Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968)
Nocturne Adriatique, op. 34
Concerto n° 3, op. 102
Sea-Murmurs
Tango
Trois intermezzi, op. 117
12 préludes, op. 28

Fulvio Luciani, violon
Massimiliano Motterle, piano

L’œuvre du compositeur Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco est suffisamment riche pour que l’on puisse s’étonner que la moitié du programme de ce disque soit consacrée à des adaptations bien peu flatteuses des Intermezzi de Brahms et des Préludes de Chopin. En effet, rien ne respire l’évidence dans cet aventureux défi. Les arrangements pour violon et piano ne sont ni à la hauteur des pages désenchantées laissées par le premier ni des accents poétiques et romantiques exprimés par le second. Pour espérer renouer avec le style fluide et personnel du musicien italien, le mieux est encore de s’attarder sur son concerto n°3 pour violon et piano. Fulvio Luciani et Massimiliano Motterle ont le mérite d’en rendre une copie parfaitement propre. D’esprit néo-romantique, cette pièce en trois mouvements, composée en 1939, est d’une immédiate séduction. Les lignes mélodiques sont pures. L’archet de Luciani est précis, riche, efficace. Derrière cette composition se cache la technique de Jascha Heifetz, compagnon de route de Castelnuovo-Tedesco, lequel lui avait dédié son deuxième concerto pour violon. On retrouve d’ailleurs l’empreinte du maître dans deux délicieuses pièces tirées des "Shakespeare Songs Book". Les arrangements très réussis de "Sea-Murmurs" et "Tango" font oublier les chemins de traverses musicaux empruntés inopportunément dans ce même programme. (Jacques Potard)

World-premiere recordings and a Heifetz commission full of virtuoso fireworks on a unique compilation of music by one of the 20th-century’s reluctant romantics. Forced into exile from his native Italy by the onset of Fascism, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco sailed to the US in 1939. He arrived at dawn one muggy summer morning, and immortalized the moment, a turning point in his life and his music, in the finale of his Third Violin Concerto. The piece was commissioned from him by Jascha Heifetz, both to give himself an impressive new commission from a young and talented but not too radically inclined composer and as a way of helping a fellow émigré find his feet in a new and strange land. Castelnuovo-Tedesco certainly wrote with Heifetz’s technique in mind as well as his predilection for big cantabile melodies. Despite its concerto title, the piece was conceived for violin and piano like a sonata. The moods of the work, cast in traditional three-movement form, mirror the composer’s own, shifting from initial confusion to nostalgia to ebullience. However, Heifetz did not care for the piece, especially the finale, and it lay unplayed until this pair of Italian musicians gave its first performance of modern times in 2016. Writing in the booklet, Fulvio Luciani considers it ‘one of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s major works’; this is its second recording, but Luciani and Motterle enjoy a familiarity with the music unrivalled by any other living interpreters. As well as several attractive miniatures dating from the composer’s pre-war years in Italy, Luciano and Motterle also present the first recordings of his postwar arrangements of piano music by Chopin and Brahms. They are acts of love on the part of a pianist that engage with the violin, and the outcome is remarkably fresh and persuasive.