Nino Rota - Sonatas; Trio; Improvvisos (Bidoli; Canino; Mercelli; Sanzin)

Information

Composer: Nino Rota

• Sonata for Violin and Piano
• Improvviso in D minor for Violin and Piano (from the film "Amanti senza amore")
• Improvviso for Violin and Piano "Un diavolo sentimentale"
• The Legend of The Glass Mountain (from the film "The Glass Mountain")
• Sonata for Flute and Harp
• Trio for Flute, Violin and Piano

Alessio Bidoli, violin

Bruno Canino, piano

Massimo Mercelli, flute

Nicoletta Sanzin, harp

Date: 2020

Label: Decca Italy

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Description

Released on 28 February 2020, the new album by violinist Alessio Bidoli is dedicated to the chamber music compositions of one of the most significant musical authors of the twentieth century. Nino Rota: Chamber Works, published by Decca Italy and distributed in leading music stores and on major digital platforms, is a project that the young Milanese musician has performed together with Bruno Canino on piano, Massimo Mercelli on flute and Nicoletta Sanzin on harp. The booklet is embellished with works by Gabriele Basilico and Federico Patellani, kindly granted by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, together with contributions by Manfredo Pinzauti.

The talent of Nino Rota, an enfant prodige who had already composed an oratorio for soloists, chorus and orchestra at the age of eleven, often engaged with demanding instrumental forms: in this album, particular emphasis has been placed on some of his most evocative chamber works. The selected repertoire includes compositions connected with his neoclassical production as well as chamber transcriptions of pieces drawn from music he wrote for lesser-known films.

The album opens with the Sonata for Violin and Piano (1936–37), dedicated to Guido Agosti and first performed in Milan on 14 March 1938, a composition that fully belongs to the season of Italian neoclassicism. It is followed by the Improvviso in D minor for violin and piano, a piece of considerable instrumental difficulty, performed in a sequence of the film Amanti senza amore by Gianni Franciolini (1947), an adaptation of Lev Tolstoy’s novella The Kreutzer Sonata, starring Clara Calamai, Roldano Lupi and Jean Servais in the role of the celebrated violinist. Of a different character is the Improvviso in C major (Un diavolo sentimentale), a completely autonomous work composed in 1969 and dedicated to the violinist and publisher Alberto Curci: a composition that is at once brilliant and virtuosic, fluid and enjoyable, characterised by harmonic writing that handles dissonances and tonal ambiguities with modern ease and confidence.

The Legend of the Glass is instead a piece for violin and piano drawn from the soundtrack of the 1949 film The Glass Mountain (La Montagna di Cristallo), directed by Henry Cass, and dedicated to the violinist Francesco Antonioni, instrumentalist, historian and violin teacher at the Liceo Musicale—later the N. Piccinni Conservatory—in Bari, of which Rota became director in 1950.

The Sonata for Flute and Harp, published by Ricordi in 1939, is one of the chamber works most representative of Rota’s neoclassical poetics, defined by Gavazzeni as “the most perfect measure offered by Rota.”

Finally, the Trio for Flute, Violin and Piano, composed in 1958 for the Swiss-Cuban Trio Klemm and premiered by the ensemble on 6 April 1960 at the Lyceum Clubs Hall, is a distinctive work characterised by incisive rhythmic writing and shifting harmonic ambiguities.

“The idea for this project,” says Alessio Bidoli, “came to me after listening during a sleepless night to one of his interviews on RAI3. Nino Rota spoke about his dizzying career with the simplicity of the truly great, and this humility and simplicity struck me deeply. Of course, I knew him for his film scores, but also because he had taught at the Bari Conservatory, where I too had a wonderful professional experience for two years. So I began exploring his chamber repertoire and was very surprised to find that many of his lesser-known compositions were truly rarely performed. Hence the idea for this recording, together with Bruno Canino (with whom I have already recorded four CDs), Massimo Mercelli and Nicoletta Sanzin, to introduce young students and lovers of twentieth-century music to the refined and ironic chamber repertoire of this great Italian composer. I am grateful to Decca for giving me this opportunity.”

Rota stated: “I do not believe in differences of class or level in music: the term ‘light music’ refers only to the lightness of those who listen to it, not of those who wrote it.” According to Nicola Scardicchio, author of the introductory note in the elegant booklet accompanying the CD, this idea can be perfectly applied to the distinction between concert music and film music: “The exchanges from the concert hall to the cinema hall characterize a composer who did not establish genre barriers in an art such as music, which for Rota had meaning precisely because it was free from limits of any kind.”

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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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Alessio Bidoli (born 18 August 1986 in Milan) is an Italian violinist. A graduate with highest honors from the G. Verdi Conservatory in Milan, he refined his studies in Lausanne, Salzburg, Siena and Imola with distinguished masters including Salvatore Accardo. He has performed at major venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Musikverein, and collaborated extensively with pianist Bruno Canino, producing numerous acclaimed recordings. A dedicated educator, Bidoli is Professor of Violin at the Guido Cantelli Conservatory in Novara and serves as Artistic Director of the Musica in Corte Festival and the New York Classica Festival.

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Bruno Canino (born 2 January 1936 in Naples) is an Italian pianist, harpsichordist and composer. Trained at the Naples and Milan Conservatories, he has toured extensively across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Oceania, collaborating with such artists as Salvatore Accardo and Itzhak Perlman. He has performed with major orchestras worldwide under leading conductors including Claudio Abbado and Riccardo Muti. A champion of contemporary music, he has premiered works by prominent composers and recorded extensively. Canino has also held prominent teaching and artistic leadership positions throughout his career.

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