Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco - Guitar Concertos (Lorenzo Micheli; Massimo Felici)

Information

Composer: Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco

• Concerto in G for two Guitars and Orchestra, Op. 201
• Concerto No. 1 in D for Guitar and Orchestra, Op. 99
• Concerto No. 2 in C for Guitar and Orchestra, Op. 160

Lorenzo Micheli & Massimo Felici, guitars

Orchestra Sinfonica Abruzzese

Michael Summers, conductor

Date: 2004

Label: Brilliant

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Review

The "International Castelnuovo-Tedesco Society" is active in New York, of which Andres Segovia was honorary president. And in Italy? It's already a great achievement that at least the name and a faint memory of this highly respected Florentine composer, a pupil of Pizzetti, survived the cold avant-garde wave of the post-World War II era (which ended, without self-criticism, in nothing). At the age of forty-four, in 1939, he fled, following racial persecution, to the United States, to California, where he vigorously pursued his brilliant compositional career, which began in 1925, when he won the National Opera Competition with La Mandragola. He died in Los Angeles in 1968, where he had been teaching since 1946. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, who also worked in film, has a remarkable oeuvre spanning all genres. The three concertos collected on this beautiful CD are the complete guitar works; the Concerto in G major. op.201 for two guitars and orchestra (1962) is the last of his Concertos and has a melodic profile of extremely elegant freedom: we can hear elegantly hinted popular inflections; the Concerto no. 1 in D major, op.99 (1939), completed a few months before his departure from Trieste – aided by the interest of Arturo Toscanini, Jascha Heifetz and Albert Spalding – is the one that reflects a beautiful neoclassical inspiration, true to the imprint of the composer's training. The Concerto no. 2 in C major, op.160 (1953) is an Allegretto followed by a Sarabande and seven Variations: an airy display of imagination, and a delight for the ear also due to the excellence of the two excellent, sensitive guitarists.

— Umberto Padroni

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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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Lorenzo Micheli (born 1975) is a classical guitarist who studied under Paola Coppi, Frédéric Zigante and Oscar Ghiglia. A graduate of the Conservatory of Trieste and Basel's Musik-Akademie, he gained international recognition after winning the 1999 Guitar Foundation of America competition. Since then, he has performed over 600 concerts across six continents, as a soloist, with orchestra or in "SoloDuo" with Matteo Mela. He has recorded over 20 acclaimed albums, covering a wide range of guitar repertoire. In addition to performing, he teaches at universities and conservatories in Switzerland, the US, Spain and Italy.

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Massimo Felici studied under Oscar Ghiglia at the Chigiana Academy in Siena and the Musik-Akademie in Basel. He won top prizes in competitions in Gargnano and Málaga, with further recognition in Alessandria, Parma and Granada. Felici has performed worldwide as a soloist and with orchestras. His acclaimed CD Escarraman features premiere recordings of works by Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He also recorded Castelnuovo-Tedesco's complete guitar concertos with Lorenzo Micheli. Composers like Giovanni Sollima and Luis Bacalov have written works for him. Felici is guitar professor at the Parma Conservatory.

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