Mode's Dallapiccola & Petrassi: Musica da camera is an interesting program of chamber music by two of the main figures in twentieth century Italian music: Goffredo Petrassi and Luigi Dallapiccola. Although often lumped together as they were born in the same year, within Italy their reputations are perceived as being totally opposite; Petrassi concentrated his efforts within Italy and continued to write in style concurrent with Italy's long traditions of music-making. Dallapiccola, on the other hand, wrote in an international style that made use of serialist precepts with the intention of being heard at festivals by audiences outside of Italy. Dallapiccola & Petrassi: Musica da camera, performed by the expert Italian new music group
Ensemble Dissonanzen, not only reveals the gorgeously beautiful and transparent musical scores of composers little known in the English speaking world, but also demonstrates how these opposing personalities are, in some ways, similar.
Dallapiccola was the most prominent member of a tiny fraternity of musicians who took private lessons with composer Anton Webern in a time when it was hazardous for Webern to have any contacts with the outside world. Dallapiccola gained an assimilation of serial technique that is like Webern's in its concentration and shares with him a preference for relatively simple, spare textures; Dallapiccola's music is not anything like that of
Boulez, for example. One aspect that marks Dallapiccola's piano suite Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera is its sweetness, musicality, and variety, written as it is for his daughter's eighth birthday; while there are moments of darkness, it's mostly in the light. Somewhat darker is Dallapiccola's brilliant gloss on the music of Tartini in Tartiniana Seconda, an almost post-modern sounding divertimento for violin and piano that pits Baroque mannerisms against a pianistic accompaniment punched full of holes.
Nevertheless, the real surprise here is Petrassi; his diaphanous Seconda Serenata Trio is a real ear opener, with the insistent, shimmering plucking of its combination of mandolin, guitar, and harp. It could stand with anything either
Berio or Nono could have done, but it's not systematic in any way, and doesn't sound like them, or anyone else for that matter. Mode's sound is terrific, and word has it that the label is embarking on more projects with
Ensemble Dissonanzen, giving us all something to look forward to. For now, Dallapiccola & Petrassi: Musica da camera is easily recommendable.