Ildebrando Pizzetti
Selected works
Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra
Myron Michailidis, conductor
Naxos
Ildebrando Pizzetti’s Concerto dell’estate of 1928 (really a three-movement symphony) is one of the most attractive of all early-20th-century Italian orchestral works. It hasn’t been recorded for some forty years, and this new version is most welcome. It’s a beautiful performance, well played and atmospheric. Similarly, the Oedipus Rex Symphonic Preludes deserve far greater currency than they enjoy. This version provides confident horn playing and powerful climaxes.
The remaining two works receive their recording premieres. Pizzetti was basically a gentle, lyrical composer, but he could get his dander up quite effectively: witness the five-minute Prelude to Clitennestra. Composed in the 1960s just before his death, you would never know it from the harmonic style—as attractive and approachable as the Oedipus Rex of some sixty years earlier. La Feste delle Panatenee is another tryptich that, like Clitennestra, takes ancient Greece as its inspiration.
-David Hurwitz
