Marco Enrico Bossi (1861-1925)
Works for violin and piano
A mo’ di fantasia (1920)
Sonata in A minor op. 82 (1893)
Sonata in C major op. 117 (1899)
Dolce soffrir: romance for violin or cello with piano accompaniment (Op.4 no.2) (1881)
Roberto Noferini (violin)
Giulio Giurato (piano)
rec. 2021, Milan
Tactus TC860204 [69]

After a period of being more or less forgotten, in recent years there has been something of a renewal of interest in Marco Enrico Bossi and his music. The Italian label Tactus (which has served Italian instrumental music of the nineteenth and early twentieth century very well) has played an important role – as both cause and effect, as it were – in that renewal. Tactus has recorded pretty well all of Bossi’s surviving compositions, around 150 or slightly more in number. The recording of all his organ works was completed by the issue, in 2022,  of Volume XV – a two-disc set (TC 862791), see the review by Marc Rochester; there are also several discs of Bossi’s chamber music (e.g. see review). More such discs can be found in the Tactus catalogue online (e.g. TC862701, TC862705 and TC826707).

This new disc concentrates on Bossi’s compositions for violin and piano. For those to whom Bossi is a new name, some biographical information may be useful. He was born at Salò (on the shore of Lake Como in northern Italy), where his father was organist in the cathedral which, dating from the Fifteenth Century, had an organ of 1865 by Fratelli Serassi. No doubt this was the instrument on which Marco Enrico Bossi had his first introduction to the organ (his grandfather was also an organist). The young Bossi’s formal study of music followed later at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna and the Conservatory in Milan – where his teachers included Amilcare Ponchielli (composition) and Polibio Fumagalli (organ), Fumagalli being a significant figure in the history of Italian organ music. In 1881 Bossi was appointed organist and director of music at Como Cathedral. Nine years later he was made Professor of Composition and Organ in Naples. He subsequently held academic posts at Conservatories in Venice (1895-1901), Bologna (1902-1911) and Rome (1916-23). Composers he taught included Ghedini and Malipiero. Modern studies of Bossi include Federico Mompellio’s Marco Enrico Bossi, 1952, Ennio Cominetti’s Marco Enrico Bossi, 1999 and S. Martinotti’s Ottocento Strumentale Italiano, 1972. Alongside his academic career he gave a great many organ recitals across Europe and in the USA, establishing contacts with such figures as César Franck, Marcel Dupré and Alexandre Guilmant. But it was not only with significant organists that Bossi had connections: he and Gustav Mahler corresponded, and it is interesting that a work by Bossi, his ‘Intermezzi Goldoniani, for string orchestra’ was in the programme of the last concert conducted by Mahler in New York in February 2011. It seems that Bossi wrote five operas, three that were performed and met with little success, and two which are now lost.

The chief musical interest on this disc is provided by Bossi’s two violin sonatas, both written in the 1890s; these are framed, as it were, by two rather slighter works, A mo’ di fantasia (composed in 1920) and the early work Dolce soffrir (written in 1881). As an instrumental composer Bossi was shaped by the models provided by the great German Romantics, most notably Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt and Brahms. In his organ compositions, he was also influenced by the use of counterpoint so central to the German organ tradition. I suspect that he must also have listened carefully to the instrumental works of two older contemporaries such as Antonio Bazzini (1818-1897) and Giovanni Sgambati (1841-1914) who, like him, largely turned away from operatic composition in favour of instrumental music.

Throughout, this disc benefits from the committed and discerning work of violinist Roberto Noferini and pianist Giulio Giurato. Both have played on previous Tactus discs devoted to Bossi’s music and their familiarity with the composer’s characteristics enables them to serve these works well.

The sonata in A minor, written when Bossi was teaching in Naples is in three movements (Allegro con energia – Andante sostenuto con vaghezza – Allegro focoso, poco più presto). The work is essentially cyclical in form, with several motifs repeated in more than one movement, and makes extensive use of dissonance. At times, the sense of tonality seems to be in the process of dissolution. There are some fine lyrical moments, especially in the Andante sostenuto. Bossi’s writing builds a complex web of interconnections; so, for example, the manner in which the main theme of the third movement is introduced is very similar to how a theme in the early part of the first movement is introduced. At the close of the final movement, a scherzo-like theme from the second movement is merged with the main theme of the third movement, clinching a unifying link. This is a sonata one can listen to in a relatively superficial way and enjoy it, but it also provides intellectual rewards for an analytic listener.

The Sonata in C major was written in 1899 and its four movements are marked Moderato – Scherzoso – Adagio elegiaco and Allegro con fuoco. Though I haven’t heard by any means all of Bossi’s chamber compositions, this violin sonata in C minor seems to be among the very best of his works. Given that in his entry on Bossi in the New Grove (2011, Vol 4, p.68) John C.G. Waterhouse observes that “the profoundly expressive, subtle-textured slow movement of the second [violin sonata] is one of Bossi’s most inspired utterances”, my instinctive judgement may be right. The four movements of this sonata (Moderato – Scherzoso – Adagio elegiaco – Allegro con fuoco) all have affinities with the quartets of, say, Haydn and Mozart, without ever adhering at all strictly to the models provided by the classical string quartet. So, for example, in the scherzoso,  at the point where we might expect a trio subject, we get a passage in binary rhythm. The third movement, Adagio elegiaco is the emotional and structural centre of the work (every bit as fine as the description by Waterhouse, quoted above, suggests. The melody is sustained by the violin with the piano providing, by way of accompaniment, a range of emotions, from rich lyricism to something more intensely dramatic. In the closing movement an ambitious synthesis is attempted (and largely achieved); keys are, as it were, pushed to their limits and there is an unexpected fugato passage which, in retrospect, feels altogether appropriate. The several changes of direction in this movement are all, in context, quite fitting.

These two violin sonatas (particularly No.2, in C major) would, by themselves, be enough to make a case for Bossi as, along with Bazzini and Sgambati, a major figure in the renaissance of Italian instrumental music. 

The two remaining works on the disc are a good deal less ambitious, though they make pleasant listening. A mo’ di Fantasia (In the manner of a Fantasia) features some virtuoso writing for the violin, which is played with assurance by Roberto Nofferini, both fluently and accurately. The piece is full of a kind of happy unpredictability (which is fitting for a fantasia) although a loose ternary structure (A major – F major – A major) can be discerned. The result is thoroughly entertaining.

The closing work in the programme, Dolce soffrir (Sweet pain) is a miniature elegantly evoking the charms of love-melancholy.  It makes an attractive and undemanding conclusion to a disc on which there is also some complex and demanding music.

Glyn Pursglove

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