Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Piano Works, Alfonso Soldano

There is no shortage of great 20th Century Italian Composers. In the States at least, some of the greats are not as widely known as their stature would suggest. An excellent example is Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968). He lived a good amount of time, was both prolific and original. Yet not nearly enough works are performed with any regularity in this locale. Why?

His biography supplies some details. A Sephardic Jew in Florence, he was forced to leave Italy with the rise of Mussolini. In 1939 he entered the US, one of many brilliant immigrant composers to make the exodus to the New World. Like some important others he ended up as a film composer, which was then and is now ever a mixed blessing for the compositional arts. He was in no way relegated to obscurity then. But his fate in the present has not entirely allowed him much in the way of immortality. What matters is our own readiness to hear more of his music.

An excellent opportunity arises in the recent CD release Piano Works (Divine Art 25152). From the "Italian Ravel" comes some eight compositional entities, a few in their world premier recordings. The liner notes tell us that the solo piano corpus of works have all but been ignored. It was Aldo Ciccolini who discovered that the works have an incredible charm and fluency. Pianist Alfonso Soldano gains an insider's vision of the music and transfers what he so wonderfully understands into our musical selves via the recording.

There is a true wealth of subtly shimmering, poised and grandly sounding melodic-harmonic brilliance. This is music of a very high caliber, a treasure trove of fantastically pianistic utterance. Alfonso Soldano seems the ideal vehicle for these works.

I cannot recommend this one highly enough. Or perhaps I just did? Just listen.