Everyone knows Felix
Mendelssohn’s sparkling overture to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Nights’ Dream.
It is a splendid piece that deservedly maintains its place in the classical
charts: it is currently available on at least 94 CDs. Fewer people will know
the equally stunning overture for the same play written by the eminent Italian
composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1965).
It is probably a little-known
fact that this composer was fascinated by Shakespeare. So much so, that during
the 1920s and 1930s, he set 33 songs from the plays as well as some 35 sonnets.
Over and above this, he wrote two Shakespearian operas: The Merchant of
Venice (1956) and All’s Well that Ends Well (1955-8) Between 1930
and 1953 Castelnuovo-Tedesco also composed 11 overtures:
- La bisbetica domata (The Taming of the Shrew), Op. 61 (1930)
- La dodicesima notte (Twelfth Night), Op. 73 (1932)
- Il mercante di Venezia (The Merchant of Venice), Op. 76 (1933)
- Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar), Op. 78 (1934)
- Il racconto d’inverno (The Winter’s Tale), Op. 80 (1935)
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 108 (1940)
- King John, Op. 111 (1941)
- Antony and Cleopatra, Op. 134 (1947)
- The Tragedy of Coriolanus, Op. 135 (1947)
- Much Ado about Nothing, Op. 164 (1953)
- As You Like It, Op. 166 (1953)
Three things about Italian
composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) that need to be remembered.
Firstly, he is nowadays best recalled for his numerous guitar works, of which
he wrote more than a hundred. His most popular work in the CD catalogue is the
Concerto for Guitar, no. 1 in D major. Secondly, he composed more than 250 film
scores for Hollywood. He was a ghost writer with very few on-screen credits. He
taught film music, and his pupils included Henry Mancini, John Williams and
André Previn. And, thirdly, his musical style owes much to Claude Debussy and
Maurice Ravel as well as his teacher, the Italian composer, Ildebrando
Pizzetti. He has been variously described as an impressionist, a
post-impressionist, a classicist, post romantic and part of the 1920s Italian
avant-garde.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Shakespearian
Overtures are not tone poems: they do not attempt to follow the plot of the plays.
They are concert pieces and not ‘incidental music.’ What the composer does, is
to create ‘impressions’ of ‘specific aspects of the drama.’ The Naxos CD liner
notes explain that the scores include direct quotations from the text, and
these are used to indicate the introduction of each musical idea.
Turning to the present work, much
interest is crammed into seven minutes of music. I guess that the literary
material does not go far beyond ‘A Wood near Athens.’ For most English readers, this forest is
really ‘located’ nearer to home in Warwickshire: The Forest of Arden. Here and there, Puck and the Fairies flit to
and fro. Fundamentally, from Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s perspective this piece is an
evocation of woodland (somewhere in Europe!) with ‘all the live murmur of a
summer’s day’ (Matthew Arnold). It is an impressionistic masterpiece. Notice
the nod to Mendelssohn’s Overture in the opening bars. And somehow a Spanish
mood seems to insinuate itself into the melody.
Finally, David’s Blog
(Classics Today.com) sums the matter up well: ‘Thank God Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's
overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream doesn't sound anything like
Mendelssohn: it's just a luscious bit of late-Romantic impressionism, and it's
as lovely as it is concise.’
In 2010, all eleven overtures
were issued by the Naxos label on two CDs (8.572500/1). Andrew Penny conducts
the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in recordings made in Perth, Australia
during 1994.
Listen to Mario
Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Overture to A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream on YouTube.
2 comments:
Thanks for this post about Castelnuovo-Tedesco. One other thing that's notable about him is that he is a main character in a recent film: THe Maestro (2018).
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5985672/?ref_=nm_flmg_msdp_1
He is well played by Xander Berkeley. The story concerns a (real) young man trying to break into film composing--Jerry Herst who wrote the hit song "So Rare"--studying with the maestro.
It's a small low-budget film, but I found it engaging and the subject matter interesting. I rate it more highly than the average IMDB user, probably because I was aware of the composer at the center of the story.
The movie is apparently streaming, in the US at least, on Amazon, YouTube, and Google Play for a small fee.
Thanks for that!!
J
Post a Comment