I have long been a fan of Italian film music of the 60’s and 70’s. Rota was truely one of the most important and influential composers of his generation, the generation that would influence such greats as Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai and many others. Rota of course (like many other film composers) had a “Classical Music” side to his work. I had a chance to chat with conductor Enrico Bronzi about his disc of Rota Concertos on the Concerto label.

Enrico, can you tell us a little bit about the Rota project? What inspired you to make this recording? Why these particular compositions?
For a while now I have been looking for an opportunity to study the Concerto n. 2 for cello. So when the Musici di Parma asked me to join them in a project regarding Rota, naturally my reaction was to join them immediately. This recording brings together all aspects of my life as a musician: chamber music, work as a soloist and conducting.

Can you describe for us where Nino Rota fits in the Italian Music Landscape (historically speaking)?
Rota’s music is like breathing Italian air. His vocation for melody originates in the lyric traditions of my hometown. Often his music is tinged with a typically Mediterranean mood. It can be playful: in it he frequently alludes to particular sounds, such as a band from southern Italy or the circus. However, he does know where the limits lie and it is done with a gentlemanliness, which keeps everything from becoming mere imitation. And this sense of ‘moderation in all things’ is part of the education of that refined aristocrat from the south, which is a part of the foundations of our culture.

What do you see as being Rota’s most important compositions outside of the film works? What makes these pieces important?
Rota’s concert music is contiguous with his music for film. It is sophisticated music that has absorbed all of the lessons of European music. And yet it is not music that feigns solemnity or zeal. When Morricone writes ‘serious’ music, he does it disowning the poetry of his film music. Rota, on the other hand, just enlarges and reinforces the poetic structure of his pieces. We never get the impression that the joy exuding from his enormous melodic streak is running out.

What would you like this recording you’ve made to achieve both in Italy and abroad?
I hope this recording will be considered a step toward rediscovering this great composer’s recorded music. Many have begun to re-evaluate all angles of his music and I believe the public will not have to work at all to appreciate him. I am thinking of some rather silly and useless criticisms leveled at Poulenc. In the end the coherence of these authors is worth more than an aesthetic credo or the poorly placed problems regarding the avant-garde. Let it be understood I am a big fan of a wide variety of very different composers, such as Zimmermann, Ligeti, Kurtag. Our age is a Tower of Babel of different and diverse languages. But if we know how to listen we will be able to understand the beauty that can be found in opposites.

While some people in America are familiar with Rota’s film music, by and large his “Classical Compositions” still remain somewhat obscure (when speaking in terms of the “Classical mainstream”), why do you think this is?
For many years, in Europe, there was, basically, a kind of censorship regarding this composer who was so far removed from any of the beacons of the avant-garde in the last century. Given that 20th century American music is not so very different from Rota’s aesthetic cannons, I think that, in the United States, he could be warmly welcomed. For people who enjoy Copland or Bernstein, admiring Rota’s spontaneous and luminous music should come naturally.

At Naxos, we are fortunate to have a very eclectic group! Our National Business Developer for the USA, Sean Hickey, is not only a great salesman, but first and foremost a talented composer. Here he recounts his experience with his first Russian recording.

Part 1: Cello in the Sun – St. Petersburg 2009

In late 2007, I was commissioned to write a concertante work for cello and orchestra by the brilliant cellist Dmitry Kouzov, in collaboration with Vladimir Lande, principal guest conductor of the St. Petersburg Symphony. I completed the three-movement concerto in 2008, working very closely with the soloist in New York, particularly in the cadenzas, and dedicated it to the spectacular artistry of Dmitry. Composing this work in this degree of collaboration was new for me and I think I gained a lot from it.

In May, Maestro Lande led the Chamber Orchestra of Southern Maryland in two performances (in two different towns) of the work with Kouzov as soloist. Though the semi-professional orchestra clearly had difficulties with the score, it allowed all of us – composer, conductor, soloist – to address the hurdles in the work before taking it to St. Petersburg for its official world premiere. That concert took place on June 21st, 2009, in the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace, one of the many palatial residences Catherine the Great built for her lovers in St. Petersburg.

Never traveling to Russia before but knowing a good handful of St. Petersburg musicians based in the States meant that this would be an interesting trip in a lot of ways. I would be staying with Dmitry and his parents on the Moika Embankment. Dima and I had organized a series of chamber music concerts in New York over the previous six months to raise money for the recording of my concerto. We were helped along by a couple of generous donations from individuals who have supported my work over the years.

Dima picked me up in a newly-purchased but old-as-dirt Soviet Lada, which required two strong hands on the glass in order to roll up the passenger window. Driving up the broad Moskova Prospekt, we sped through Soviet history: a statue of Lenin high on a pedestal in front of a hammer and sickle bas relief; the spot where the Nazis stopped in their siege of Leningrad, now a memorial dedicated to the defenders of the city; rows of Soviet housing estates, most of them looking like they could be toppled by a light breeze. At Dima’s comfortable flat, his mother served us an array of Russian delicacies and we set out to explore the city at night. St. Pete’s is the world’s northernmost city with more than a million people. In fact, nearly 5 million people call it home and it’s easy to see why in June. During this time of White Nights, the sun sets for about an hour and a half. It’s only truly dark for about an hour, around 2:30 AM. Most Petersburgers don’t seem to go to bed at all and I wouldn’t sleep much either.

Entering Palace Square, with the Alexander Column in the center, the massive Hermitage surrounding, and the Admiralty and St. Isaac’s in the near distance, was an unforgettable experience. Dima and I walked around extensively, along the broad Neva and across the exquisite bridges that bisect the many canals and rivers of the city: Fontanka, Moika, Griboeveda. Summer time usually means dinner around midnight, and most restaurants on the Nevsky Prospekt – Russia’s most famous street – make accommodation for diners at all hours. Amazing to think of this city built on islands and swamps, made to order by Peter the Great in the 18th century and where some 200,000 people perished in its construction, is actually younger than New York.

Next morning Dima and I drove to the pink and graceful Palace of Beloselsky-Belozersky on the banks of the Fontanka. The grand staircase was opulent, the enormous rooms of the palace sumptuous in their rococo detail. We ascended staircase after staircase to reach the smallest room on the whole place: the rehearsal space for the St. Petersburg Symphony. All composers feel anxiety in rehearsal and I’m certainly no exception. As soon as Vladimir gave the downbeat, the strings struggled with intonation, the nicely-dovetailed chorale-like wind passages weren’t so in tune or chorale-like and the overloud percussion sounded as if they were playing instruments manufactured in the Stone Age. My greatest fear, of course, was errors in parts, much of which was ameliorated in the Maryland performances. I was confident everything was proofed and reproofed. Alas, it was not quite. A xylophone part went mysteriously missing and though I had my files on disc, we couldn’t find a copy shop or hotel to read the files. Dima later bought some manuscript paper and I stayed up late the second night rewriting the part from score. Rosemary, a great friend from Ireland, came with me to the first rehearsal and after lunch the two of us headed to the impossibly opulent Church of the Saviour of the Spilled Blood. With more mosaics than any church in Europe, the place is almost too extreme in its color and detail. Inside, the stones where anarchists assassinated Tsar Alexander II in 1881 form the centerpiece opposite the altar. The church’s setting on the banks of the Griboedov makes it one of the most photographed places in Russia.

Alas, I’m getting carried away. I used to do a lot of travel writing but this is supposed to be about my musical experience. We had some late-night discussions with Vladimir before the next morning’s rehearsal. Dima played like a demon and the orchestra had improved, though not to any great degree. I was worried and Dima was clearly tense. Alexander Titov, music director of the orchestra and a well-known conductor, gave a few pointers and tried to rally the orchestra to concentrate. We were two days away from our concert, which also happened to feature another concerto premiere, the Violin Concerto of James Aikman, performed by an extraordinary violinist, Charles Wetherbee. Two American premieres in one concert! To the disbelief of the non-Russians present, the orchestra was recording this work the day after mine. In fact, between rehearsals, concerts and recordings, the orchestra worked some ten days straight, in many cases for 8-10 hours at a time. Their calm and quiet determination was astonishing.

The contrast between the opulent, wedding-cake facades and behind-the-scenes areas is shocking throughout St. Petersburg. Dima dragged me to the stage door of the Large Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic where a friend was waiting. She led us through a cavernous catacomb of dripping light bulbs, rusty pipes and exposed wiring. Then up a few flights of crumbling stairs and through a musician’s lounge of cigarette butts and chessboards, through another long hallway where she then parted a heavy velvet curtain. In an instant we were on stage with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic – mid-concert mind you - in the most sumptuous hall, replete with glittering chandeliers. We sat close enough behind the basses to read their parts of Prokofiev’s L’enfant Prodigue.

Dima and I had some serious discussions with Vladimir on this premiere and recording and I was reminded that I carried not an insignificant wad of US dollars in my pockets on the plane, and I wasn’t going to see it go to waste. Volodya assured us that the concert would be good and the recording – scheduled for the next day – would be better than good. Russians like to smoke like Americans like to eat and it was obvious that Dima was worried as he took drag after drag at a café on the Nevsky Prospekt. I wandered around on my own, snapping pictures of the Yussupov Palace (where Rasputin was poisoned and dumped, still alive, in the Moika), and climbed the steps to the top of St. Isaac’s, where I could look out over the entire watery city. That night, I got caught up in controlled mayhem and ran into a tank-reinforced line of hundreds of police officers. Hundreds of thousands of graduating 17-year-olds descend on the Neva to watch fireworks and hundred-foot tall fountains spew from barges. As all intersections to Nevsky were closed, I had to backtrack several blocks and canals, going against a tidal wave of traffic, each person with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of beer or champagne in another. For a few moments, I was genuinely scared as bottles flew, a few pretty close to my head. I met up with Dima in a sudden downpour which turned the million-plus crowd into a writhing, soused, but well-dressed mess.

I commented to Sasha, Dima’s dad, how their television always seemed to be showing scenes from WWII, or the Great Patriotic War, as it’s considered by Russians. As I was reading Antony Beevor’s book on Stalingrad, I should have known that my premiere would take place on the very anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Russia. In my concerto’s second movement, there’s a not so thinly-veiled quote from Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony “Leningrad”, first in the flutes, then in the bass clarinet. The musicians picked up on it in the second rehearsal. Talking to Sasha over a couple of scotches, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the very fact that the two of us could talk about growing up in our respective countries; he, born in Leningrad during the siege where family members starved or later disappeared during the Stalin purges; me, growing up safe but with a Cold War suspicion and even hatred of anything Russian, helped by Reagan’s endless rhetoric. The truth was that the two of us could not have had this discussion even fifteen years earlier.

Composer Nino Rota is best known for his more than 150 film scores. His thirty-year artistic relationship with Federico Fellini led him to be one of the most identified film composers of the twentieth century. Rota also worked with filmmakers such as Luchino Visconti, Eduardo De Filippo, Mario Monicelli and Francis Ford Coppola (which won him an Oscar in 1975 for “Best Original Soundtrack” for The Godfather, Part II).Recently however, a sizeable catalog of Rota’s concert music has been discovered. In June, Chandos and Concerto are releasing recordings that celebrate the discovery of Rota’s vast and newly revealed catalog of works and also to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the gifted composer’s death in 1979.

Nino Rota completed four symphonies in his lifetime. Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 are found on a recording to be released by Chandos on June 30. Performed by Marzio Conti and Orchestra Filarmonica ‘900 del Teatro Regio di Torino, Rota composed his first two symphonies simultaneously in the latter part of the 1930s. At this point in his career, Rota’s style had officially evolved into one that was unmistakably melodic. Rota purposely avoided any sort of musical extremism or experimentation in these two symphonies only hinting vaguely toward well-balanced modernism. The composer’s musical language remains neoclassical throughout while also staying true to his own ability to create a landscape in sound.

Also in June, Concerto presents three rarely-recorded Rota masterpieces performed by director Enrico Bronzi and I Musici di Parmi. The recording includes Rota’s Concerto per violoncello with Enrico Bronzi as soloist and conductor and Concerto per Archi (presented here in the revised version from 1977). The Trio con clarinetto of 1973, features Alessandro Carbonare (clarinet) Alberto Miodini (piano) and Enrico Bronzi (who form the Trio di Parma). 

Founded in 2002, the Chamber Orchestra, I Musici di Parmi, brings together musicians who collaborate with the most important orchestral institutions both in Italy and abroad. Created with the intent of exploring a musical world directed at rediscovering unpublished musical scores and popularizing the work of important musicians, I Musici di Parmi has a wide-ranging repertory that runs from Baroque to Classicism, right up to the best of 19th century chamber music. Working with the I Musici di Parmi both as a soloist and as director, Maestro Enrico Bronzi’s collaboration has become stable over the years. Thanks to the originality of their programs and the musical and artistic quality of their performances, the orchestra has established itself in the Italian musical world, receiving the unanimous praise from critics and public alike.

 

Here is an article from Liverpool Daily Post by Peter Spaull, For the record collector who thinks they have everything. Two of the albums mentioned are PILATI, M.: Concerto for Orchestra and SIBELIUS, J.: Night Ride and Sunrise / Belshazzar’s Feast Suite / Kuolema

… I had not heard of Mario Pilati until I found the new Naxos disc of his orchestral music. He was 35 when he died in 1938, by which time his music was heard across Europe…

Three of his 10 Concertos show a romantic composer who wrote light tuneful music, but looked forward to the fireworks which were to come from Paganini…

… these Naxos discs, an exciting Sibelius programme from Pietari Inkinen and the New Zealand Orchestra, with a wild Night Ride and Sunrise, and some short orchestral pieces whose titles may not be familiar, but whose music certainly is…

Read more.