Francesco Santoliquido (1883-1971)
Sonate pour violon et piano en la mineur
"Chiarità Lunare", pour violon et piano
Rêverie pour violon et piano
Fantaisie en trio pour violon, violoncelle et piano "La Favola di Helga"
Air Antique pour violon et piano
"Acqueforti Tunisine", pour piano
Nocturne pour piano
Petite Ballade pour piano
"Giardini Notturni", pour piano
"Ex Humo ad Sidera", pour piano

Federica Del Bagno, violoncelle
Gran Duo Italiano

Mauro Tortorelli, violon
Angela Meluso, piano

La redécouverte d’un compositeur oublié permet de mieux saisir les pratiques musicales d’une époque, qui ne saurait se réduire aux seuls maîtres. Certes la sonate pour piano et violon de 1927 n’a rien de novateur, mais ici, elle est bien défendue par les interprètes. Les deux pièces « de salon », « Clair de lune » et « Rêverie » pour violon et piano, ne manquent pas d’originalité. On est bien en présence d’une musique post-romantique, mais si évocatrice qu’on se laisse aller à rêver. Le violoncelle fait ensuite son apparition pour un trio en un mouvement. On se demande pourquoi le cd est présenté comme consacré à Santoliquido, alors que la lecture du livre dit que cette pièce est d’Aldo Cantarini, d’après un opéra de Santoliquido. L’« Aria Antica » qui termine cette partie avec cordes frottées, a cette originalité de faire dialoguer le violoncelle dans le registre aigu avec le piano. Les pièces suivantes, pour piano seul, aux titres évocateurs de l’Arabie, sont orientales au sens où on l’entendait au XIX° siècle, mais loin de toute référence ethnographique. (Lothaire Mabru)

Chamber music aficionados of older generations will remember LPs of Brahms and Beethoven as performed by the Trio Santoliquido. The ensemble took its name from its pianist Ornella Puliti Santoliquido, who herself took the name when she married the composer Francesco Santoliquido. For several decades in the middle of the last century, husband and wife formed something of a power couple on the classical-music scene – especially in the field of chamber music – in Rome. However, Francesco Santoliquido’s own music has fallen into almost complete obscurity, a state which this attractive new recording by the established partnership of the Gran Duo Italiano should help to improve. Born in Naples in 1883 and trained in Rome, Santoliquido never espoused even the mild brand of modernism or the neoclassicism of contemporaries such as Casella, Malipiero and Pizzetti, and he issued diatribes against the evils and origins of modernism in the fascist press. Beyond the precepts of a classic-romantic style, then, the individual flavour of Santoliquido’s music owes something to his residence in Tunis during the 1910s, and subsequent support of a culture for classical music in north Africa, including the foundation of a concert society and music school in Tunis. Thus the piano music featured here includes a pair of Acqueforti Tunisine, as well as orientally scented nocturnes which were written for his wife to play. The album concludes with Ex Humo ad Sidera, a piece that describes mankind’s terrible struggle in rising from the dark, savage state towards Light. The main work here is a traditionally structured Violin Sonata in A minor with a turbulent opening movement, a languid and dreamy Andante and then a stormy finale. It is revived here with tremendous conviction by Mauro Tortorelli and Angela Meluso, who have a string of critically acclaimed albums on Brilliant Classics to their credit, most recently featuring chamber music by Ševcík, Auer (96213) and Castelnuovo-Tedesco (96007). According to Fanfare magazine, reviewing an album of Milhaud’s chamber music (95449), ‘the versatility and fine musicianship of Mauro Tortorelli… maintains its high standards here.’