Nino Rota - Film Music; Concertos (Felix Bender)

Information

Composer: Nino Rota

• Guerra e pace (Film Music Suite)
• Castel del Monte
• Concerto per archi
• Concerto per arpa e orchestra
• Prova d'orchestra (Film Music)

WDR Funkhausorchester Köln

Felix Bender, conductor

Esther Peristerakis, harp / Michael Seal, conductor (Concerto per arpa)

Date: 2023

Label: Capriccio

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Review

This generously filled album brings together a selection of concert works and film music by Nino Rota. Such is the quality of invention and finish of the soundtrack pieces that they rarely seem inferior to their ostensibly more serious companions, themselves distinguished by the composer’s talent for lyricism and communicative immediacy.

Completed in 1947, the Harp Concerto features an effective combination of rhythmic ingenuity and orchestral colour. Especially memorable are the fanfares for solo trumpet and horn in the slow movement. The warmth and luminosity of the writing here contrast strongly with the darker tone of the Concerto for Strings, commissioned by the chamber orchestra I Musici and completed in 1965. Here, a greater seriousness of purpose and an element of sardonic humour make themselves felt in a four-movement work with a duration of slightly over 15 minutes. The third concert work, Castel del Monte, dates from 1974 and is a mysterious and atmospheric evocation for horn and orchestra of the castle in Andria in south-eastern Italy from which it takes its name.

Rota’s score for King Vidor’s 1956 Italian-American film epic War and Peace is represented here by a suite of 11 numbers amounting to about 30 minutes of music. The theme for Andrei and Natasha is one of Rota’s finest inspirations, and while some of the pieces do little more than evoke a mood, both the Polonaise and Natasha’s Waltz are musical conceptions of the highest quality. Only three items from Fellini’s 1978 satirical film Orchestral Rehearsal are included but all are strikingly vivid, none more so than the Galop, a riotous dance that sounds as if might have wandered in from a Khachaturian ballet.

The quality of all the performances is first-rate and the recording is clear and well balanced, albeit slightly lacking in warmth. Strongly recommended to anyone not yet familiar with Rota’s output, and to those who already are.

— Christian Hoskins

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Nino Rota (3 December 1911 – 10 April 1979) was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor and educator, internationally acclaimed for his film scores. He is best known for his collaborations with Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti, as well as for scoring The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, the latter earning him an Academy Award. Over a 46-year career, Rota composed more than 150 film scores, in addition to operas, ballets, orchestral and chamber works, including a notable concerto for strings. He also wrote music for theatre and served for nearly three decades as director of the Liceo Musicale in Bari.

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Felix Bender, born in Halle, was a member of the Thomanerchor Leipzig and studied in Weimar. He was also an assistant to Herbert Blomstedt at the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Prizewinner at the Ring Award in Graz, he served as First Kapellmeister and Deputy General Music Director at Theater Chemnitz (2013–2018). Since 2021/22, he has been General Music Director at Theater Ulm, where his production of La Légende de Tristan was named "World Premiere of the Year 2022". A frequent guest at Leipzig Opera and Cologne Opera, he has conducted widely across Germany and Europe and collaborated with leading orchestra.

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