished' Scherzo at it's heart, while the slow outer movements translate elements of medieval chant and polyphony into soulful meditations. Three years later he composed a cycle of Tre Canti - three songs more commonly encountered in the version for violin and piano but better suited to the pitch and expressive range of the cello, so closely molded to that of the human voice. And these really are 'songs without words' - by turns affectionate, tender and impassioned. The younger Castelnuovo-Tedesco was more concerned to establish a mood than to tell a story in his instrumental music, and the first movement of his Cello Sonata from 1928 is an object example of his tendency to face both backwards and forwards, artistically speaking, so that he can evoke Romanticism while simultaneously casting doubt upon it's certainties and view them from an anxious distance. The album is rounded off with the delicious fantasy on the Largo al factotum and 'Un voce po' fa' from Il barbiere di Siviglia which Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed in two versions, for Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky, having emigrated and become a fixture on the Hollywood musical scene.
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