Paul Jeanjean: Clarinet Chamber Music
Same artist
Da Vinci Classics
Cristina Romanò, Danilo Zaffaroni, Luigi Magistrelli
Arranger: Benedetto Carulli
Works by Giuseppe Verdi, Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini
Artists: Luigi Magistrelli · clarinet; Cristina Romanò · clarinet; Danilo Zaffaroni · bassoon
Barcode: 0793597061898
13.67€
Carulli · Chamber Music with Clarinet · 22 tracks
Timings follow Apple Music, Spotify and Qobuz. The digital album includes the Trio as tracks 19–22; the original booklet identifies these as additional online tracks.
Cristina Romanò began studying the clarinet at an early age and trained at the Milan Conservatory with Luigi Magistrelli. She attended masterclasses with Karl Leister, Richard Stoltzman, Wenzel Fuchs, Sharon Kam and Peter Schmidl.
Her freelance activities include clarinet-and-piano recitals, chamber music with various ensembles and collaborations with the Milan Municipal Wind Orchestra, Milano Classica Chamber Orchestra, the F. J. Haydn Orchestra of Legnano and the Arteviva Orchestra of Milan. She has recorded for Urania/Leonardo.
She has taught music in primary and secondary schools in Milan and clarinet at Live Music in Segrate, near Milan.
Danilo Zaffaroni studied bassoon at the Milan Conservatory with Professor Brandolini, composition with Professor Rotondi and electronic music with Professor Paccagnini.
As a bassoonist, he has collaborated with the Angelicum and radio orchestras of Milan, the Ars Cantus Orchestra, the Città di Legnano Orchestra, O.F.S.I. (the wind orchestra of Italian-speaking Switzerland) and the Arteviva Orchestra. He has performed chamber music and orchestral repertoire, including solo appearances, in Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland, Spain and the Netherlands, and has recorded for Stradivarius, Bayer Records and Brilliant Classics.
His compositions for chamber ensembles and wind groups have received premières in Milan, L’Aquila, Switzerland and Mexico. Performers of his music include the Andersen Wind Quintet, bass clarinettists Stefano Cardo of La Scala and Fausto Saredi of Milan’s Verdi Orchestra, the Civica di Mendrisio Wind Ensemble, the O.F.S.I. Orchestra and the Piccoli Pomeriggi Musicali Orchestra of Milan. Several of his works have been published by Wicky Music.
Luigi Magistrelli was born in Santo Stefano Ticino, near Milan. He studied clarinet at the Milan Conservatory with Primo Borali and attended masterclasses with Dieter Klöcker, Karl Leister and Giuseppe Garbarino.
He has appeared as a soloist with I Pomeriggi Musicali, Angelicum, Teatro Litta, the Radio Orchestra of Milan, Città di Magenta, Vivaldi Val Camonica, the Haydn Chamber Orchestra, the Grande Orchestra Romantica and other ensembles. His chamber-music work ranges from clarinet-and-piano duos to larger ensembles, including contemporary repertoire.
He has served as principal clarinet of the Sanremo Symphony Orchestra and worked as an additional player with I Pomeriggi Musicali, Angelicum, Gaspare da Salò, Cantelli, the radio orchestras of Milan and Turin, La Scala Strings, Orchester der Jahrhunderte in Germany, MusicAeterna in Perm, the Moldova Radio Symphony Orchestra and others. He has also toured with the International Orchestra of Italy and won prizes at competitions in Genoa and Stresa.
He has performed throughout Italy and in Switzerland, Malta, Austria, Belgium, Latvia, the former Yugoslavia, France, Spain, Kenya (at the National Theatre in Nairobi), India, Germany, Finland, Israel, Mexico, the United States, Canada and Russia. With pianist Sumiko Hojo he has performed in the Czech Republic, China and Japan.
His discography includes chamber music and solo recordings for Pongo Classica, Bayer Records, Nuova Era, Stradivarius, Arta Records (on historical clarinets), ASV, Clarinet Classics, Urania/Leonardo, Centaur Records, Talent Records, Gallo, Brilliant Classics, MDG and Orfeo, including collaborations with Dieter Klöcker. He has recorded with the Filarmonica della Scala under Riccardo Muti for Sony Classical, with Milano Classica for Dynamic and with the Cremona Barock Orchestra for Tactus. He also recorded two Mozart CDs for Camerata Tokyo with Karl Leister, principal clarinet of the Berlin Philharmonic for 34 years, and has recorded for Italian radio and the BBC.
He has edited little-known clarinet works for Eufonia, Accolade, Trio Musik, Poco Nota Verlag and Musica Rara. His activities have included serving as Italian chairman of the international clarinet association and performing at clarinet congresses around the world.
He has given masterclasses and lectures in Italy, Bulgaria, Belgium (the Royal Conservatory of Brussels), Austria (the Salzburg Mozarteum and the University of Vienna), Germany, China, Latvia, Spain, the Czech Republic, Israel (music academies in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem), South Korea, India, Mexico and the United States, including the University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Southern California. He teaches clarinet at the Milan Conservatory and maintains a substantial collection of clarinets of many types.
The biography originally supplied for this catalogue recorded 55 CDs and a collection of 240 instruments; the 2018 booklet for Chamber Music & Clarinet Solos recorded 60 CDs and 260 instruments.
Benedetto Carulli (1797–1877) was an Italian clarinettist, composer and teacher closely associated with the Milan Conservatory and La Scala. Trained at the conservatory, he subsequently taught there for almost half a century. His pupils included Ernesto Cavallini and Romeo Orsi. At La Scala he belonged to a wind quartet with Giuseppe Rabboni, Carlo Yvon and Antonio Cantù.
His music includes operatic fantasies and arrangements on themes by Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, clarinet duets, trios, variations and other works for wind instruments. These compositions reflect the nineteenth-century practice of bringing operatic repertoire into domestic music-making, teaching and chamber concerts.
On 22 November 1822 Giuseppe Antonio Carulli (1762–1830), a music copyist at the Milan Conservatory, applied on behalf of his son Luigi for a licence to print music. He described himself as a native of Assago, near Milan, aged sixty and with four children. Luigi had already been working as a music engraver and printer, while Benedetto was a professor of clarinet at the conservatory.
The licence was granted on 4 January 1823. For several years, as Editore dell’Imperiale Regio Conservatorio of Milan, Giuseppe Antonio issued works by conservatory teachers and former pupils, together with teaching material, especially vocal and keyboard tutors. In 1827 he began the Nuovo repertorio musicale: Produzioni dei più accreditati maestri ridotte per organo e pianoforte; twenty-four instalments had appeared by 1830. In 1828, with plate number 167, his address was given as S. Radegonda 984. Plate number 173 marked the beginning of the Collezione completa di Muzio Clementi, based on Breitkopf & Härtel’s edition.
Carulli worked with Secondo Colombo in 1829 and began a new series, the Biblioteca musicale economica per flauto, organo e pianoforte, the following year. After Giuseppe Antonio’s death, Benedetto requested the transfer of the publishing licence, which was granted on 11 June 1830; his activity in this field lasted less than a year. In 1832 Ricordi acquired the Carulli catalogue of approximately 300 publications, entering them under the numbers 6113–6161 and 6225–6339. Four years later Giovanni Canti began publishing by reprinting several Carulli editions, notably the Muzio Clementi collection.
Gaetano Donizetti (Bergamo, 29 November 1797–8 April 1848) was an Italian composer whose operas helped shape the bel canto repertory of the nineteenth century. He achieved international success in both comic and serious opera, developing a personal dramatic language between the operatic worlds of Rossini and Verdi.
Born into a family of modest means, he received his early musical education at the charitable school established in Bergamo by Simon Mayr, who remained his teacher, mentor and supporter. Mayr arranged further study with Stanislao Mattei in Bologna. Donizetti’s first professional operatic commission, Enrico di Borgogna, was performed in Venice in 1818. Following the success of Zoraida di Granata in Rome, he began working in Naples in 1822, maintaining a demanding succession of commissions while also writing for other Italian theatres.
Anna Bolena established his international reputation in 1830. The following decade brought such enduring works as L’elisir d’amore, Lucrezia Borgia and Lucia di Lammermoor. His writing combines melodic immediacy with a keen understanding of theatrical pace, character and vocal expression. Close collaboration with singers was central to his working methods. Although exceptionally prolific, he continually adapted his musical and dramatic approach to the requirements of different theatres, performers and audiences.
His later career extended to Paris and Vienna, with operas including La fille du régiment, La favorite, Linda di Chamounix and Don Pasquale. Alongside his operas, he composed sacred music, songs, orchestral pieces and chamber works, including string quartets and music for wind instruments. Serious illness curtailed his final years, and he returned to Bergamo before his death in 1848. His elder brother Giuseppe, a military musician who worked in Constantinople, was a different composer.
Gioacchino Rossini: (b Pesaro, 29 Feb 1792; d Passy, 13 Nov 1868). Italian composer. No composer in the first half of the 19th century enjoyed the measure of prestige, wealth, popular acclaim or artistic influence that belonged to Rossini. His contemporaries recognized him as the greatest Italian composer of his time. His achievements cast into oblivion the operatic world of Cimarosa and Paisiello, creating new standards against which other composers were to be judged. That both Bellini and Donizetti carved out personal styles is undeniable; but they worked under Rossini’s shadow, and their artistic personalities emerged in confrontation with his operas. Not until the advent of Verdi was Rossini replaced at the centre of Italian operatic life.
Giuseppe Verdi: (b Roncole, nr Busseto, 9/10 Oct 1813; d Milan, 27 Jan 1901). Italian composer. By common consent he is recognized as the greatest Italian musical dramatist.
Vincenzo Bellini (b Catania, 3 Nov 1801; d Puteaux, nr Paris, 23 Sept 1835). Italian composer. He was a leading figure in early 19th-century opera, noted for his expressive melodies and sensitive approach to text-setting.
Album notes by Luigi Magistrelli Benedetto Carulli (1797–1877) belongs to the Milanese clarinet school and, particularly, to the history of the Milan Conservatory, where he studied and subsequently taught for almost half a century. His pupils included Romeo Orsi, who later founded a clarinet-making firm, and, above all, Ernesto Cavallini, the celebrated Italian clarinet virtuoso whose reputation extended throughout Europe. Cavallini succeeded Carulli as principal clarinet at La Scala and later moved to St Petersburg. Carulli belonged to the theatre’s distinguished wind quartet alongside the flautist Giuseppe Rabboni, the oboist…
Benedetto Carulli (1797–1877) belongs to the Milanese clarinet school and, particularly, to the history of the Milan Conservatory, where he studied and subsequently taught for almost half a century. His pupils included Romeo Orsi, who later founded a clarinet-making firm, and, above all, Ernesto Cavallini, the celebrated Italian clarinet virtuoso whose reputation extended throughout Europe. Cavallini succeeded Carulli as principal clarinet at La Scala and later moved to St Petersburg. Carulli belonged to the theatre’s distinguished wind quartet alongside the flautist Giuseppe Rabboni, the oboist Carlo Yvon and the bassoonist Antonio Cantù. Cavallini dedicated six of his thirty Capricci and the romance Un pensiero (“A Thought”) to his former teacher.
Carulli himself studied with Adami, a teacher of clarinet and basset horn at the recently established Milan Conservatory. His family lived for many years within the conservatory building, where his father worked as a porter; they also ran a music-publishing business. Carulli composed numerous fantasies on operas by Verdi and Donizetti, combining the clarinet with piano and oboe, as in the Poliuto fantasy and a Divertimento, or with other wind instruments. His output also includes duets, trios, further fantasies and variations characteristic of the musical tastes of his time. Among his other works are a wind composition involving flute, clarinet, horn and bassoon, written for his students, and a trombone Divertimento preserved in the library of the Convent of San Francesco in Bologna.
Opera occupied such an important place in nineteenth-century Italian musical life that arrangements for different instrumental combinations often appeared soon after a new work’s première. The arias recorded here derive from some of the period’s principal Italian operatic composers: Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini. Such arrangements helped popularise the operas and could be approved, tolerated or received with reservations by their composers. Musicians associated with La Scala frequently undertook this work.
Verdi’s Rigoletto was first performed in 1851, and Carulli’s arrangement followed soon afterwards. It offers valuable material for teaching and practice: the first clarinet generally carries the melodic line while the second supplies the bass, though both encounter demanding virtuoso passages. The Tema con variazioni for solo clarinet, republished by the Accademia Italiana del Clarinetto after its original nineteenth-century Carulli/Colombo edition, resembles a concert étude, comparable in character to Donizetti’s two clarinet studies. A cantabile theme is followed by four virtuoso variations and a brilliant coda.
The other short arias come from an album described on the title page of the Milanese Canti edition as Lezioni melodiche (“Melodic Lessons”). They present partially developed themes from well-known operatic arias by Donizetti, Rossini and Bellini.
The Trio in B-flat major was originally conceived for two clarinets in C and bassoon. I chose to retain this original instrumentation, which gives the music a lighter, fresher character. The writing recalls Classical forms, including a minuet whose trio contains a beautiful theme in the manner of a Viennese Ländler. Virtuoso passages appear throughout the work, and the second clarinet and bassoon have solo parts as demanding as those of the first clarinet.
Text by Luigi Magistrelli; English revised for this edition.
Luigi Magistrelli and Cristina Romanò, clarinets in B-flat and C; Danilo Zaffaroni, bassoon. The solo Theme and Variations is performed by Luigi Magistrelli.
Magistrelli plays an early twentieth-century Schmidt-Kolbe Reform Boehm B-flat clarinet in the Theme and Variations, a Warschewski Oehler-system C clarinet in the Trio, and a Warschewski B-flat clarinet formerly owned by Dieter Klöcker in the other arias.
Recorded in Santo Stefano Ticino, Italy, on 18 September 2016. Sound engineer: Luigi Magistrelli. The original release identifies all pieces as world première recordings. The digital edition includes the four movements of the Trio as tracks 19–22; the printed booklet describes these as additional online tracks.
Cover image: Bernardo Bellotto, Castello Sforzesco di Milano, 1750. Design, art direction and production: Osaka Mozart Association. The sound-recording and artwork copyright belongs to Osaka Mozart Association. ℗ & © Da Vinci Classics. DDD. Manufactured in Japan.
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