Leone Sinigaglia - Chamber Music (Various Artists)

Information

Composer: Leone Sinigaglia

• Violin Sonata in G major, Op. 44
• Romanze in D major for cello and piano, Op. 16 No. 1
• Cavatina in G major for violin and piano, Op. 13 No. 1
• Cello Sonata in C major, Op. 41

Solomia Soroka, violin

Noreen Silver, cello

Phillip Silver, piano

Date: 2011

Label: Toccata

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Review

It would be a pleasure to think that Leone Sinigaglia’s music might make inroads after many years of neglect. The Italian composer, who knew Brahms and was a student of Dvořák in Prague, was championed by diverse elite musicians – Furtwängler, Kreisler, Stokowski and Toscanini among them – but his compositions have long fallen into the kind of limbo that befalls many another once held in esteem. These chamber works are all heard, it seems, in premiere recordings.

 

The 1936 Violin Sonata was his last large-scale work – he was to die eight years later in Turin in 1944 whilst being arrested by the Nazis - Sinigaglia was Jewish. Bell peals and songful lyricism fuse with moments of gently pensive unease in broadly sonata form in the first movement. Maybe some of the passagework sounds a touch sequential but that is the only demerit, and that’s not a failing one could level at the ripe romanticism of the central slow movement. Here refined nostalgia is predicated on German models but is no less fresh for all that. The uplifting finale, albeit with a contrapuntal element – canonic imitation too – leads on to some strenuous passages amidst the elegant fluidity of the writing.

 

The Cello Sonata was written in 1923, contemporary therefore with the cello sonatas of Bax, Ireland and Delius. This time Sinigaglia prefers a four-movement structure, and the overall dimensions of the work are bigger than the later Violin Sonata.. The writing is quite busy at points but the slow winding down into simplicity illuminates the end of the opening movement rather touchingly. The Intermezzo is delightfully capricious, full of wit, whilst rich warmth suffuses the Adagio, a kind of barcarolle, and again rather wistful. This is a quality Sinigaglia often displays, and it is a singular one.

 

The small morceaux have been cleverly selected, one for each string instrument. We hear a somewhat melancholic Romanze for cello and piano, dating from 1898, and the Cavatina for violin from 1902 which reveals just the kind of lyric ease of which Sinigaglia was so astute a practitioner.

 

There is some but really not so very much trace of Italian folkloric writing in these string works – this was a strong component of his music but it’s less immediately apparent here. The performances are stylistically apt throughout, properly chamber-scaled, and not at all concertante-like. They make a good case for the sonatas though I can imagine rather more extravert tonal performances bringing other attributes to the fore.

 

Other than that, these elegant readings set a standard for future Sinigaglia performances, and I truly hope that more will follow the lead of the intrepid Solomia Soroka and Noreen and Philip Silver.

 

— Jonathan Woolf

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Leone Sinigaglia (14 August 1868 – 16 May 1944) was an Italian composer and mountaineer. Born in Turin, he studied composition with Giovanni Bolzoni at the local conservatoire and was passionate about climbing, often spending time in Cavoretto, where nature inspired his music. His travels across Europe shaped his artistic development: he met Brahms in Vienna in 1894 and Dvořák in Prague in 1900. Returning to Turin in 1901, Sinigaglia focused on arranging and preserving Italian folk music. His most acclaimed work is Vecchie Canzoni popolari del Piemonte, Op. 40, a six-volume collection of Piedmontese folk songs.

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Ukrainian violinist Solomia Soroka, born in L'viv, studied with Hersh Heifetz, Bohodar Kotorovych, Liudmyla Zvirko and Charles Castleman. She has performed as a soloist and chamber musician across Europe, North America, Asia and Australia. A champion of Ukrainian music, she has premiered works by Lyatoshynsky, Skoryk and Stankovych. With her husband, pianist Arthur Greene, she records for Naxos and Toccata Records, earning critical acclaim. Currently, she teaches at Goshen College and Bowling Green State University, directs the Sherer Violin/Piano Competition, and remains active in festivals and masterclasses.

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Born in Glasgow, Scotland, cellist Noreen Silver studied at the Royal College of Music in London and the New England Conservatory in Boston, and received private instruction from Jacqueline du Pré and Pierre Fournier. Since 1999, she has taught at the University of Maine and served as Principal Cellist of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. Along with her husband, pianist Phillip Silver, she has performed much of the cello/piano repertoire in the USA, Europe, Israel and the UK. She has also taught at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Strathclyde University, and the Ellsworth Community Music Institute.

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Phillip Silver, a pianist and chamber musician from Brooklyn, New York, studied at the New England Conservatory with Katja Andy and Leonard Shure, earning bachelor's and master's degrees cum laude, and later received a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Washington for his research on Ignaz Moscheles. Silver has performed in major venues worldwide, including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, and the Mozarteum. A member of the Silver Duo with his wife, cellist Noreen Silver, he has recorded extensively for Koch/Schwann and Toccata Classics. He is Professor of Music at the University of Maine.

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