Marco Enrico BOSSI (1861-1925)
Complete Organ Works Volume 15
Andrea Macinanti (organ)
Ilaria Torciani (soprano), Valentina Vanini (mezzo-soprano), Alessandro Cortello (tenor)
Emanuela Degli Esposti (harp), Marco Blanchi (violin), Roberto Trainini and Manuel Zigante (cello)
rec. 2002-21
TACTUS TC862791 [2 CDs: 110:59]
Bossi is one of the commanding figures of Italian organ music. I have been trotting that tired old joke out continually ever since I first came across his name on a dog-eared copy of three organ pieces in a dusty shelf high up in the sheet music section of Foyle’s bookshop in London sometime in the mid-1960s. I have added a couple of his pieces to my repertory, and have been a persistent and, thus far, largely solitary advocate of his Organ Concerto for years. What I did not know then, and am only discovering now thanks to Andrea Macinanti, is just how prolific a composer he was. Beside Bossi’s innumerable organ pieces, transcriptions, arrangements, and ensemble pieces involving the organ, even Liszt seems a reluctant scribe. My awareness of the vast ocean (I use the word in bad taste - Bossi died in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean as he was sailing from New York to Le Havre) of his output has been brought about by this long-running series covering, apparently, his Complete Organ Music curated by Macinanti for Tactus. Volume 1 appeared in 2013 and over the intervening decade a further two dozen volumes have appeared. When will it all end? Well, the answer would appear to be with this release, which has every appearance of being a repository for odds and ends, scraps from the cutting room floor as it were, which have been missed out of the previous 14 volumes. We are told it completes the series, but it is worth noting that the Organ Concerto appears on none of the 15 releases, so there is a chance that something is still in the pipeline.
This double CD set contains a veritable hotch-potch of original works, transcriptions, ensemble and vocal works (with an involvement from the organ), and fragments found in various manuscript notebooks, recorded at five different locations over a period of some 20 years. The first CD of this two-disc set opens with Six Transcriptions published between 1926 and 1927 by the New York company H. W. Gray as part of their St Cecilia Series of Compositions for the Organ. Here we have pieces by Paganini, Mendelssohn, Luigi Gordigiani, Adolf von Henselt,, Martucci, and “The Old Castle” from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Next comes an arrangement of Liszt’s Concert Etude No.3 improbably for harp and organ. The remainder of the first disc and all of the second are devoted to original works by Bossi, mostly for voice, string instrument and organ but including a few scraps of unfinished pieces reconstructed by Paolo Geminiani. With almost two hours’ worth of small pieces, some of which last less than two minutes, I certainly do not intend to give a piece-by-piece commentary, but will single out just a handful of the more noteworthy ones.
Macinanti notes in his booklet essay (which includes full details of the organs recorded here) that the six transcriptions were published posthumously with registration indications suggested, probably, by the publisher. He ignores these in his performances, which were recorded on the organ in the Sala Barozzi of Milan’s Istituto dei Ciechi, an instrument originally built in 1901 by Carlo Vegezzi, enlarged in 1919 with advice from Bossi himself by Balbiani, and rebuilt in 2020 by Alessandro Giacobazzi. Instead, he uses the six pieces to demonstrate the instrument, detailing his registrations in the booklet note. Probably the most intriguing of these is Paganini’s extravagant violin display piece, Moto perpetuo. Initially it seems to work quite well, but the strange choice of Oboe and Mixture to replace the violin, as well as a somewhat halting sense of movement (I am not sure whether this is by accident or design), soon becomes a source of irritation. Liszt’s Un sospiro works infinitely better in this version for harp and organ. True, the extreme virtuosity of the original piano part is transformed into incredible virtuosity on the harp (superbly and fluently executed by Emanuela Degli Esposti), with the organ merely serving to anchor the harmonies, but, risking the wrath of pianophiles everywhere, I have to confess to preferring Bossi’s transcription to Liszt’s original.
Of the assorted other pieces, those for violin and organ - the Adagio and Visione – work well, as does the gorgeous Romanze for cello and organ, but the very finest and most memorable music on the entire pair of discs is scored for soprano, violin and organ, and the most magical of these is the Ave Maria Op.50 in which the pure, fluting tone of Ilaria Torciani (recorded in 2002) is perfectly complemented by the graceful violin playing of Marco Blanchi. The warmth of contralto Valentina Vanini’s tone seems ideally suited for the clutch of pieces for mezzo-soprano and organ, Sanctus-Benedictus (which appears in a second version for soprano, and does not work so effectively with that voice), Pange Lingua, Ricordo di Vaprio d’Adda, and most magical of all, another setting of Ave Maria in which Vanini and Macinanti are joined by cellist Roberto Trainini. I remain wholly unconvinced by the two pieces for tenor and organ – Expectans, expectavi and Sancte Abundi Praesul, despite the thoroughly operatic posturing of Alessandro Cortello, and rather wish Paolo Geminiani had not bothered to try and complete the three unfinished manuscript scraps of movements for a Sinfonia per organo which Bossi began but, wisely, abandoned when he realised there was no musical life in it; but in the interest of completeness, I suppose Macinanti was right to add them to this release. The trouble is, with these, and a number of other obvious musical lame ducks (I would suggest the organ solo Postludio falls very much into this category), it is easy to miss the handful of utter gems here. Macinanti is a devoted and, at times, compelling advocate, and while most of this music probably deserves the obscurity into which it has long fallen, it is worth rooting out this series for the real gems which are sprinkled among all the dross.
Marc Rochester
Clarifications received
Andrea Macinanti has contacted MusicWeb with some points of
clarification relating to Marc Rocherster's review
in the first 6 tracks of CD 1 I strictly
respected the indications of the registers present in the score even if,
as I write in the booklet, I think they are not by Bossi. The only
absent register, is the French Horn, which I imitated by combining two
Reed's jobs with a magnificent Bourdon;
- I have deliberately avoided any rigor of time.
Both because this is how Bossi sounded, and because managing the
electro-pneumatic traction of a 1901 machine requires attention in some
points;
- the theme reconstructed by Paolo Geminiani that
you believe to be of no interest to Bossi, was, as I wrote in the
libretto, used by his son Renzo when completing the opera Malombra;
- mine is a complete recording and, as such, it
must contain all the compositions and fragments, same, for example, as
commonly happens for a catalog dedicated to a painter. This is why I
included even the weakest compositions, of which I do not act as a
"lawyer" but I limit myself to studying and presenting them as best as
possible;
- Paolo Geminiani's reconstructions are
comparable to those made by Lorenzo Ghielmi for Bach's fragments. We
will never know if the composers would have used those themes or not,
but the hypothesis is suggestive;
Contents
Adagio, Op.84 - violin & organ (1894) [4:01]
Ave Maria - soprano, violin & organ (1887) [3:36]
Ave Maria (1899) – mezzo-soprano, cello & organ [4:51]
Ave Maria, Op.50 (1889) - soprano, violin & organ [5:00]
Bénediction Nuptiale, Op.111 no.1 (1897) – cello & organ [4:17]
Dio siete buono, Op.98 (1894) – soprano, violin & organ [3:07]
Expectans, expectavi Domine (1885) – tenor & organ [1:50]
Pange lingua. Ricordo di Vaprio d'Adda (1882) - contralto & organ [1:59]
Postludio (1925) [1:53]
Romanze, Op.89 (1893) – cello & organ [4:45]
Salve Regina, Op.8 (1884) – soprano & organ [6:38]
Sancte Abundi Praesul (1885) – tenor & organ [4:11]
Sanctus - Benedictus (version 1) (1898) - mezzosoprano & organ [4:47]
Sanctus - Benedictus (version 2) (1898) – soprano & organ [5:16]
Sinfonia per organo (reconstr. Paolo Geminiani) – Sinfonia, Adagio, Finale [10:46]
Visione, Op.119 No.2 (1899) – violin & organ [5:31]
Six Transcriptions, Op. posth. (1926-7)
Nicolò Paganini (1782-1840): Moto perpetuo [3:43]
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): La Fileuse [3:33]
Luigi Gordigiani (1806-1860): Tuscan Folk-Song / O Santissima Vergine Maria [3:07]
Adolf von Henselt (1814-1889): Ave Maria [6:19]
Giuseppe Martucci (1856-1909): Novelletta [6:08]
Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881): Pictures at an Exhibition – “The Old Castle” [5:53
Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Concert Etude No.3 – “Un sospiro” - harp & organ [8:04]
Recording details
September 2020, Istituto dei Clechi, Milan; May 2019, June 2020, March 2021, Duomo dei Ss. Nazario e Celso, Castiglione delle Stivere; March 2006, October 2002, Cattedrale di Maria Vergine Assunta, Saluzzo; July 2012, Chiesa di St Andrea Apostolo, Sequala; November 2012, Chiesa di Ognissanti, Camino al Tagliamento, Italy.
