Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco - Appunti (Enea Leone)

Information

Composer: Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco

• Appunti, Op, 210

Enea Leone, guitar

Date: 2015

Label: Brilliant

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Description

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) was an Italian-born, US-naturalised composer whose greatest legacy to posterity was his guitar music, much of which is already well represented within the deep catalogue of Brilliant Classics, but not these volumes of Appunti: preludes and studies, neo-Baroque and neo-Classical in character, which derive from his work with the musicologist Ruggero Chiesa and were composed with the intention of expanding the repertoire for the instrument both forwards, into his own time, and backwards, to the era when the instrumental forebears to the guitar such as the lute and theorbo were such significant carriers of dance music.

Accordingly, he wrote sets of Danze del ’600 e del ’700, Danze dell’Ottocento and Danze del ’900, but died before the full, intended four-volume scope of these ‘Notes’ (Appunti) could be realised, and the first two volumes had to be published as they stand. This is the only currently available complete recording of the set. The contents range from an antique Galliard to uptempo Rumba and Samba: appealing proof of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s compositional skill across the widest range of style and idiom.

There was a hidden didactic aim behind the Appunti which becomes clearer when the pieces are assembled together, but their individual charms raise their status from that of technical exercises or studies. Nowhere evident here are the composer’s experiments with the avant-garde language of his time, but rather a compendium of the guitar’s poetic and dance-like expressive potential across the ages. The soloist on this new recording is a pupil of Chiesa who, though not yet 40, has made an international career for himself as a concert guitarist, with several well-received recordings to his name.

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Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (3 April 1895 — 15 March 1968) was an Italian composer. A student of Ildebrando Pizzetti, he gained recognition in the 1920s but was forced to emigrate to the U.S. in 1939 due to Mussolini's anti-Semitic laws. Settling in Hollywood, he composed concertos for piano, violin, cello and guitar, and wrote overtures for 12 Shakespeare plays. He also set Shakespeare's poems and sonnets to music and composed two Shakespearean operas. Castelnuovo-Tedesco's chamber and piano works are noted for their symphonic scope, while his vocal music reflects the melodic tradition of the Italian school.

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Enea Leone (born 1978 in Milan) began studying guitar under his father's guidance and later trained with top teachers, including Ruggero Chiesa and Oscar Ghiglia. He graduated with honors from the Milan Conservatory and the Basel Academy. A successful competitor, he won the International Tournament of Music (TIM) in 2002 and performed widely across Europe as a soloist and chamber musician. Leone is also a dedicated educator, serving as Artistic Director at Harmonia School of Music in Gessate and teaching masterclasses across Italy. He currently teaches guitar at the conservatories of Cagliari and Vibo Valentia.

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