Temporary Italian entry 2, 2022
This Week in Classical Music: November 7, 2022. Temporary Italian entry 2. We’re nonetheless underneath the Italian spell, however this week it’s more durable to take care of the Italian theme: we now have just one Italian composer, and, sadly, relatively mediocre – Luigi Legnani, born on November 7th of 1790 in Ferrara. He began as a tenor however switched to taking part in the guitar when he was nearly 30. He turned out to be excellent at that: after making a reputation for himself in Italy, he went to Vienna in 1822 and carried out there to nice acclaim. Critics calling him a worthy successor to Mauro Giuliani, one other Italian, a virtuoso guitar participant and composer, who spent a few years in Vienna, constructed a extremely profitable profession and made mates with Beethoven, Rossini and members of the Imperial courtroom. Legnani toured many European nations and in some unspecified time in the future, met Paganini, himself a wonderful guitar participant. They turned pleasant and even deliberate a live performance collectively however on the final second Paganini obtained sick. Legnani composed about 250 works, most of them for the guitar. Later in life he settled in Ravenna the place he constructed nice guitars and violins. Right here is Luigi Legnani’s Capriccio no. 28, op. 20, performed by the Italian guitarist Federica Canta.
Our second Italian, Giuseppe Sinopoli, was a really proficient (and unorthodox) conductor and composer. Born on November 2nd of 1946 in Venice, he studied with Bruno Maderna, considered one of most distinguished Italian modernist composers, and later with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Darmstadt. In 1975 Sinopoli shaped the Bruno Maderna Ensemble to carry out modern music; in 1978 he performed his first opera, Aida, in Venice. Throughout that interval, he composed an opera, Lou Salomé, which was staged in Munich in 1981. He later dropped composing and devoted himself to conducting. Sinopoli’s profession developed quickly: in 1983 he turned the Chief conductor of the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome, went on to conduct the New York Philharmonic and Philharmonia Orchestra from London, labored on the Bayreuth Pageant. In 1990 he was appointed to the distinguished place of music director on the Berlin Deutsche Oper however didn’t take it, shifting as a substitute to Dresden’s Staatskapelle as their principal conductor. Sinopoli died on April 20th of 2001 of a coronary heart assault whereas conducting the third act of Aida on the Deutsche Oper. Right here’s Giuseppe Sinopoli conducting the Staatskapelle Dresden orchestra within the first motion of Bruckner’s Symphony no. 5.
