Search - Casella, Rizzi, Pepicelli :: Cto Op.56 / Cto Op.69 / Cto Op.58

There's more here than "just" Casella

Mark McCue, limebomb@hotmail.com | Denver | 04/13/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This issue is one of those that grabs you even if you're not sitting down and paying 100% attention. It creates a whole new environment for you, and you wonder that such genius could exist to compose such wonderful works and present them on this stellar level.It's not just Rizzi et.al. that impresses you, it's the Milan orchestra of young musicians that gives you a comprehensive feel for what cultural life is like in that amazing city. If you know Milan, you'll conjure it up with this disc as a perfect souvenir.I first got to know the Triple Concerto years ago when I heard it with the late Oswald Lehnert, Jurgen de Lemos, and Paul Parmelee with the Boulder Chamber Orchestra. Casella's genius showed through brilliantly then, and if you up it about a dozen notches, you have Panni, his orchestra and soloists. The performance encapsulates Casella's timelessness, facets, and depth. It carries over to the other works at the same level. It's like lapidary neo-classic Stravinsky with added levels, with sparkling mineral jewels emerging from the timeless strata of a steep canyon wall. Rizzi's climbs and descents through the Casellian terrain demonstrates that he is all that Uto Ughi should/could have been: the supreme Milanese violinist, fearless technically and emotionally, overridingly confident in all interpretative environments, the musical Irredentist in all his splendor.The Peppicelli are on the same level, with flashes of Benedetti Michelangeli and Pollini for one, Nelsova, Palm and Nyffenegger for the other, all submitted to the delectation of Casella's emotional and aesthetic utterance. Panni seems to have instilled in his considerable orchestral force that concerto-grosso sort of participatory relish and virtuosity that runs a linear nip-and-tuck contra the soloists to startling effect.More than anything, this disk shows you what Casella has meant for Italian music and that of the world. He and other figures such as Malipiero, Pizzetti, Rota, Morricone forged a huge musical tradition of genius we're only now getting to know.This is a perfect way to start, and after experiencing it, you'll wonder at and cherish what it's added to your life."