MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


 
REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS
Download: Classicsonline


Italian Clarinet Suites
Alessandro LONGO
(1864-1945)

Suite, Op.62 (1910) [15:18]
Ferruccio BUSONI (1866-1924)
Suite, K 88 (1878) [17:46]
Antonio SCONTRINO (1850-1922)
Sei Bozzetti (1909) [13:56]
Giuseppe FRUGATTA (1860-1933)
Suite, Op.44 (1901) [17:29]
Sergio Bosi (clarinet), Riccardo Bartoli (piano)
rec. 28-30 May 2008, Teatro Raffaello Sanzio, Urbino, Italy
NAXOS 8.572399 [64:29]

Experience Classicsonline
The unfamiliarity of three of the names at the head of this review is not perhaps well-calculated to attract the casual browser; should that browser grow a bit less casual and work out that best-known of the four composers, Busoni, is represented by a work written when he was twelve, expectations will not, perhaps, be very high.

And, in truth, there isn’t anything to be heard here that is likely to take the world by storm. But there is much that makes for thoroughly enjoyable listening and nothing that is less than interesting. To varying degrees all the works belong broadly in the idiom of late Romanticism, growing out of the German tradition but leavened with distinctively Italian elements and - particularly in the case of Scontrino - some French influences. There are lots of attractive melodies, some sophisticated harmonies and some finely expressive music.

All three of those less familiar names belong to composers who played a significant role in the musical life of their day. Alessandro Longo was one of the earliest modern scholars of Scarlatti; he established a Domenico Scarlatti Society in Naples early in the 1890s, and subsequently published 11 volumes containing 544 of Scarlatti’s sonatas (1906-10) and a monograph on the composer (1913). His ‘L’ numbers were for a long while the standard system for referencing Scarlatti’s sonatas. Longo taught piano at the Conservatory in Naples and was himself very active as a performer. His suite for clarinet and piano was one of a series for piano and wind instruments; it is in three movements, the second of which, an intermezzo, contains some pellucid melodies and some adroit piano writing; in the third movement (Allegro con spirito) is an attractive dialogue, the interplay of clarinet and piano is full of interesting touches and some intriguing changes of tempo. The writing everywhere is highly competent and the results, if relatively lightweight, make for engaging listening.

Born in Sicily, after studying at the Palermo Conservatory Antonio Scontrino worked extensively as virtuoso player of the double-bass. From 1871-1873 he studied in Munich. He later worked in Milan as a teacher, before being appointed Professor of counterpoint and composition back at the Palermo Conservatory in 1891 and a year later was also appointed Professor at the Istituto Musicale in Florence. His Sei Bozzetti (Six Sketches) were written when the composer was approaching his sixtieth birthday and they breathe experience and maturity. Full of complex rhythmic and harmonic manoeuvres, they deserve to be better known than they are. The first, Adelaide, contains some lush writing for the clarinet, beautifully played by Sergio Bosi; Didone, the second, is in the long line of musical responses to Dido’s abandonment and suicide, though the music is perhaps more sad than suicidal - at any rate until its close. Valser is thoroughly Germanic, though perhaps it isn’t only knowledge of the composer’s nationality that makes one hear some rather Italianate quasi-operatic inflections in places; the fourth piece, Gondoliera begins languorously, and with some audible debts to French impressionism, but builds to a vigorous conclusion. The fifth, Speranza, packs a good deal of emotional power and the suite closes with Letizia (Joy), which lives up to its title, full of vivacity and energy … and demanding considerable skill of its performers.

Giuseppe Frugatta has perhaps been even more comprehensively forgotten than Longo and Scontrino. He taught piano at the Milan Conservatory from 1891-1930 while also active as a soloist and a composer. More than one of his compositions won a significant international prize for him; he wrote some fine and once very popular operatic transcriptions for piano; but he has no entry in the current Grove nor, indeed, in Marc Vignal’s Dizionario della Musica Classica Italiana (2002). The six movements of his suite are elegant and expressive, full of music which, while very much of its time, should also appeal to most modern listeners. The thoughtful, slightly troubled Romance, the second movement of the suite, and the witty Scherzino (the fourth) are both of them rewarding and the closing Tarantelle is colourfully inventive.

Though it may have been written when its composer was not yet into his teens, Busoni’s six-movement suite is a work with some real emotional depth. Its opening Improvvisata is thoughtful and questioning, the following Barcarola has a melancholy sweetness and some dignified melodic lines; at the heart of the suite is Elegia, a lyrical movement that is more than merely mournful, with its sense both of letting go and of fond memory; Danza campestre (Rural dance) is a pretty, sprightly affair; Tema variato is a miniature of some compositional subtlety - especially considering the age of the composer - and the whole closes with a Serenata which has moments of astringency amidst its general (uncloying) sweetness. This was a 12 year old of real promise and already possessed of considerable maturity!

Throughout, the playing of Sergio Bosi is exemplary, always sympathetic to the writing, unfazed by any of the technical demands and capable of real wit and panache; his accompanist, Riccardo Bartoli is excellent, even if the recording balance occasionally seems to thrust the clarinet a little too far forward at the piano’s expense. On the whole, however, the sound is good.

Glyn Pursglove

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.