GIUSEPPE MARTUCCI
La canzone dei ricordi op.68a
ILDEBRANDO PIZZETTI
Tre sonetti del Petrarca
FRANZ LISZT
Tre sonetti del Petrarca S270
Tenore
Matteo Lippi
Piano
Claudio Marino Moretti
Giuseppe Martucci (1856-1909) was a composer, pianist and conductor. German Romanticism was his main reference especially in symphonic writing, a unicum in the late 19th century Italian scene. His output focuses on piano music, but also includes pages of chamber music, two symphonies, two concertos for piano and orchestra, and the oratorio Samuel. The lyric poem La canzone dei ricordi op. 68 dates from the mid-1880s, Martucci composed it for voice and piano, between 1886 and 1887 he made a version for voice and orchestra (op.68a). On texts by poet and academic Rocco Emanuele Pagliara, La canzone is divided into seven sections with a late Romantic and crepuscular style. In the first, the love theme is introduced, which then develops through a journey between memory and fantasy. The last section is a musical variation of the first, with a more melancholy tone but on the same text.
Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1915) is part, together with composers such as Alfredo Casella, Ottorino Respighi and Gian Francesco Malipiero, of the “generation of the ’80s,” united in the early twentieth century by the search for a new musical language, open to the avant-garde but at the same time tied to the Italian tradition. Pizzetti’s research focused particularly on musical theater and symphonic music, but his catalog also includes a number of titles of vocal chamber music, including I pastori, Tre canzoni per canto e quartetto d’archi, Tre canti greci per canto e pianoforte, and Tre sonetti del Petrarca. The composer devoted himself to the latter in 1922, selecting three texts from Petrarch’s Canzoniere: La vita fugge, e non s’arresta un’ora (sonnet 272), Levommi il mio pensier in parte ov’era (sonnet 302) and Quel rosignuol che sì soave piagne (sonnet 311). The style of the three lyric poems juxtaposes a piano line not devoid of new and sought-after harmonies with a vocal line at times of archaic inspiration, in which Pizzetti’s theatrical experience emerges.
Franz Liszt’s I tre sonetti del Petrarca belong in the first version for solo piano to the Années de pèlerinage (composed between 1842 and 1882), particularly to the Second Book suite dedicated to Italy. In 1883 Liszt created a new version of the Sonnets for voice and piano, taking up the texts from which he was originally inspired: Pace non trovo (sonnet 104), Benedetto sia il giorno (sonnet 47) and I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi (sonnet 123). The composer’s piano style, which shifts from sweeping, dense and articulate moments to moments of ethereal suspension, is interwoven with operatic vocal writing, a very distinctive feature of this collection. Famous interpretations of it include those of Luciano Pavarotti, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Jonas Kaufmann, among others.
Ludovica Gelpi
