Of the composers belonging to, or associated with, Italy’s “Eighties
Generation”, Gian Francesco Malipiero is the hardest to pin
down. In spite of Casella’s modernist forays and the somewhat
isolated position of the younger Ghedini, he was the most radical,
the most inclined to break into unexpected paths, the result,
it often seems, of curiosity rather than systematic self-searching.
This is not the same as saying he was the most independent,
and I rather suspect that in the end Pizzetti will prove the
major, most rigorous, figure of the group. All these composers
tended to be prolific, but Malipiero’s yearly output would have
ensured a vast corpus of work even if he had stopped at the
proverbial three-score-years-and-ten. Instead, he went on pouring
out score after score till the end, maybe not always in his
own best interests. I recall hearing a very late “Concerto delle
Macchine” which suggested he had run out of music long before
he actually stopped writing it. Massimo Bontempelli made the
attractive suggestion – quoted in David Gallagher’s notes –
that “every piece counts, because together they create what
is really a single vast uninterrupted work, a continuous musical
discourse without repetition”. This, however, sidesteps the
issue that this “vast uninterrupted work” contains relatively
few sections which one might wish to hear frequently. And, purely
as a discussion point, is not every artist’s output a “vast
uninterrupted work”? Perhaps not always, thinking of the abyss
between Sibelius’s great orchestral works and his salon trinkets.
Certainly, Malipiero’s extensive catalogue does not contain,
so far as I know, trivial scraps written to order or in the
hope of popular success. Whatever the ups and downs of his inspiration,
he meant every note he wrote.
Like the Casella issue I recently reviewed (Symphony 3/Elegia
Eroica 8.572415),
Naxos offer the slightly unusual solution of notes in English
and Italian of which one or other is not a translation. Instead,
they are independent and quite detailed essays by David Gallagher
and Marta Marullo. In the former case I preferred Marullo’s
approach, but Gallagher seemingly has a special sympathy for
Malipiero. He writes in such a way as to bring alive to us Malipero
the man, with his love of silence and animals, and provides
such background information on the compositions as will ensure
that the novice approaches them in a suitable frame of mind.
His amiable portrait omits to mention, though, that Malipiero
was a somewhat abrasive – read bloody awkward – personality,
inclined to take pot-shots at friends and enemies alike. Marullo
is more business-like, with comments on structures and influences,
dates of first performances and who conducted them and so on.
Both, not surprisingly, quote Malipiero’s own comments on the
works recorded here. If you read Italian you will be pleased
to read his actual words, though the English translations are
good.
The three sets of “Impressioni dal vero” (Impressions from Life)
sound as if they ought to be aural postcards of the Respighi
type. The first set is about birds, its three movements entitled
“The Blackcap”, “The Woodpecker” and “The Scops Owl”. The second
set has a “Dialogue of Bells”, “The Cypresses and the Wind”
and a “Country Festival” while the pieces of the third set are
“Festival in the ‘Valley of Hell’”, “The Cockerels” and “The
Tarantella in Capri”. And it is also true that, of the bird
pieces, the first is pervaded by the blackcap’s mournful cry,
the second by the woodpecker’s rapped-out rhythm on the tree
– a woodpecker of Hitchcockian dimensions though – and the third
by the plaintive, monotonous wail of the scops owl. But the
music is not a portrayal of either the birds or their habitat,
it is all about Malipiero’s personal impressions and thoughts.
To that extent the titles are perhaps sardonically misleading.
“The Blackcap” opens with an atmosphere of brooding, languorous
mystery. The bittersweet sense of sun-drenched longing may remind
British listeners of Bridge’s tone-poem “Summer” (1914-15).
A coincidence, unless Bridge travelled to Milan in May 1913
to hear the Malipiero première, which seems highly unlikely:
Sir Henry Wood gave “Impressioni I” their British première in
1918, following with “Impressioni II” the year after. A question,
then, of the two composers’ reactions to Debussy, both of them
preferring a more obviously emotional engagement to the Frenchman’s
more distant evocations. The comparison serves to show that
Malipiero was the more radical composer. Bridge proceeds by
way of his own brand of endless melody, Wagner-derived and maybe
filtered through his teacher Stanford.
Malipiero rejected such romantic trappings. Influenced perhaps
by the old Italian madrigal sequences which he was instrumental
in restoring to public attention, he replaced symphonic development
of the Germanic kind with the juxtaposition of “panels”. So
each of the three Impressions works out, in its brief length,
the emotional implications of its subject matter, then he stops
and writes another panel. The atmospheric first piece is followed
by an energetic, even violent scherzo and the first cycle concludes
with a haunting nocturne. In these three pieces the balance
between content and form seems to me perfect and the themes,
while not immediately memorable, lodge in the mind with increasing
hearings.
About the other two sets of “Impressioni” I am not so sure.
Nor, apparently, was Malipiero himself, concluding that he did
not “disown them, but I don’t love them”. Under the circumstances,
he would perhaps not have been too upset to hear me say that
I don’t mind hearing them but I don’t love them either.
With the second set the problem is that they are just that little
bit longer. This is where the “panels” become unstuck and we
risk finding what I am inclined to define, having recently reviewed
the complete piano concertos of Alexander Tcherepnin, the “Tcherepnin-syndrome”,
or “rut-by-rut” construction. This arose because Tcherepnin,
too, had rejected Germanic symphonic development and it means
that the composer gets into a rut, stays stuck in it until he’s
had enough, and maybe some time after we’ve had enough, then
moves on to another rut and gets stuck in that. The opening
“Dialogue of Bells” is an impressive cortège in its bleak –
but orchestrally elaborate – way but rather too obviously sectional
and ultimately tedious. I do just wonder, though, if we’re getting
the real story. From Marullo’s notes I learn that it’s marked
Moderato, ma non lento. Like a festive, distant peal of bells.
La Vecchia’s Moderato seems to me verging on lento,
and I hear nothing festive in his almost tragic reading. So
perhaps a faster tempo would show it in a better light.
The second piece is more attractive in its delicate tone-painting.
Bridge lovers will note a resemblance between Malipiero’s wind-tossed
cypresses and Bridge’s wind-swept seagulls in the “Sea-foam”
movement of his suite “The Sea”. Theoretically Malipiero could
have known the Bridge work but it seems most unlikely and we
must assume this is a coincidence. The last Impression shows
that Malipiero could always produce effective if unedifying
orchestral bluster when required.
Back to brevity for the third set of “Impressioni”, and so much
the better. The first piece, “Festival in the ‘Valley of Hell’”,
is dominated by a constantly repeated five-note motive that
I suppose might be thought to resemble the famous motive of
Beethoven’s fifth symphony with one note more. The effect and
atmosphere here are so different that I must say the resemblance
occurred to me only after several hearings. It is a curiously
hypnotic piece, more hellish than festive, though in reality
the valley in question is a famously beautiful one in the Italian
Alps. It got its name because it contained seams of iron ore
and in quite early times was strewn with smoking iron kilns.
What worries me is Marullo’s comment that “A rhythmic joy and
an irrepressible desire for song emerge from the first and last
movements…”. Nothing of the kind emerges from this performance,
which is effective and impressive according to its own lights.
But my question is: has Marullo heard a performance that sounded
like that, and if so, was it conducted by someone who might
have known what Malipiero wanted? Readers may not realize, by
the way, that writers of liner notes do not usually have the
opportunity to hear the disc they are writing about if it is
a new recording.
The concluding “Tarantella in Capri”, too, though lively enough
here in a bandmasterly manner, doesn’t match Marullo’s description
or possess the whirl and excitement of the classic tarantella.
Undoubtedly successful is the sinister central movement, an
unlikely depiction of cockerels but a strongly atmospheric slow
piece.
The first set of “Pause del Silenzio” is a radical statement
of Malipiero’s rejection of Germanic development in favour of
separate panels. The title is rendered here “Breaks in Silence”;
elsewhere I see that Harvey Sachs has translated it more literally
as “Pauses of Silence”. Neither is entirely satisfactory since
the Italian definite article – “Pause del Silenzio” rather than
“Pause di Silenzio” – makes the silence specific, almost a living
thing. “Breaks in the Silence” might have been better, but I
think Malipiero meant something poised between the tangible
and the intangible, and perhaps English has no way to express
it.
In spite of its short length, this work has seven very distinct
sections. They are unrelated, but each is preceded and succeeded
by a fanfare-like theme which appears a semitone higher each
time, slightly varied. The first panel is promising with its
tolling bell and sombre atmosphere and no one would say that
this music sounds like Bridge, or like anyone else really, so
I suppose this is the pure Malipiero. But what a drab fellow
he is, for all his large orchestral palette. Even within their
length, the slow sections are obliged to proceed rut-wise and
go on too long for their material while the faster ones tend
to be exercises in the sort of instant noise any post-Rite of
Spring composer could produce on tap. Unrelated though they
may be, the themes and characters of the different slow sections
and the different fast sections are not really memorable enough
for you to notice that they actually are different without a
good number of hearings. I write these negative impressions
with regret and listened to it through once again before penning
them. Yes, the themes do gradually begin to stick in the mind
a little more, but is it worth it?
I am wonder if the performance does all it can to help. I get
the idea that La Vecchia’s Malipiero is a bit like Bryden Thomson’s
Bax, sympathetic and analytical of the orchestral textures,
useful in showing aficionados how the wheels go round, but ultimately
flat-footed and pedestrian, unlikely to convince the unconverted.
A 1994 broadcast performance from Cagliari under the excellent
Spanish conductor Arturo Tamayo shaved more than a minute off
La Vecchia’s timing (11:48). This seems a step in the right
direction, more sharply characterized, but not really enough
to change my opinion of the music. Tamayo is within one second
of the 1962 RAI Turin performance by Malipiero’s pupil Bruno
Maderna, but I haven’t been able to hear this. The identical
timing is no guarantee for what happens within the individual
sections, of course. Most curiously, Marullo describes the work
as taking place within “the brief space of fifteen minutes”,
so I wonder if she has heard a much slower performance, and
what it sounded like. This is the only work on this disc of
which a previous complete recording exists, an LP made for Fabbri
by the Nuremburg SO under Othmar Maga. Maybe that lasts fifteen
minutes?
In place of an unbroken sequence, “Pause del Silenzio II” has
five separate pieces. This final title seems to have been Malipiero’s
first idea, though here Gallagher’s and Marullo’s accounts don’t
quite agree. They were first published as “The Hero’s Exile”
on the insistence of Gabriele D’Annunzio. He no doubt spotted
the somewhat heroic cut of the theme of the last piece, though
this mood is dissipated as the music drifts into its central
rut – sorry, I mean panel. A less suitable title for the work
as a whole could hardly be imagined. Malipiero then toyed with
“The Book of Hours” and tried “On the River of Time” and “The
Singing Cricket”. The latter, he told John Waterhouse in 1963
– quoted by Gallagher – referred to “a creature who goes on
singing all day every day without knowing why” and has been
supposed a rueful admission by the composer of his own strengths
and weaknesses. None of these titles gained friends for the
work, though “On the River of Time” plausibly suggests its stream-of-consciousness,
inconsequential flow of unrelated events. Like many stream of
consciousness novels, it suffers from a tendency to put in everything,
whether interesting or not. It is Malipiero at his most timeless,
but also at his drabbest, often drifting aimlessly up and down
with no clear reason why he should not instead have drifted
down and up. Yet it does convey a sense of belonging to some
epic if dimly perceived procession of events. The stream of
consciousness comparison is not far-fetched since this technique
was known in Italy through Joyce’s disciple Italo Svevo, who
published the classic Italian stream of consciousness novel,
“The Conscience of Zeno”, in 1923, not long before Malipiero
wrote this work. In the end Malipiero reverted to the title
of “Pause del Silenzio II” but regretfully found that, under
whatever name, few conductors took it up. I can’t say I blame
them.
Hyper-productivity of the Malipiero type can be counter-productive
in the sense that, faced with a vast catalogue of works reputed
to be of uneven quality, musicians and the public just give
it all a pass. Although Malipiero was quite widely performed
at one time – performances of his works under Koussevitzky,
Mitropoulos and Celibidache allegedly survive, the British premières
of his first two symphonies under Boult probably don’t – no
one work became a repertory piece, even temporarily, acting
as a magnet for further exploration. In the case of “Impressioni
dal vero I” this is surely a pity. If a conductor were to programme
this alongside Respighi’s “Gli uccelli”, hopefully at least
some listeners would recognize the Malipiero as offering a far
deeper, if less titillating, experience. This work alone would
seem to make purchase of the present disc mandatory for collectors
with an interest in early-20th century orchestral
music. They may or may not agree with me over the rest.
Christopher Howell
see also review by Hubert
Culot and Nick
Barnard
Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma/Francesco La Vecchia 
