Triple Concerto / Concerto dell'albatro

Triple Concerto / Concerto dell’albatro Naxos 8.573180

Both Alfredo Casella and Giorgio Federico Ghedini are featured in ongoing Naxos series of orchestral works, but this is the first release to couple the two of them. The pieces have much in common—not least, both are concertos using the rare combination of piano trio and orchestra, pioneered by Beethoven—but they are also beautifully contrasted. Casella wrote his Triple Concerto for his own Trio Italiano, who performed it five hundred times on three continents in less than a decade. Ghedini’s Concerto dell’albatro adds the voice of a narrator to the piano trio and orchestra, evoking, in words from Herman Melville’s sea story Moby-Dick, a remarkable encounter with an Antarctic albatross.

Review:
Born ten years apart towards the end of the 19th century Alfredo Casella was to map out a style of composition in Italy that included the music of Giorgio Ghedini. Though an outstanding performing musician, Casella devoted much of his life to composition. Ghedini, on the other hand, was never able to make up his mind whether he wanted to be a pianist, composer or conductor, his name now residing in history as the mentor of composition pupils, including Berio, and his conducting students, Cantelli and Abbado. Musically educated in Paris with Faure as his tutor, Casella remained in the city for fifteen years, his music becoming influenced by Ravel, Debussy and the young Stravinsky. Maybe you will also hear Honegger in the spiky brilliance of the outer movements of his Triple Concerto, the cheeky finale a particular pleasure…it is a work well worth hearing…To the same forces Ghedini adds a speaker for the Concerto dell’albatro (Concerto of the Albatross), and in style we move forward from Casella’s pure tonality to the edge of the atonal world. Though modern it is still readily attractive, the Italian performers…are very assured…we must be grateful for the opportunity of hearing the music.
David Denton, David’s Review Cor­ner