Alfredo Casella - Piano Music (Luca Ballerini)

Information

Composer: Alfredo Casella

• Nine Pieces, Op. 24
• Eleven Children's Pieces, Op. 35
• Two Ricercari on the name B-A-C-H, Op. 52
• Six Studies, Op. 70

Luca Ballerini, piano

Date: 1998

Label: Naxos

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Description

Alfredo Casella (1883–1947) was a prominent Italian composer, pianist, and conductor whose career spanned a transformative period in European music. Born into a musical family in Turin, he showed early promise as a pianist, receiving initial instruction from his mother. Influenced by prominent figures like Giuseppe Martucci and Antonio Bazzini, Casella moved to Paris in 1896 with his mother after his father's death to study at the Paris Conservatoire. There, he studied piano with Louis Diémer, harmony with Xavier Leroux, and composition with Gabriel Fauré. His nineteen-year stay in Paris brought him into contact with leading composers such as Ravel, Enescu, Debussy, and Stravinsky, though early influences included Mahler, Richard Strauss, and Wagner, whom he admired from performances conducted by Toscanini.

Casella initially pursued a career as a pianist and chamber musician, composing two symphonies during this period. Although he attempted to establish a symphonic concert series in 1911, it was short-lived. By 1915, he returned to Italy, settling in Rome, where he began teaching at the Liceo Musicale di Santa Cecilia. There, he became a central figure in modernizing Italy’s musical culture, helping it catch up with European trends. His impact was amplified by founding several music organizations. The Società Nazionale di Musica (later the Società Italiana di Musica Moderna) and the Corporazione delle Nuove Musiche introduced modern European music to Italian audiences. These institutions featured both conservative composers like Respighi and Pizzetti and more progressive figures, with Casella aligning himself with the latter.

Casella also promoted early Italian music, both through performance and scholarly work. He was director of the Venice Festival of Contemporary Music and co-founded the Settimane Musicali Senesi in 1939 with Count Guido Chigi Saracini to revive older Italian works. Despite aligning at times with Mussolini’s fascist regime—finding operatic inspiration in the Abyssinian campaign—Casella maintained a strong commitment to modernism and artistic progress until his death in 1947.

Casella’s compositional output is generally divided into three periods. His early phase (pre-1913) was influenced by various composers; the middle (1913–1920) saw a turn toward modernist experimentation; and his later period synthesized earlier influences into a distinct personal style, marked by contrapuntal texture and historical references.

This stylistic evolution is evident in works such as Nove Pezzi, Op. 24 (1914), a collection of character pieces dedicated to peers like Stravinsky and Ravel, each with distinctive moods and pianistic techniques. His Undici Pezzi Infantili, Op. 35 (1920), written for children, blend simplicity with subtle homage to earlier composers, including Clementi and Albéniz. In Due Ricercari sul nome B-A-C-H, Op. 52 (1932), Casella pays tribute to Bach using the musical cryptogram B-A-C-H in two contrasting pieces: a somber Funebre and a rhythmically intense Ostinato.

Finally, his Sei Studi, Op. 70 (1942–44), are both technical piano studies and homages to Chopin and Ravel, exploring musical challenges like thirds, sevenths, repeated notes, and perpetual motion. These pieces demonstrate Casella’s mature style—virtuosic, structurally inventive, and deeply informed by both historical and modern traditions. Throughout his life, Casella played a key role in shaping modern Italian music, serving as a bridge between its past and its European future.

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Alfredo Casella (25 July 1883 – 5 March 1947) was an Italian composer, pianist and conductor. He studied in Paris under Louis Diémer and Gabriel Fauré before returning to Italy in 1914 to teach at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome. From 1927 to 1929, he served as principal conductor of the Boston Pops. Casella played a key role in reviving interest in Antonio Vivaldi's music, notably through organizing the 1939 Vivaldi Week. A major figure in the Neoclassical revival, his own compositions were deeply influenced by earlier Italian music. His notable works include La Giara, Paganiniana, and concertos for various instruments.

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Luca Ballerini (born 1965 in Bologna) is an Italian pianist. He studied at the G.B. Martini Conservatory in Bologna and later at the Geneva Conservatory with Maria Tipo, earning top honors. He is a prizewinner at major international competitions, including Senigallia, G.B. Viotti, F. Busoni and Géza Anda, after which he recorded Casella's piano music for Naxos. Ballerini has performed across Europe as a soloist and chamber musician, collaborating with notable orchestras and artists such as the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and cellist Vadim Pavlov. He also teaches piano at the V. Bellini Institute in Catania.

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