DEFIANCE AND STRUGGLE

'... an excellent and polished tribute to an important Italian composer ...'

The orchestral music of Ildebrando Pizzetti -
with SIMON SPENCER

The period of Italian orchestral music from Puccini to Berio, to which Pizzetti belongs, remains mostly undiscovered by audiences, with the exception of Respighi. This disc acts as a sampler of Pizzetti's orchestral music, each piece characterised by the composer's individual voice. Additionally, it is in some respects fully representative of its time. For example, the Tre Preludii Sinfonici of 1903 is a collection of small mood pictures rather than an accurate retelling of the Oedipus Tyrannos story (from where the inspiration is derived), and comes from the period when Satie was composing his diminutive mood pictures in Paris.

From 1913 we hear the suite La Pisanella, remniscent of Ravel yet strongly Italian. By one of the ironies of life this suite was premiered in Paris just two weeks after The Rite of Spring, and received a much warmer welcome. Toscanini included the second movement in his very first recording session.

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