 Natif de Pavie, Rolla y naquit un an après Mozart, mais lui survécut 50 ans, ce qui lui permit d’être le contemporain de Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin ou Rossini. Professeur réputé, il maîtrisa très tôt le violon, mais aussi l’alto, qui devint son instrument fétiche. A côté de 15 concertos, on trouve dans sa très abondante production une foule d’œuvres de musique de chambre mettant l’alto en vedette, associé à toutes sortes d’instruments. Fidèle toute sa vie à l’idéal classique (comme le prouve par exemple son concerto pour cor de basset daté de 1829), il assimila néanmoins certaines innovations romantiques, notamment dans sa production de chambre. Après un premier CD incluant deux concertos pour alto, Simonide Braconi revient nous charmer avec son timbre moelleux et particulièrement expressif, dans deux nouveaux concertos de deux époques différentes, et dans une création particulièrement originale de Rolla, un « Tantum ergo » pour alto, voix de basse et orchestre, dédié à un aristocrate ami du compositeur. Il est extrêmement probable que la création de l’œuvre vit Rolla accompagner à l’alto la voix de basse de son ami. Une vive sinfonia à l’italienne, des années 1800, complète avec bonheur ce très bel enregistrement, où l’orchestre Il Demetrio, fondé à Pavie par son chef Maurizio Schiavo, ne démérite pas aux côtés de ces brillants solistes. (Jean-Michel Babin-Goasdoué) As both conductor at La Scala from 1802 to 1833, and a professor at the new conservatoire in Milan (from 1808, the year of its foundation, to 1835), Alessandro Rolla (1757-1841) was the heartbeat of Milanese music in the turbulent early decades of the 19th century. He was also an accomplished performer on both violin and viola, and his own compositional output reflects his instrumental mastery, filtered through his experience of leading the Italian premieres of quartets and symphonies by Beethoven as well as operas by Mozart: he was a complete musician of his time. The F major Viola Concerto opening this attractive new album belongs to Rolla’s apprentice years in service to the ducal court at Parma. With its uncompromising technical demands and unwavering focus on the solo instrument, the concerto represents a missing link between the idioms of Tartini and Paganini. The dawn of bel canto may be discerned in the slow movement of the album’s concluding D minor Viola Concerto, which concludes with a charmingly bucolic Rondo. Dating from Rolla’s Milanese years, the 1805 Tantum ergo also features a concertante role for the viola, in sinuous accompaniment to the vocal bass soloist: a highly original device perhaps prompted by Mozart’s famous Sinfonia Concertante. As a performer, Rolla reserved the most haunting melodies and moments for himself: After a vocal cadenza on the closing Amen it is the viola that sets the seal on the work with an intensely lyrical phrase and a brilliantly virtuosic stretta. The D major Sinfonia likewise belongs to the first decade of the 1800s – infused with Rossinian verve and bubbling with operatic drama in the quick outer movements. The Milanese violist Simonide Braconi plays Rolla’s music to the manner born, being the long-standing principal violist at La Scala. He is accompanied here by a chamber orchestra based in nearby Pavia and specialising in Classical-era works by neglected composers.
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