Ricardo Chailly: Verdi Discoveries
Verdi Discoveries
Italian conductor Riccardo Chailly is an explorer and like all explorers, he likes discovering new things. He “found” the Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja, for instance, made a CD with him and the CD became one of the hottest selling classical albums of 2004 thus far. Chailly also happens to be one of the most innovative conductors and a great Verdi fan. That combination has done a lot for the legacy of the Italian composer. In 1993 he helped form the Verdi Orchestra in Milan (Orchestra Sinfinica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi) and has since gone on a journey of Verdi discoveries with them. on the like-named album, Chailly introduces several unknown pieces of Verdi, four of them world premiere recordings.
“I believe that the main purpose of this project is one of discovery, to explore new repertoire and to allow us the chance to make a direct or indirect comparison between compositions which might throw light on an area of Verdi’s orchestral music and which were until recently unpublished,” Chailly says.
There is nothing surprising about the fact that Verdi, who started out in life as an organist and wanted to become a pianist, has always felt drawn to instrumental music. He privately studied instrumental music by his contemporaries and by composers of the past.
“I thought it would be interesting to explore Verdi’s instrumental music with the orchestra that bears his name,” Chailly continues. “It has been an enjoyable and exciting experience. Several of the works we recorded offer members of the orchestra the opportunity to tackle extremely challenging solo parts.”
On Chailly’s CD we find pieces like “Variazioni per pianoforte ed orchestra”, which is one of the world premiere recordings, and “Variazione per oboe ed orchestra”. The variations for piano and orchestra, on a romance from Morlacci’s opera Tebaldo e Isolina, were destined for the court at Parma. The young Verdi had asked permission in 1837 to perform this piece at a concert held for the Duchess’s birthday but he never received an answer. The piece stands, as it is, without a full score or orchestral parts, but the piano part is reminiscent of Paganini, who greatly influenced Verdi while the former was in Parma between 1834 and 1836. It is no wonder that Verdi has been called “the Paganini of the piano”. Few people recall that the piano was Verdi’s first love and that he took the entrance exam in 1832 at the Milano conservatory to study piano, failed because of a defective hand position, and was advised to study composition instead. on the CD a reconstruction of the missing orchestral part has been added.
The Sinfonia in C, also a world premiere recording, was composed for the Busseto Accademia dei Filarmonici in 1838, the same year that Verdi’s second child was born. Two of the three themes were later used again, in the 1840 overture to Un Giorno di Regno. The simple fugal treatment of the first theme shows it to be a piece that was obviously composed in haste. Verdi had spent three years studying fugue and canon!
Of interest to fans of Verdi’s operas is another small piece, not a world premiere, but nonetheless a rarity: the original 1857 Preludio from Simon Boccanegra. Simon Boccanegra is among Verdi’s finest and most moving operas, about which Claudio Abbado said: “Listening to it we find an abundance of musical and psychological material uncommonly well developed.”
This opera had two versions. Originally, it came into being when the Teatro la Fenice in Venice asked Verdi, in 1855, to compose another opera for them. Verdi took his time in finding an appropriate subject. one year later, when he had seen the outline for a play by Antonio Garcia Gutierrez about the first doge of Genoa, he signed the contract for Simon Boccanegra, an opera that was to tell the incredible true story of the real Boccanegra. Verdi wrote his own version of Boccanegra’s life while he was in Paris and then gave librettist Franceso Piave his modifications to stick by. The end result was an opera of 3 acts, lasting some 140 minutes, which premiered on March 12th, 1857, with Baritone Leone Gilardoni as the first Boccanegra. Initially, the opera was a giant flop, almost as bad as La Traviata had flopped only four years earlier. But, like many people, Verdi held great affection for his opera’s hero and did not wish to discard his story. At times, he was as much as historian as he was a composer for he sought out true stories that deserved to be told and then researched them in detail. Boccanegra’s was a story that Verdi did not wish to be forgotten and his persistence paid off. 22 years after the initial flop, Verdi returned to Boccanegra and worked with another librettist to modify Piave’s version. For this, Verdi used original letters by Francesco Petrarca, one to Simon Boccanegra and one to the doge of Venice, which were asking the men to cease the wars between the two republics. This new version premiered at the Scala in Milan in 1881 and Verdi made Boccanegra immortal. It is now unlikely that the world will ever forgot this exceptional statesman and his tragic story. For as long as people continue to listen to Verdi operas they will continue to know the name of Simon Boccanegra.
The original 1857 orchestral prelude is only rarely heard these days and so the Chailly CD is a true gem for connoisseurs of Verdi operas.
Verdi Discoveries
Riccardo Chailly
Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi
Jean-Yves Thibaudet – Piano
Added: Monday, July 26, 2004
Reviewer: Tess Crebbin
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Language: eng
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