Quartet No 1 (Rispetti e Strambotti) - G.F. Malipiero
Quartet in D - Pizzetti
Five Pieces, Op 34 - Casella
The Wexford Festival programme of the young Italian Prometeo String Quartet was devised to illustrate aspects of Italian music in the inter-war years. This was the period when Respighi's La fiamma, one of the operas of the main Wexford programme, was premiered, and during which Gian Francesco Mali piero (1882-1973), Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) and Alfredo Casella (1883-1947) all played important roles in Italian musical life.
The three composers' responses to the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in 1913 mark out their musical differences. It was Casella, the most modernistically inclined of the three, who in the first place encouraged Malipiero to go, and the ground-breaking music helped rouse him "from a long and dangerous lethargy". The altogether more conservative Pizzetti, however, experienced perplexity and disorientation.
Malipiero's Quartet No. 1, Rispetti e Strambotti (the title refers to antique forms of Italian poetry), is cast as a single movement. It is not constructed through any formal thematic process but is presented, with surprising effectiveness, as a series of freelysequenced segments. The approach might be compared to Janacek, though not the music, which takes consistent, exuberant pleasure in the exploration of string sonorities.
Like Malipiero, who edited the works of Monteverdi and Vivaldi, Pizzetti had a deep interest in early Italian music. The reflection of this concern in the second of his two string quartets is expressed in a nostalgia which led to both musical dilution and dilation.
Casella's Five Pieces, Op. 34, make much use of driving, motoric rhythm, angular melodic shapes and high-contrast shifts into veiled, muted textures. Lighter moments emerge in the mock-popular touches of the fifth piece and the grotesque, pizzicato-accompanied waltz of the third.
The Prometeo Quartet played all three musical rarities with palpable relish, fine technical resource and an acute sensitivity to distinctions of musical style. There is currently no other forum in Ireland where this unusually rewarding programme would be likely to receive an airing.
