Antonio Salieri (1750-1825)
Complete Works for Harpsichord and Piano
Keyboard Concerto in B flat major
Keyboard Concerto in C major
Keyboard Sonata in C major
March in D major
Filippo Pantieri (keyboards), Ensemble Sezione Aurea/Luca Giardini
rec. 2023, Castello Malatestiano di Longiano, Forlì-Cesena, Italy; 2024, Studio Zabalik, Rome, Italy (March)
Dynamic CDS8060 [63]
Salieri is hardly a composer one thinks about in terms of the keyboard. Even if he has now just about managed to re-establish a reputation for his compositions – mostly operatic – on his own terms, outside of Mozart’s shadow, his small output of music for that instrument is never going to escape comparison with his younger contemporary’s prodigious achievements as a performer and composer for it. Nevertheless, in this bicentenary year of Salieri’s death it’s useful to have this complete survey of his keyboard compositions for the first time, although the Concertos have been recorded several times before. The other two works here are claimed to be premiere recordings
Dating from 1773, the Concertos were composed early in his career, and it’s worth remembering that by this time Mozart had written only one original piano concerto (No. 5, K175 – the previous four being arrangements of other composers’ works). Salieri’s pair are comparable to Mozart’s one in terms of scale, though they are scored for a smaller orchestra, of flute, oboes, and strings only. In fact, Mozart seems to have wanted to make an impression with a flashy first original concerto, and Salieri’s are more similar in scope to Mozart’s Nos. 6 to 8 which he wrote in the following years.
Despite the disc’s referring to the Concertos as for harpsichord, Filippo Pantieri plays them on an 18th century fortepiano by an anonymous maker from the Italian school. It has a soft, tinny timbre that is not unattractive, but it can’t hold long notes, and so they tend to be trilled by Pantieri. He discreetly accompanies the expositions of each Concerto’s first movement, as seems to have been common practice in Salieri’s time.
In the first movement of the C major, Pantieri improvises a cadenza, as none survives in manuscript; its introspective chord progressions add a weightier mood to the music’s edgy character, while a sombre A minor siciliano second movement offers a serious interlude, with some passages of pizzicato violins sounding delicately like a lute. The tranquil lilt of that movement is unsettled by the disjointed integration of the pianist’s two hands – the left is almost robotically precise in its accompanying rhythms, while the right imposes an uneasy rubato on the melody. The long first movement of the B flat Concerto offers more defined contrast with the florid dotted notes of its rococo principal theme articulated with percussive precision, while the more lyrical countermelodies draw sweeter playing from the keyboard. Both Concertos have finales in the graceful meter of a minuet, though they still have a certain alacrity in these readings.
The period instrument Ensemble Sezione Aurea play one to a part, except that Luca Giardini leads from the violin, bolstering the other two. The strings are wiry, even acerbic, affording performances that are generally sparky and to the point, though the rocking triplets of the B flat Concerto’s Adagio set the scene for a more warmly engaging movement. The four emphatic, staccato chords of the C major Concerto’s opening chords here give a clear indication of what is to follow, with some brusque attacks on sudden forte chords or openings of sections. In that sense they are similar to the volatile style of CPE Bach’s concertos, as the liner notes observe. But in other respects, the modest and genial scale of these compositions and their jaunty interpretations remind me of the series of JC Bach’s keyboard concertos, as recorded by Anthony Halstead with the Hanover Band.
The Ensemble’s approach will please some listeners, but probably not those who prefer a more traditionally sustained instrumental timbre, as in the recordings on modern instruments by Pietro Spada and the Philharmonic Orchestra, or Aldo Ciccolini with I Solisti Veneti and Claudio Scimone. Andreas Staier, with Concerto Köln, represents a more temperate middle ground in historically informed practice.
The so-called Sonata is really a sequence of six undemanding movements, possibly composed by Salieri as teaching material for his pupils. The piano by Paul McNulty, after one from 1792 by Anton Walter, is a more satisfactory instrument, with more even tones across its range suiting the music’s more straightforwardly domestic, if whimsical, character: lively figures and fanfares open the set in a manner reminiscent of a Scarlatti sonata, and the fluid tempo of the Adagio second movement’s cantabile line is like a fantasia delivered by a temperamental singer.
It’s amusing to find a March at the conclusion of this disc, perhaps putting one in mind of the ‘trifle’ which Salieri composes in Amadeus in Mozart’s honour on the occasion of his first visit to Joseph II. The manuscript is a recent rediscovery, and of course has nothing to do with the simple piece in the film which was evidently concocted for the purpose, so that Mozart can extemporise and develop it as a nascent version of ‘Non più andrai’. This March is like a parody of a pre-existing composition, and is given a quirky rendition here by Pantieri on a bright-sounding harpsichord based on an early 18th century model.
Curtis Rogers
