Alfredo d’Ambrosio (1871-1914)
Dedicato a …
Lucilla Rose Mariotti (violin)
Zsuzsanna Homor (piano)
No recording or video details
ACHORD PICTURES DVD [58]
Alfredo d’Ambrosio was a noted violinist and composer popular for both his morceaux and a couple of big concertos, which have been recorded on DVD by the same company (review). Talking of which, a cassette-made recording exists of the great Aldo Ferraresi performing Concerto No 1 (review). D’Ambrosio studied with Pinto and Bossi in Naples and then with Sarasate in Paris and finally Wilhelmj in London. In his day the best of his salon pieces were played by just about every player of note. Now Achord releases a recital devoted to those once-famous – and still tenacious – fiddle pieces, some of which keep a toe-hold on the near outer fringes of the repertoire. See, for example, Peter Fisher, who recorded both the Sérénade and Canzonetta adding the Romance, Op 9 and Sonnet Allègre on his Litmus CD (review).
In this recital the violinist is the talented young Italian, Lucilla Rose Mariotti, born in 2001, a pupil of Accardo and Vilmos Szabadi. The pianist is the Hungarian Zsuzsanna Homor, a graduate of the Ferenc Liszt Academy in Budapest where she is now a piano accompanist in the string department. Some may know her Hungaroton recording of pieces by Ferenc Vecsey with Szabadi, another link with Mariotti (review).
They play thirteen pieces. They open with the charming, feminine Sérénade, Op 4 and move straight to one of his most famous effusions, the Canzonetta. The Romanza, Op 9 is less well-known, though Fisher recorded it in the album cited above, and it begins in sprightly, athletic form before subsiding to a warm cantilena, which is very much d’Ambrosio’s default position compositionally. He does reserve forcefulness for a piece he dedicated to Hugo Heermann, the Strimpellata, but it’s back to salon sensitivity in the Cavantina, Op 13, dedicated to the great Czech player, Jaroslav Kocian. The names of the dedicatees explain the DVD title, ‘Dedicato a…’ as each piece is dedicated to a performer or friend.
I’d not heard the Aria, Op 22 before and was surprised how melancholy it is, especially when one considers that it was dedicated to Jan Kubelík. A coincidental dedication? Or perhaps d’Ambrosio saw beneath the gymnastics to the man beneath. Perhaps the most stylish performance is of Aveu, Op 38 No 1 dedicated to Achille Simonetti. There’s a fast and frisky Introduction et Humoreque, Op 25 dedicated to the Hungarian violinist Edie Reynolds. She was a pupil of Sauret and performed the concertos of Tchaikovsky and Bruch with the respective composers accompanying her. There’s a brief reference to each of the dedicatees in the booklet.
The sound is not ideally focused in a slightly billowy ballroom acoustic; they do actually play in what might very well be a small ballroom or large, elegant drawing room. There are several camera angles involved, largely unproblematic and certainly not flashy. They’re fixed so there’s no distracting virtuosity in long shots and closeups. One peculiarity is that the name of each piece performed stays at the bottom of the screen for the duration. There’s no method that I could find of using a menu. It’s a spartan set-up.
Nevertheless, this is a good companion to the bigger concertos and I hope that d’Ambrosio’s works will receive more than cursory interest as they’re rediscovered and performed. This DVD, rather homespun though it is, may well help a little in that process.
Jonathan Woolf
Published: November 7, 2022
