Enrico Mainardi, cello, Vol. I = Works of BRAHMS, BOCCHERINI, VIVALDI, MARCELLO, HINDEMITH, MELIPIERO, PIZZETTI, R. STRAUSS – Doremi (3 CDs)

by | Jun 12, 2009 | Classical Reissue Reviews | 0 comments

Enrico Mainardi, Vol. I = BRAHMS: Cello Sonata No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 38; Cello Sonata No. 2 in F Major, Op. 99; BOCCHERINI: Cello Sonata No. 1 in A Major; Cello Sonata No. 6 in A Major; VIVALDI: Cello Sonata No. 3 in C Major, RV 43; MARCELLO: Cello Sonata in F Major; HINDEMITH: Cello Concerto (1940); MALIPIERO: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra; PIZZETTI: Concerto in C Major for Cello and Orchestra; R. STRAUSS: Don Quixote, Op. 35 – Enrico Mainardi, cello/ Carlo Zecchi, piano and on conductor RAI Torino Orchestra (Hindemith); Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam/Eduard van Beinum (Malipiero)/ RAI Torino Orchestra cond. Carlo Maria Giulini (Pizzetti)/Berlin State Opera Orchestra/Richard Strauss

Doremi DHR-7926-8, 3 CDs 78:35; 74:55; 75:15 [Distrib. by Qualiton] ****:

The great, Milanese cellist has a marvelous tribute in these three discs from Doremi, Enrico Mainardi (1897-1976), the great, Milanese cellist, has a marvelous tribute in these three discs from Doremi, inscribed 1933 (R. Strauss) – 1962 (Pizzetti), including several works that few cellists have absorbed into their active repertoires. Mainardi’s easy, suave grace, his refusal to rush or smear a passage, regardless of its innate, technical difficulty, made him a romantic artist with a sensitive and polished approach to the works he championed.

The first disc, recorded 1952 for RCA Italiana, offers the two Brahms cello sonatas, Vivaldi, and Marcello; the opening two selections from Disc 2, music by Boccherini, also derive from the same sessions with the gifted pianist and conductor Carlo Zecchi (1903-1984), one of the more prominent students of both Busoni and Schnabel. The E Minor Brahms takes a long, leisurely view, similar to that of Casals, but with a leaner, lighter hand. Zecchi’s piano the in the Allegretto proves sensationally crystalline, and only Horszowski and Sebok can rival his pearly play, that glistens in etched accompaniment to Mainardi’s dreamy figures.  Styled after a Bach toccata, the last movement of the E Minor fits glovelike into the Mainardi-Zecchi sensibility, which relishes equal bravura from both parts, a taut, soaring, melodic line, an ardent, even piercing, nostalgia.  

The more vivaciously extroverted F Major Sonata, too, receives a grand slowly evolving line, allowing us to bathe in the exquisite tone Mainardi draws from his instrument. The muscular, driven realization often wants to point to the A Minor Concerto, Op. 102, that Brahms wrote as a peace-pipe for Joachim. The huge pauses in the developmental working-out of the themes features a piano part worthy of the B-flat Concerto; and so, too, in the intensely lyrical Allegro passionate third movement. The Adagio affetuoso provides us a model of the 20th Century recasting of 19th Century Romantic style, doubtless acquired by Mainardi through his studies with Hugo Becker in Berlin. The last movement, given its portion of marcato phrasing, sound like an instrumental addendum to the Second Symphony.

Vivaldi’s C Major Sonata via Mainardi reveals its church-sonata origins, the opening Largoespecially ripe, even operatic, in its expressive range. The second Largo allows the intimacy of Mainardi’s sound its effects. The intervening Allegro has a galant character, stately and brisk, the final Allegro four-square and soberly correct. Benedetto Marcello still remains a rarity in concert programs, but his F Major Sonata-which could easily be construed as Corelli–carries a noble sentiment through four idiomatic movements, the first of which, Largo con espessione, shows off Mainardi’s glassy trill. If the first Allegro chugs away, the second, tiny Largo seems a step away from Faure’s Elegie. Razory, keen resolve marks the final Allegro molto, with its staggered metrics, a subtle tour de force.

Boccherini offers more bel canto flourishes for Mainardi, still in the olden style of a transposed trio sonata in three movements. Double stops appear, a rich high register, a singing tone, an alternately virile and dainty lyricism, an etude-quality parallel to Viotti’s figures for expanding violin technique.  Boccherini’s A Major Sonata, G 4, ends with an Affetuoso of sustained, tender power. Bold leaps mark the A Major Sonata, G 13, again peppered with trills and staggered metrics. The registration shifts and drone patterns hint at C.P.E. Bach, here fertilized by a Latin imagination. The rather huge Largo–complete with an extended cadenza–proceeds without sag, Mainardi’s inflections consistently affecting. The final Allegro could be a parody of a Beethoven minuet, with drone, bucolic and spiccato artifices.

It takes 105 minutes of listening, but we finally hear Mainardi in a modern concerto, the Hindemith (1940), composed just after the composer’s emigration to the United States. The performance (1958) under conductor Zecchi with RAI Turin engages us with blistering attacks, moody undercurrents in the bass line, an aggressive sensibility, hard-edged and brassy.  Mainardi injects considerable lyric passion into the often contrapuntal work, considering that sentiment is not Hindemith’s strong suit. The dry, even stark, sonic aura for the martial Andante con moto reinforces Hindemith’s neo-classic image, and Mainardi’s equally plain-spoken approach accommodates the Neue Sachlichkeit that cellist Emanuel Feuermann brought to the concerto canon. The martial, Roman impulse extends into the last movement, a jaunty, irregularly measured bacchanalia whose middle section lightens up texturally, a kind of pagan dance in olden style, woodwinds and brass prominent. Zecchi brings the da capo in with a vengeance, Mainardi’s bow streaking in rasping and hectic, obsessive colors. Orchestra and cello hammer and chisel their way to the coda, a hard-won resolution of will and feverish temperament.

The little concerto (1937) by Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973) is dedicated to Enrico Mainardo, who performs it (1941) at the Concertgebouw with Eduard van Beinum. A pulsating figure permeates the first movement, Allegro moderato, but it softens into layered textures that allow the cello to sing exuberantly above a yearning sea of sound. The Lento lilts in neo-classical ariosi, flute and cello in sweet dialogue, songs without words. The French horn and oboe join the charmed mix, the air having become sultry and exotic, a gifted voice. Relentless virtuosity opens the Allegro, a Bach-model toccata for cello that has Mainardi up and down the fingerboard. Mainardi establishes a heavy-treaded dance in his solo cadenza–over three minutes before the orchestra enters–then the palpitating race is on. Nice flute work from the COA solo. But the interplay has only just begun when it all stops suddenly, and the audience, off-guard and impressed at once, begins to applaud.

The music of Ildebrando Pizzeti (1880-1968) first came to my attention via Yehudi Menuhin, who recommended I audition his recording of Pizzetti’s Violin Sonata. The Cello Concerto (1934) was premiered by Mainardi and the composer at the Venice Music Festival, 11 September 1934. In neo-Romantic style, the piece allows conductor Giulini (18 May 1962) his own moments of exalted lyricism, something of the Richard Strauss opulent, convulsive style. The scale of the concerto rivals the Dvorak for girth and personal statement, a four-note motif operant in the manner of Beethoven‘s “fate” motif. The Largo utters huge sighs, a gloomy meditation whose dark, pensive spirit echoes Mahler. Cello and oboe pick up troubled figures in the low strings and snare drum, but the melancholy remains tonal, accessible and tragic. A Roman march ensues, then it yields to a nostalgia that could be Ernest Bloch but is lyrically unique. The final movement, Allegro energico, proceeds with another cadenza-like arioso for cello, followed by a resolute series of figures from the orchestra, Mainardi in the high registers. The structure seems more rhapsodic than rondo-esque, Pizzetti indulging his woodwinds, French horn, and pedal points in Alpine flights of fancy. A graduated series of marches leads to a solidly defined conclusion.

Richard Strauss chose Mainardi as his voice for the knight-errant Don Quixote, the recording of 1933 also featuring Karl Reits, viola and Georg Kniestedt, violin. The elements of idealism and mental confusion Strauss mixes in leisurely fashion, the viola wending its way through the labyrinths of Quixote’s inflated ego. Throughout the ten variations of “knightly character,” sonic definition remains quite good, the interplay between Quixote and Panza eloquent, ironic, and pathetic. The bleating of sheep proves effective, as does Quixote’s drubbing at the hands of the indignant shepherds. The “Conversation between Quixote and Sancho Panza” evokes liquid, articulate tones from Mainardi, and the orchestral tissue swells to a canvas of eternity.  Strauss takes the segues at considerable speed, the Penitents marching with a will, at least until Quixote disrupts their pilgrimage and lands with a resounding thump, tuba and contrabassoon in sympathy with broken dreams and a sore posterior. But true to his persistent visions of utopia and Dulcinea, harp and wind-machine lift Quixote to ever more castles in the air. Mainardi’s pizzicato disillusionment rings true, as does the religioso sentiment uttered in the orchestra. A battle with two conjurers and with the Knights of the Bright Moon invokes some mighty pageantry, then the emotional and spiritual collapse. The extended Death of Quixote achieves a plangent, mystical atmosphere, a direct expressivity on Mainardi’s behalf that well explains his longevity as an active soloist of finesse and noble stature.

–Gary Lemco

  

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