Ravinia 2019, Issue 7, Week 14

recently immigrated to the US. Spivakovsky gave the premiere on November 23, 1940, at Car- negie Hall. The Ballade remained unpublished until 2018, when Edizioni Curci issued the score in an edition prepared, in part, by violinist Fran- cesca Dego. OTTORINO RESPIGHI (1879–1936) Violin Sonata in B minor, P. 110 In 1917, Ottorino Respighi, professor of composi- tion at the Liceo di Santa Cecilia in Rome, found himself struggling up the slopes of fame, yet un- able to surmount that elusive plateau. Respighi had suffered an infamous setback the previous year at the scheduled premiere of his symphonic poem Fountains of Rome . Arturo Toscanini had programmed the work immediately after a per- formance of excerpts from Wagner’s Twilight of the Gods . According to the composer’s wife (at that time, his fiancée), the fervently patriotic Italian audience objected, and when the “Funer- al March” was played, one listener shouted out, “This is for the Paduan dead.” Toscanini angrily threw down his baton and left the stage. Ironically, Respighi’s orchestral depiction of some of Italy’s most famous monuments be- came a casualty of this spontaneous nationalist protest. The premiere ultimately took place in Rome on March 11, 1917, under Antonio Guar- nieri. This performance was a near-unanimous failure, and the dejected composer condemned the score to his desk drawer: “Bah! This has been a failure! I’ll write another.” Redemption for Fountains of Rome , P. 106, came the follow- ing year, when Toscanini finally conducted the work to wild applause. Respighi persisted in writing music through- out this whole ordeal, completing his first new work after the failed premiere in August 1917— the Violin Sonata in B minor, P. 110. Written in Bologna and dedicated to his friends Ernesto Consolo and Arrigo Serato, the sonata exempli- fies Respighi’s distinctive blend of late-Romantic lyricism with a harmonic language on the outer fringes of modernity. Respighi played piano at the Bologna premiere (1918) with violinist Fed- erico Sarti. This lone essay for violin and piano begins with a compactly designed sonata movement, although its unusual treatment of themes gives the im- pression of a series of variations separated by pi- ano interludes. The Andante espressivo presents a movement of stunning lyrical beauty. Here, Respighi employed his most modernist device: a two-tier metrical structure with the violin play- ing in 4/4 while the piano is in 10/8, a layering that results in rhythmic flexibility rather than complexity. The finale employs a Baroque com- positional form—a passacaglia, with numerous repetitions of the 10-measure bass theme heard first in the piano. This movement offers a tes- tament to Respighi’s compositional virtuosity. A sense of musical continuity prevails, despite the fact that tempo, mode (major and minor), and character change radically and frequently. Respighi also revealed a variety of stylistic in- fluences: Bach, Brahms, Chopin, Mendelssohn, and perhaps even a hint of Prokofiev in the pen- ultimate section. IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882–1971) Suite italienne (arranged by the composer and Samuel Dushkin) Stravinsky fell in love with Naples and its vibrant Italian and Spanish heritage. So, when ballet im- presario Sergei Diaghilev approached him in 1919 with a new dance project involving music by the early-18th-century Neapolitan composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–36), Stravin- sky found the idea difficult to refuse: “I have al- ways been enchanted by Pergolesi’s Neapolitan music, so entirely of the people and yet so exotic in its Spanish character.” World War I had caused the dissolution of the Ballets Russes, but Diaghilev had reunited the troupe in London for three short seasons in 1918 and 1919. Hoping to rekindle the musical excitement Stravinsky brought to the Ballets MARIO CASTELNUOVO-TEDESCO (1895–1968) Ballade, op. 107 A native of Florence, Italy, Mario Castelnuo- vo-Tedesco studied at the local conservatory, where his greatest influence came from Ildeb- rando Pizzetti, a composer often mentioned for his pursuit of a purified, “classical” approach to opera. Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s abundant imag- ination soon accounted for an enormous cat- alogue of works that attracted considerable at- tention from another influential figure in Italian music, Alfredo Casella. Many works during this period of rising international prominence also reflected a fascination with the Impressionist style of Maurice Ravel. Castelnuovo-Tedesco fled Italy in July 1939 in the face of rising anti-Semitism (his Sephardic Jewish family, mostly bankers by trade, had lived in Italy for more than 400 years) and the subsequent ban on performances of his music, making his home first in New York, then in Los Angeles. Hollywood studios became his prin- cipal employers during the next decade and a half, commissioning scores for such films as And Then There Were None . Numerous concert works also date from the Hollywood years, in- cluding, as affirmation of his Jewish heritage, a handful of Biblical oratorios. In 1946, Casteln- uovo-Tedesco became a citizen of the United States. For years, he taught at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music (renamed the California Institute of the Arts), where his students includ- ed Jerry Goldsmith, Henry Mancini, André Pre- vin, and John Williams. Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Ballade, op. 107, belongs to a substantial catalogue of compositions and transcriptions for violin and piano. The music pays allegiance to Chopin’s ballades in its essen- tially introspective, though dramatic character, alternating between placid and impassioned themes. Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed his Ballade in 1940 while living in Larchmont, NY. He dedicated the score to Russian-Ukrainian violinist Nathan “Tossy” Spivakovsky, who had Ottorino Respighi Igor Stravinsky Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco SEPTEMBER 3 – SEPTEMBER 15, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 99