 Joué ici par d'autres italiens convaincus, Marco Enrico Bossi (né en Lombardie en 1861, mort en 1923 durant son retour d'une tournée américaine triomphale) fut excellent pianiste, mais surtout – comme ses propres parents – organiste renommé. Il trouva l'amitié d'éminents confrères comme Camille Saint-Saëns ou César Franck, après des études à Bologne et Milan. Ses deux trios s'inscrivent dans une tradition de romantisme attardé, comme on sait bien établie dans la Péninsule, et si l'on cite volontiers à son égard Brahms ou Mendelssohn, nous avons plutôt entendu du côté de Schumann dès le premier mouvement du premier trio en ré mineur, dont les emportements font un peu semblablement désordre, et c'est justement la même tonalité que l'idem premier trio du cher Robert. Bossi eut le mérite de perpétuer la musique européenne instrumentale dans un pays sans doute trop gavé du seul opéra, et c'est une leçon que retint notamment son élève Malipiero. Avec son second trio, on atteint à la musique pure, via un adagio "in memoriam" (de qui ?) d'une émotion si proche du silence qu'on le dirait presque fauréen, suivi d'un moderato... au titre encore une fois, mais aussi au rythme, si schumanniens (Novelette), de même que sa conclusion un tant soit peu heurtée, hachée. (Gilles-Daniel Percet) Italian Romantic chamber music, unique to the catalogue, in new recordings by an internationally renowned native group. Born in a town on the shore of Lake Garda, Marco Bossi has a foothold on the catalogue thanks to his organ music: he was born into a family of organists and studied and worked in northern Italian cities including Bologna and Milan before taking up a post as teacher of harmony and organ at the conservatoire in Naples. He made contributions to the Italian operatic tradition which have largely been forgotten, but organists still play his sonatas and dramatic evocations of the Passion and the Transfiguration of Christ. With Giuseppe Martucci and Giovanni Sgambati, Bossi also led a revival of the native tradition of chamber music, which had been neglected in Italy after the string quartets of Donizetti. This new recording of his piano trios joins Brilliant Classics albums of piano trios and string quartets of Martucci (BC94968) and string quartets and piano quartets of Sgambati (BC94813). Both works are generously proportioned fourmovement works in Classical form, the first of them dedicated to Martucci. The slow movements are especially novel: the Larghetto of the first is designated a dialogue, which unfolds in long, unwinding melodies; the Adagio of the Second is overtly elegiac in mood, though it is dedicated to German musician Georg Goehler, who outlived Bossi for almost 30 years; the career of the Italian musician came to a sudden and tragic end with his death by drowning in the mid-Atlantic, returning to Europe in February 1925 from a visit to New York. This disc forms an engaging introduction to the impassioned idiom, too little known, of a significant figure in fin-de-siècle Italian music.
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