ROCKING THE BOAT

Ex Novo play the chamber works of Casella -
with RODERIC DUNNETT

Once it was all birds and fountains. It has taken a long time for a wider picture of Respighi -- his rewarding operas, for instance -- to emerge on disc. Recently his key contemporaries, Pizzetti, Casella, Malipiero, largely ignored outside Italy since the war -- partly, perhaps, because of their historical coinciding with Fascism (on which David Gallagher's sleevenote, arguably the best thing about this disc, casts light) -- are beginning to surface too, and to advantage (read Simon Spencer's M&V Pizzetti review).

The instrumental playing and insight on this ASV Casella disc doesn't hold a candle to Naxos's superb Casella orchestral recording (Paganiana etc, Naxos 8.553706) and worthwhile keyboard offering (Naxos 8.554009, read Bill Newman's M&V review) at less than half the price. But it does add to our picture of a figure much admired in Parisian as well as Italian circles early this century.

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