Translate
Goffredo Petrassi entered the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in 1928, studying composition with Alessandro Bustini and organ with Fernando Germani. He received considerable encouragement from Alfredo Casella, one of the leading figures in Italian music between 1918 and 1939, and went on to enjoy a distinguished career as a teacher at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia, and subsequently as a conductor and administrator at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. His many pupils included Peter Maxwell Davies and Kenneth Leighton, together with a generation of younger Italian composers.
Goffredo PETRASSI (1904–2003)
Concertos for Orchestra Nos. 7 & 8
Sonata da camera *
Mario Stefano Tonda, Harpsichord *Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma
Francesco La Vecchia
In the early 1960s Goffredo Petrassi’s idiom was almost indistinguishable from that of the Italian avant-garde. Completed in 1964, the Seventh Concerto evolves with mounting tension and a sense of underlying menace. The Eighth Concerto from 1972 was commissioned and premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It is a substantial piece of outright virtuosity, with dissonance, trenchant dialogues and a fraught atmosphere. The much earlier Sonata da camera for harpsichord and ten instruments finds Petrassi poised between neo-Classicism and a more modernist direction. This is the third and final volume of Petrassi’s complete Concertos for Orchestra on Naxos (Nos. 1–3 are on 8.573702; Nos. 4–6 are on 8.573703).
Born in Rome, Francesco La Vecchia became leader of the Boccherini Quartet at the age of 18; five years later he founded the Arts Academy of Rome and embarked on his international recording career shortly after. In 2002 he was appointed artistic director and resident conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma. Under his leadership the orchestra rapidly achieved success in highly successful visits to St Petersburg, Madrid, Belgrade, Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, London, Athens, Berlin, Beijing and Vienna.
The Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma was established in 2002 by the Rome Foundation, a rare example in Europe of an orchestra that was funded completely privately. Under its artistic and musical director Francesco La Vecchia, the orchestra performed regularly in Rome at the Teatro Argentina, Teatro Sistina and Auditorium Conciliazione. The orchestra was dissolved in 2014, shortly after giving the first modern performance of Giovanni Sgambati’s Symphony No. 2.
Quattro inni sacri • Coro di morti
Putelli • Malvestio
Nuovo Coro Lirico Sinfonico Romano
Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma La Vecchia
– American Record Guide
Flute Concerto
La Follia di Orlando
Canino • Ancillotti
Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma
La Vecchia
– MusicWeb International
– Classical CD Choice
– Pizzicato