Gian Francesco Malipiero - Complete Songs for Soprano & Piano (Vansìsiem Lied Duo)

Information

Composer: Gian Francesco Malipiero

CD1

• I sonetti delle fate
• Cinq mélodies
• Keepsake
• Tre poesie del Poliziano
• Quattro sonetti del Burchiello
• Due sonetti del Berni
• Due romanze di Domenico Gnoli
• La cavalcata della morte
• Vocalizzo per voce acuta

CD2

• Le stagioni italiche
• Tre canti di Filomela
• Le sette allegrezze d'amore
• Mondi celesti
• Sette canzonette veneziane

Vansìsiem Lied Duo

    Paola Camponovo, soprano

    Alfredo Blessano, piano

Date: 2021

Label: Brilliant

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Description

Belonging to the generation of Respighi but dying several decades later, Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973) is a far more varied composer than listeners to his post-Romantic chamber and orchestral music would guess. This album is both the most comprehensive publication ever issued of his song output on record, and a valuable opportunity to reappraise an often under-rated 20th-century composer.

Malipiero wrote songs throughout his career, and in his late 20s found an affinity with the visionary and influential poet Gabriele d’Annunzio. Their artistic partnership began in 1909 with I sonetti delle fate, full of Wagnerian yearning in the spirit of Debussy’s incidental music to d’Annunzio’s St Sebastian play. The composer’s literary leanings and gifted word setting soon produced equally idiomatic settings of French poetry in a set of Cinq mélodies and an elliptical cycle of three poems (titled in English) by Georges Jean-Aubry, Keepsake.

With Le stagioni italiche, however, Malipiero shows himself up to date and in sympathy with the latest developments in expressionist song writing from the pens of Mahler, Schoenberg and Webern, and with an ambition to match: a 40-minute cycle of four varied texts ranging from the 15th century to Malipiero’s own day. Like much else here, the cycle has previously been recorded but never in the context of Malipiero’s other songs which help us to understand the composer’s stylistic evolution. Three years later, there followed a through-composed drama based on the ancient legend of Philomel (immortalised by Ovid in the Metamorphoses) from which Malipiero extracted a cycle of three songs. He continued to refresh his style and innovate with Le sette allegrezze d’amore from 1945, but little in his music prepares the listener for the pointilliste precision of the Sette canzonette veneziane from 1960.

Anyone with a passion for art song will want to acquaint themselves with this marvellously varied body of work, especially in the hands of the ‘Vansìsiem Lied Duo’, consisting of soprano Paola Camponovo and pianist Alfredo Blessano. Previous albums have shown them to be acutely sensitive interpreters of Rossini, Debussy and Lili Boulanger, and the French-Italian axis of Malipiero’s songs plays to their particular talents.

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Gian Francesco Malipiero (18 March 1882 – 1 August 1973) was an Italian composer and music scholar. Educated in Vienna, Venice and Bologna, he was later influenced by modernist trends in Paris. A key figure in 20th-century Italian music alongside Alfredo Casella, Malipiero rejected verismo and revived interest in pre-Romantic Italian music. His major works include operas, symphonies, chamber music and cantatas. As a scholar, he edited the complete works of Monteverdi and contributed to editions of Vivaldi, Corelli and Frescobaldi, significantly shaping the modern understanding of early Italian music.

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The Vansìsiem Lied Duo is an Italian ensemble specializing in German, French and Italian Art Song from the 19th and 20th centuries, especially the Generazione dell’Ottanta. Formed at the Florence Conservatory and further trained at top European institutions, the Duo has won many international awards, including the Elsa Respighi Competition and Grand Prize Virtuoso in Paris. In addition to classical repertoire, they champion contemporary music, premiering works by Óscar Prados and Orazio Sciortino. The Duo regularly collaborates with prestigious cultural institutions and festivals across Italy and Europe.

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