Giacomo Orefice (1865-1922)
Piano Works
Andrea Boscutti (piano)
rec. 2023, Conservatory of Music “Amigo Pedrollo”, Vicenza, Italy
Dynamic CDS8014.02 [2 CDs: 82]
Giacomo Orefice is little known today though his opera Chopin, loosely based on the life of the Polish composer and using orchestrations of his works, is occasionally mentioned. His first studies were in his home town of Vicenza before continuing at the music high school in Bologna. He also studied and gained a degree in law though he made his career in music, partly as a pianist and composer and ultimately teaching at the Milan Conservatory. He wrote in most genres, composing the first of ten operas when he was twenty, at least one symphony, a cello concerto and a cello sonata alongside other chamber works. There are also many piano works of which Boscutti has recorded just a selection; impromptus, études and polkas remain unrecorded at the present.
The earliest works are very much 19th century romantic character pieces and include Ninnoli – trinkets, two light-hearted and undemanding pieces that would fit alongside Mendelssohn’s Songs without words. Tale is a flowing lyrical and slightly melancholic piece that is contrasted with fanfara, brass band, a jaunty romp that is reminiscent of earlier hunting song type works. Boscutti also includes a handful of his dance pieces, all of which are elegant salon works. The Sérénade allemande, which has moments of Chopinesque figuration, has slightly more meat than the Valse des amoureuses but both are charming examples of the sort of waltz that was being penned by late romantic French composers such as Auguste Durand or Benjamin Godard. Jacinta is similar in feel, waltz like for the most part but with the distinctive bolero rhythm peeping through now and again. The tarantella, a Posilipo, more obviously virtuosic, describes the affluent residential quarter of sunny Naples. The final work not in a collection is Cipressi, a wonderfully evocative and elegiac piece, aptly published a year after the composer’s death. This haunting sarabande is a highlight of the recital for me.
With the two collections we move away from salon territory. His Preludi del mare and Quadri di Böcklin were published in 1916 by Sonzongo alongside his two concert études, miraggi and crepuscoli. Arnold Böcklin’s paintings had already inspired the likes of Rachmaninov, Mahler, Reger and several lesser known composers and Orefice was similarly inspired to create his set simply entitled Böcklin’s paintings, composed in 1905. Böcklin had died in Italy just four years earlier having spent many years in Rome and Orefice commemorated six of his paintings in music. Three at least have a musical connection; Pan in the reeds, the lute player and the Hermit. Pan in the reeds depicts the shadowy figure of Pan resting in a bower of green fronds, the painting more about the feeling of solitude and though there is more movement in the central section of the piece there is a feeling of reflective playing just for one’s own pleasure. The musical theme continues in the serenade like plucking of the lute player, once more a depiction of the player on her own in a bucolic setting. The lapping of waves is captured in Isle of the dead, the opening motif repeated with a gradually evolving harmony. Even when a melody makes an appearance, sparse and hesitant it is accompanied by a rolling accompaniment that soon gives way to the obstinate rhythm of the opening. The gloomy mood continues in the lamentations of Mary Magdalene on the body of Christ whose slow, alternating chords and halting rhythms seem a good deal calmer than the distraught figure of Mary in the painting, funereal and subdued rather than obviously anguished. This runs almost seamlessly into the hymn-like dirge of the hermit. The violin that the bowed figure of the hermit plays before the shrine-like window is evoked by running, whole-tone figures above the sombre chordal writing below. The final piece Playing in the waves is not the joyful frolic that the title would suggest and though there is plenty of froth and bubbling figuration in Orefice’s writing it accompanies uncertain and even frenetic music that mirrors the anxious look on the female character in the centre of the painting, in the waves but perhaps finding herself out of her depth with the laughing Poseidon-like character swimming at her side. In the first of these pieces I was finding similarities to the writing in a Children’s Corner though Debussy is only an occasional presence.
Orefice’s nine preludes, his Preludes of the sea, date from 1913. The titles offer a clear progression from the first, mattutino and the seventh, canzone meridiana to the final notte lunare – morning, afternoon song and moonlit night. Impressionism is a stronger element here and from the opening prelude we hear open fourths and fifths and distinctly modal harmonies, even ones as spicy as the augmented fourths and sixths which give such an feeling of disquiet at the end of morning. Between these time markers are landscapes and sea pictures; on the cliffs with its swirl of keyboard arpeggios pausing for more settled chordal passages with shifting harmonies, the old fisherman, stately and thoughtful though short dance like passages interrupt his reverie, sudden recollections of his youth and sailing tack where whole tone harmony makes its mark amid the fourths in arabesque like zephyrs dancing through the rigging. Sea storm is the most extrovert with crashing chords and keyboard encompassing arpeggios though the tempest is short lived and has died down to the occasional splash of rain before the work is half done. Procession to the beach is no picture postcard of ball games and sand castles, rather it is almost religious in its dignified serenity, a mood that continues into afternoon song, its flute-like and improvisatory melody floating over open chords. Flying Seagulls captures as much of the birds’ raucous calls as it does their swooping and diving flight and is the most capricious of the pieces here; the gulls soon return to the cliff-side nests and the moon rises. There is something of the un peu moins lent section of Debussy’s la cathédrale engloutie in the writing in this final prelude and indeed all these pieces inhabit some of the sound world of the first book of préludes written by Debussy just three years earlier.
Andrea Boscutti, who studied and now teaches at the conservatory in Orefice’s hometown, captures that sound world excellently and his choice gives us a well-rounded portrait of Orefice’s piano works, enough that I would like to hear more of his music. I did do a bit of a double take on first hearing as his early salon works are immediately followed by the much more sophisticated writing of his later works but obviously one can pick and choose which Orefice you want to listen to on any occasion. The piano is recorded a little closely but not uncomfortably so and while I might have asked for a slightly warmer sound it is more than acceptable. Only the Preludi del mare have been recorded before and I can’t find that recording but regardless you can’t go wrong with this disc if you want to hear some quite evocative late romantic Italian piano music.
Rob Challinor
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Contents
Ninnoli (pub.1887)
Valse des amoureuses (pub.1894)
Preludi del mare (1913)
a Posilipo tarantella brilliante (pub.1889)
Jacinta. Bolero (pub.1889)
Sérénade allemande. Valse caprice (pub.1896)
Quadri di Böcklin (1905)
Cipressi (pub.1923)
