Rosario Scalero (1870-1954)
Sonate pour violon et piano en ré mineur, op. 12
Trois Valses-Caprices, op. 16
Caprice pour violon seul, op. 2
Douze variations sur les Variations Barucaba de Paganini, op. 15
Suite dans le style ancien
Petite suite d'après Domenico Scarlatti
Quatorze variations sur un thème de W.A. Mozart, op. 8
Trois pièces, op. 17
Romance, op. 4
Deux Danses Napolitaines, op. 27
Neuf Danses Piémontaises

Grand Duo Italiano

Mauro Tortorelli, violon
Angela Meluso, piano

Violoniste virtuose, élève de Camillo Sivori qui fut lui-même l’élève de Paganini, Rosario Scalero étudia à Vienne avec Eusebius Mandyczewski de 1900 à 1919 avant d’émigrer aux Etats-Unis. Succédant au grand Ernest Bloch comme professeur de composition au Curtis institute de Philadelphie, il fut notamment le professeur de Barber, Menotti et Rota. Son œuvre pour violon ou violon et piano date essentiellement de ses études viennoises. On ne s’étonnera donc pas des échos brahmsiens de sa sonate, ni même du côté kreislérien de ses pastiches d’après Scarlatti. Si ses variations sur un thème de Mozart souffrent de leur trop grande longueur (près de trente minutes), en revanche on est séduit par ses danses italiennes, qu’elles soient napolitaines ou piémontaises. Sans être une révélation majeure, ce coffret, dont le premier CD avait été publié antérieurement sous l’étiquette Tactus n’en manque pas moins d’intérêt. Dommage que les limites techniques de Mauro Tortorelli soient trop souvent audibles dans un répertoire exigeant écrit par un virtuose pour son propre instrument. Un album destiné aux amateurs de la littérature pour violon avant tout. (Richard Wander)

World-premiere recordings bringing back to life the individual voice of an Italian émigré composer who taught many of the great names of American musical life in the middle of the last century. Rosario Scalero began his career as a violinist, in which guise he gave the first Italian performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Moving to Vienna in the 1890s he studied composition with Brahms’s friend Mandyczewski, and both his surroundings and his study inspired his chamber music. The D minor Sonata Op.12 was dedicated to Mandyczewski’s wife Albine, and it made a huge impression on the violinist and influential educator David Mannes, who duly invited Scalero to head up the composition department of his conservatoire in New York. In August 1919 Scalero sailed to the New World, and in 1924 he began teaching at the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, becoming its head of theory and composition three years later. In this guise he taught the likes of Barber, Menotti and Rota, but his own music fell from view. The present issue allows us to hear for the first time the musical mind that directed the creative impulses of his students. His violin and piano output shows that his music brought together three distinct strands of inspiration. There was his background as a virtuoso violinist, which comes to the fore in the Op.2 Capricci for solo violin and the Op.15 Variations on a theme of Paganini (not the famous one immortalised by Rachmaninov), and his native feeling for a cantabile melody, so evident in the Op.4 Romance. Then there is his life-long allegiance to his Italian roots to be enjoyed in the sets of Danze Napoletane Op.27 and the Danze Piemontesi. But equally his Viennese training yielded not only long-form structures such as the Sonata but also a trio of Waltz-Caprices Op.16 and neoclassical pieces in a lighter style such as the Suite of dances ‘im alten Stil’ and Eine kleine Suite of pieces ‘after’ Scarlatti. Between them, Mauro Tortorelli and Angela Meluso form the Gran Duo Italiano with an enterprising discography on Brilliant Classics that includes well-received collections of lesser-known, late-Romantic and neoclassical repertoire by Saint-Saens (94848), Milhaud (95232) and Castelnuovo-Tedesco (95642). ‘The synergy of the two performers is remarkable’ (CDClassico, reviewing the Milhaud album).