Musica
Musica's official index records a 4/5 review in issue 307, page 115. The full review has not been consulted.
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Da Vinci Classics
Leonardo De Marchi, Matteo Evangelisti, Sauro Berti
Physical and Digital Release: 30 November 2018
Sauro Berti and Leonardo De Marchi explore contrasting musical languages for clarinet, bass clarinet, guitar and ten-string guitar, with Matteo Evangelisti joining them in Andor Kovach’s Musique d’automne. The programme spans ten composers and includes six world premiere recordings.
13.67€
Enantiosemie: Contemporary Masterworks for Clarinet and Guitar · 16 tracks
Sauro Berti and Leonardo De Marchi, with Matteo Evangelisti in Andor Kovach’s Trio No. 1. Six world premiere recordings, as indicated in the original booklet. Timings verified on the digital platforms; total duration 79:37.
Leonardo De Marchi is a concert guitarist whose work is devoted particularly to recent guitar repertoire. He obtained master’s degrees with honours in guitar at the conservatoires of Venice, Novara and Pavia, and attended advanced courses at the Giulio Regondi Academy in Milan. He also holds a bachelor’s degree with honours in German and Slavic studies from Ca’ Foscari University in Venice.
He won first prizes at the competitions in Musile in 2008 as a chamber musician and in 2009 as a soloist, in Piombino in 2009, and in Treviso in 2014 as a chamber musician. He has performed in Italy and abroad, and his recordings include Bach and Haydn for Two Guitars for DotGuitar, Sergio Sorrentino’s Quattordici studi sulla creatività for Sinfonica, and Enantiosemie for Da Vinci Classics. He also participated in Parade, devoted to guitar works by Giorgio Colombo Taccani, for GuitArt.
His editorial work includes A. Franco’s 24 Preludi e Ricercari for Ut Orpheus and Giacomo Manzoni’s Dedica 2015 for RAI Com. As a lecturer and musicologist, he has given masterclasses on guitar repertoire and written album notes and listening guides. His research into new musical languages led him to investigate the ten-string guitar and to expand its repertoire through collaborations with Italian composers. The first results of this work were published in Nuovi orizzonti per la chitarra a dieci corde by Viator.
Matteo Evangelisti (born 1985) is an Italian flautist. He began studying with Filippo Cianfoni at the age of thirteen and graduated with top marks and honours at seventeen from the L. Refice Conservatoire in Frosinone. He continued his studies with Glauco Cambursano at the Imola Academy.
His competition distinctions include first prizes at the Biwako competition in Japan and the Timișoara competition in Romania, a special mention at the Jean-Pierre Rampal competition in Paris, and second prize and a special performance award at the Maxence Larrieu competition in Nice. He has performed as a soloist and chamber musician and given masterclasses in Italy and abroad.
His orchestral career includes principal flute appointments with the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, working with Zubin Mehta and Riccardo Muti. On Enantiosemie he joins Sauro Berti and Leonardo De Marchi in Andor Kovach’s Trio No. 1 for flute, clarinet in A and guitar.
Sauro Berti is a bass clarinettist associated with the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. He has collaborated with major Italian orchestras, including La Scala, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä and the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra.
He has played under Georges Prêtre, Riccardo Chailly, Myung-Whun Chung, Riccardo Muti, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Valery Gergiev, Lorin Maazel, Pierre Boulez and Zubin Mehta, and participated in the DVD recording of Mozart’s Gran Partita conducted by Muti.
His solo appearances include ClarinetFest in Tokyo in 2008 and the editions held between 2009 and 2018 in Porto, Austin, Los Angeles, Lincoln, Assisi, Baton Rouge, Madrid, Lawrence, Orlando and Ostend. He has also appeared at festivals in Costa Rica, Peru, Madrid, Guimarães, Guatemala, China and Mexico. In 2009 he obtained a conducting diploma after studying with Donato Renzetti.
His publications include Venti Studi per Clarinetto Basso, Tuning for wind instruments, published by Suvini Zerboni, and his edition of Valentino Bucchi’s concerto. His recordings include Suggestions for Edipan and SoloNonSolo for Parma Records. The Enantiosemie booklet identifies him as a D’Addario Artist and records his use of Buffet Crampon instruments, Selmer mouthpieces and Silverstein ligatures. He also contributes the title composition to Enantiosemie, recorded with guitarist Leonardo De Marchi.
Andor Kovach (1915–2005) was a composer, conductor and teacher born in Transylvania who later became a Swiss citizen. At the Liszt Academy in Budapest he studied with Lajos Bárdos and Zoltán Kodály, becoming Kodály’s assistant, and took private composition lessons with Béla Bartók in 1939–40. He completed his studies in composition, conducting and music education in 1941.
His career took him to Saarbrücken, São Paulo and Brussels before he settled in Lausanne in 1962. He taught composition, orchestration and theory at the Lausanne Conservatoire until 1977, and subsequently taught in Boston. His catalogue includes opera, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, songs, cantatas and incidental music. Paul Sacher commissioned orchestral works from him. His musical manuscripts and archives are held by the Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire in Lausanne. The early Trio No. 1, Musique d’automne, for flute, clarinet and guitar, is featured on Enantiosemie.
Antonio Bellandi graduated with distinction in composition at the G. Puccini Conservatoire in La Spezia, studying with Andrea Nicoli, and completed a postgraduate course in composition at the same institution. He also graduated in piano at the L. Boccherini Institute in Lucca with Clara Cesa, and in the history of modern and contemporary music at the University of Florence with Franco Piperno.
His catalogue includes symphonic and chamber music, sacred and secular vocal music, and electronic works. His compositions have been performed in Italy, the Czech Republic, Germany, Macedonia and Azerbaijan. Selected by Giorgio Battistelli, he attended the composers’ masterclass given by Klangforum Wien during the contemporary music festival of the 51st Venice Biennale. He was also selected for the Ostrava Days Institute in 2009.
In 2011, his La leggenda del nocciòlo e del caprifoglio, for chamber orchestra and actor, won the Premio Nazionale delle Arti awarded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research. His music has appeared at festivals including Ostrava Days, the International Guitar Festival of Lagonegro and Intersonanzen 2016. He has written for Sergio Sorrentino, Michele Bianchini, Fabio Sammarco, Antonino YekNur Siringo, Duccio Ceccanti, Ethymos Ensemble, ConTempora Ensemble of Skopje, Nyky Ensemble and the Exclusive Saxophone Quartet.
Colette Mourey (born 1954) is a French composer, guitarist, pianist, musicologist and writer. Her studies included musicology at the Sorbonne and rigorous contrapuntal training with Julien Falk. Her work brings together composition, instrumental practice and research into musical language and education.
She has taught counterpoint, computer music, aesthetics and music education at the University of Franche-Comté, and has written books on musicology and teaching. Her compositional research includes the development of a system she calls hypertonality. Her works and arrangements have been published by Bergmann Edition, Marc Reift, Soldano and other publishers. Enantiosemie includes her Invitation for bass clarinet and guitar, a tribute to Harry Sparnaay.
Pfister, Hugo (b Zürich, 7 Sept 1914; d Küsnacht, nr Zürich, 31 Oct 1969). Swiss composer and teacher. He trained as a schoolteacher, then studied the piano and music theory with Czeslaw Marek. He taught music in the Teachers’ Training College in Küsnacht for most of his life. He composed in a light French manner until 1956–7 when he went to study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger; he then quickly developed an individual style integrating linear thinking, a widely enlarged tonality with polytonal characteristics, and polyrhythmic textures stemming from the music of Bartók, Schoenberg and Berg. In many of his works the main formal force is a rhythmic impulse, combined with astute melodic and timbral invention. Pfister wrote much incidental music for stage and radio plays performed primarily in Germany and Switzerland.
Leonardo De Marchi is a concert guitarist whose work is devoted particularly to recent guitar repertoire. He obtained master’s degrees with honours in guitar at the conservatoires of Venice, Novara and Pavia, and attended advanced courses at the Giulio Regondi Academy in Milan. He also holds a bachelor’s degree with honours in German and Slavic studies from Ca’ Foscari University in Venice.
He won first prizes at the competitions in Musile in 2008 as a chamber musician and in 2009 as a soloist, in Piombino in 2009, and in Treviso in 2014 as a chamber musician. He has performed in Italy and abroad, and his recordings include Bach and Haydn for Two Guitars for DotGuitar, Sergio Sorrentino’s Quattordici studi sulla creatività for Sinfonica, and Enantiosemie for Da Vinci Classics. He also participated in Parade, devoted to guitar works by Giorgio Colombo Taccani, for GuitArt.
His editorial work includes A. Franco’s 24 Preludi e Ricercari for Ut Orpheus and Giacomo Manzoni’s Dedica 2015 for RAI Com. As a lecturer and musicologist, he has given masterclasses on guitar repertoire and written album notes and listening guides. His research into new musical languages led him to investigate the ten-string guitar and to expand its repertoire through collaborations with Italian composers. The first results of this work were published in Nuovi orizzonti per la chitarra a dieci corde by Viator.
Maurice Verheul (born 1964) is a Dutch composer and piano teacher whose catalogue ranges from solo and chamber music to orchestral works and ballet. Initially drawn to a career as a pianist, he turned intensively to music theory and composition after an injury interrupted his playing. His influences include Bach, Chopin, Stravinsky, Messiaen and Sorabji, as well as Renaissance music and Ars Nova.
His music has been performed internationally, including by pianist Geoffrey Douglas Madge. A substantial part of his output is devoted to the bass clarinet, including works associated with Harry Sparnaay. Obtuser air, recorded by Sauro Berti and Leonardo De Marchi on Enantiosemie, takes its title from an anagram of the clarinettist’s name.
Nadir Vassena (born 1970) is a Swiss composer whose work encompasses chamber and electronic music, theatre, performance and dance. He studied composition with Bruno Zanolini in Milan and Johannes Schöllhorn in Freiburg, and attended Brian Ferneyhough’s composition course at Royaumont in 1993.
His distinctions include awards from the Westdeutscher Rundfunk, the Berlin Hochschule der Künste, the Salzburg Mozart competition and the Christoph Delz Foundation. He has held residencies at Schloss Solitude and the Swiss Institute in Rome, and received a Swiss Music Prize in 2015. From 2004 to 2011 he co-directed the Tage für Neue Musik Zürich with guitarist Mats Scheidegger. His teaching includes composition at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana. Primo discorso eretico sulla leggerezza dei chiodi, written for Scheidegger and Harry Sparnaay, opens Enantiosemie.
Patrizio Esposito (born in Rome in 1960) is an Italian composer and conductor. He studied composition with Mauro Bortolotti at the Santa Cecilia Conservatoire, attended courses with Aldo Clementi, and subsequently pursued advanced studies with Franco Donatoni at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia.
His Milan debut in 1985 featured The entertainment of the senses, on texts by W. H. Auden. His work has developed through an evocative musical imagination and collaborations with visual artists, writers and actors. His compositions have been presented at festivals in Italy and abroad, including Nuova Consonanza, Romaeuropa, RAI Nuova Musica and Ultraschall Berlin.
He studied conducting with Donato Renzetti and founded the New Winds Ensemble in 1986. In 1992 he became director of the Italian Air Force Band, promoting original music for wind instruments. His works have been published by Edipan, Agenda and RAI Trade, and recorded by Pan, Dynamic and Stradivarius. Il respiro nel silenzio appears on Enantiosemie.
Sauro Berti is a bass clarinettist associated with the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. He has collaborated with major Italian orchestras, including La Scala, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Sinfonia Finlandia Jyväskylä and the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra.
He has played under Georges Prêtre, Riccardo Chailly, Myung-Whun Chung, Riccardo Muti, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Valery Gergiev, Lorin Maazel, Pierre Boulez and Zubin Mehta, and participated in the DVD recording of Mozart’s Gran Partita conducted by Muti.
His solo appearances include ClarinetFest in Tokyo in 2008 and the editions held between 2009 and 2018 in Porto, Austin, Los Angeles, Lincoln, Assisi, Baton Rouge, Madrid, Lawrence, Orlando and Ostend. He has also appeared at festivals in Costa Rica, Peru, Madrid, Guimarães, Guatemala, China and Mexico. In 2009 he obtained a conducting diploma after studying with Donato Renzetti.
His publications include Venti Studi per Clarinetto Basso, Tuning for wind instruments, published by Suvini Zerboni, and his edition of Valentino Bucchi’s concerto. His recordings include Suggestions for Edipan and SoloNonSolo for Parma Records. The Enantiosemie booklet identifies him as a D’Addario Artist and records his use of Buffet Crampon instruments, Selmer mouthpieces and Silverstein ligatures. He also contributes the title composition to Enantiosemie, recorded with guitarist Leonardo De Marchi.
Scott Lygate (born 1989) is a Scottish composer and clarinettist from Irvine, Ayrshire, with a particular interest in the bass and contrabass clarinets. He studied at the Junior Department of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and the universities of music in Vienna and Graz.
His work as a performer spans contemporary classical music, orchestral playing, film recordings, jazz and funk. He has appeared with ensembles including the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Musikfabrik and Klangforum Wien, and as a soloist with the London Mozart Players. His compositions frequently draw on the expressive and technical possibilities of his instruments. Sand sculptures, his suite for clarinet or bass clarinet and guitar, is featured on Enantiosemie.
The repertoire for clarinet-guitar duo, emerging in the nineteenth century musical salons, has grown steadily over the last fifty years; this unusual combination of instruments has given rise to a great number of different and often contrasting musical languages. Entitling this album “Enantiosemie” — referring to words that can mean one thing and also its opposite — signifies the desire not only to show how the clarinet and guitar have been able to and still do interpret innumerable styles and research modes often diametrically opposed to each other, but also…
The repertoire for clarinet-guitar duo, emerging in the nineteenth century musical salons, has grown steadily over the last fifty years; this unusual combination of instruments has given rise to a great number of different and often contrasting musical languages. Entitling this album “Enantiosemie” — referring to words that can mean one thing and also its opposite — signifies the desire not only to show how the clarinet and guitar have been able to and still do interpret innumerable styles and research modes often diametrically opposed to each other, but also how the performer can interpret the same score in completely different ways. In fact, all art forms teach us that a single word can unleash a host of contrasting emotions.
A CD based on at least apparent contradictions could scarcely open with anything other than “Primo discorso eretico sulla leggerezza dei chiodi” [“First heretical discourse on the lightness of nails”] (2000) by Nadir Vassena (born 1970), a piece written for Mats Scheidegger (born 1963) and Harry Sparnaay (1944-2017) which owes its dramatic character to sudden pauses and brusque juxtapositions of assorted materials. The title is a thought-provoking oxymoron which, referring in a provocative manner to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, leads us, even before the start of the piece, to imagine harsh and irregular sounds, shifting backwards and forwards between two apparently irreconcilable poles of ethereal lightness and pungent hardness. The bass clarinet and guitar are the interpreters of a form of musical writing which, thanks to an impressive array of resources of timbres and instrumental techniques, analyses the material dimensions of sound down to its most basic components. Manifold types of attack, the constant research for unequal intonation and the conspicuous use of hypo-sounds and multiphonics, enliven the narration which is always lively and taut.
By way of contrast, the five movements of “Sand sculptures” (2011) by Scott Lygate (born 1989) create an ironic sound fresco like a popular song, inspired by some sculptures in the sand he had seen and admired in Portugal, after which the movements of the suite are named. Lygate gives a demonstration of his detailed knowledge of extended techniques on both instruments. The result is particularly evocative, in that it is not difficult for the listener to recognise the crossover played by the “Pro-Sand Art band”, the surreal calm in “Tired flatfish admires playful dolphins”, the grotesque declamatory pose of the king in “Medieval king makes proposals on a tactical map”, the trumpeting of the terrified elephant in “Scorpions provoke a top-hatted elephant” and the wild, cacophonous scratching of “DJ octopus”.
The atmosphere in “Il respiro nel silenzio” [“The breath within silence”] (2017) by the Roman composer Patrizio Esposito (born 1960) is definitely darker and gloomier. It is evident right from the start that the score depicts an uneasy, tenebrous night: from time to time jackals appear in front of our eyes tearing the darkness apart with their fearful cries, wind instruments play disturbing melodies and we are aware of other presences with their uncertain outlines, apparently created by the mist. Esposito succeeds perfectly in uniting the low bass clarinet tessitura with the pointillism of the guitar. The subtle and meticulous exploration of nuances of timbre and dynamics is the writing’s strength.
The Dutch composer Maurice Verheul (born 1964) has dedicated a lot of solo and chamber works to the bass clarinettist Harry Sparnaay. In “Obtuser air” (2016), his first work for duo with guitar, the instruments enter into a dialogue with each other on absolutely equal terms, in an uninterrupted interplay of themes and motives from one instrument to the other. The material of the piece derives from a single rhythmic cell, a tresillo, which characterises a great deal of Latin-American music. Here Verheul puts it through a continuous process of deformation: the result is an alienating, contemplative character, sometimes not without a certain element of grotesqueness. The ironic tendency of the composer emerges also in the title “Obtuser air”, which is nothing less than an anagram of Sauro Berti, to whom the work is dedicated.
After its dialogue with the traditional guitar, the bass clarinet is paired here with a ten-string guitar, an instrument which, thanks to its supplementary bass notes, has a sound quality rich in resonances. This original union of instruments takes place in “La favola di Apollo e Marsia” [“The myth of Apollo and Marsyas”] (2017) by Antonio Bellandi (born 1974), a piece in which the action of the drama adheres faithfully to the myth of Apollo and Marsyas, as recounted by the Latin writer Hyginus. Hyginus tells of how the goddess Minerva makes a flute from a deer bone but then throws it away, as she is mocked by Venus and Juno for the faces she pulls when playing it. The instrument is picked up by the satyr Marsyas who starts practising on it making ever-sweeter sounds; his presumption drives him to challenge Apollo to a musical contest, the god playing his cithara. Marsyas seems to be winning until Apollo turns his instrument upside down and plays exactly the same music, something which Marsyas can’t manage to do. The god ties the defeated Marsyas to a tree and then hands him over to a Scythian who flays him; then he hands over what is left of the body of the satyr to his disciple Olympus to bury it. The use of extended techniques, and in particular of the unique possibilities of sounds offered by the ten-string guitar, permit the composer to describe explicitly the salient points of the story: in particular he exploits to the full the booming clusters in the low register and the auras created by resonances, using harmonics and percussion on the body of the instrument.
“Ballade” by Hugo Pfister (1914-1969), the only piece on this CD belonging to the tiny classical repertoire for clarinet and guitar, is noteworthy on account of its generally severe and gloomy atmosphere. It was probably composed in 1959, following the Swiss composer’s studies with Nadia Boulanger; the “Ballade” is a formally ambitious piece, in a dry style, not generally on the look-out for unusual sounds. The macro-structure of the piece is clearly articulated in episodes of contrasting moods. The material is drawn entirely from the initial guitar motive and the two instruments engage, with equal importance, in a close dialogue, of a highly demanding and virtuoso nature.
To lighten the dark-tinted atmosphere of Pfister’s ballade there now intervenes the concise “Invitation. Tribute to Harry Sparnaay” by the French composer Colette Mourey (born 1954; she was later to dedicate the larger scale piece entitled “Blues sonata” to the duo Berti-De Marchi). This Tribute is based, like the preceding one, on alternating sections of a contrasting nature. The mood swings from witty to pungent and then to rhapsodic in its sudden shifting from one section to the next. The bass clarinet is often pushed up to its highest register, creating an agile and diaphanous persiflage, with the writing for the guitar using an idiom which recalls the lesson of the twelve studies by Heitor Villa-Lobos.
The CD closes with the “Trio n.1 (Musique d’automne)” (1942) for flute, clarinet in A and guitar by the Romanian composer (later naturalised Swiss) Andor Kovach (1915-2005). The guitar, which in the earlier pieces was a protagonist, now leaves the stage partially to the two wind instruments, being content to supply the harmony and rhythm on which the flute and clarinet develop their respective melodic lines. The refined and elegant character of Kovach’s Trio reveals his debt to the past in its adoption of formal models canonised by tradition: the first movement is in sonata form, the second is a mournful melody over a guitar ostinato and the third is a particularly lively and witty rondo.
It will not have escaped the notice of the attentive listener that in two pieces, both written in August 2018, the CD’s performers are also their composers! “Pagina d’album” by Leonardo De Marchi is a sort of intermezzo in ternary form and its lyrical atmosphere – with a quotation from Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and from another piece on this CD, the identity of which we won’t reveal! — acts as a fleeting intermezzo between the heavier works of Bellandi and Pfister. “Enantiosemie” by Sauro Berti on the other hand seems to suggest to us, with the simultaneous use of four metronomes which the interpreters have to follow, that the linear, ordered and strict perception of the tempo can paradoxically lead to a contrary result with the performers taking turns to disrupt the rigid order of the metronomes’ simultaneous beats. The performers have to play the same parts, purposely lacking in expression markings, but the different tempo indications suggest diverse interpretations. When it comes down to it, it is precisely this continuous shifting from one concept to its opposite which represents a miraculous example of enantiosemy.
Album Notes by Leonardo De Marchi · Translation by Ian Pearson; English revised for the website.
Recorded at Studio Millennium, Rome. Sound engineering and mastering: Fabio Ferri. Booklet photographs: Sauro Berti. Production, design and art direction: Da Vinci Publishing. Printed with the support of S.P.L.M.
Sauro Berti, clarinet and bass clarinet · Leonardo De Marchi, guitar and ten-string guitar · Matteo Evangelisti, flute (Andor Kovach’s Trio No. 1).
Clarinets: Buffet Crampon Tradition in B-flat and A; Buffet Crampon Tosca bass clarinets (1185 and 1185R), with D’Addario Reserve Classic reeds, Selmer Concept mouthpieces and Silverstein ligatures. Guitars: Fabio Zontini (2017), after Hermann Hauser; Luigi Sabbatini (2015), ten-string guitar. Flute: Pearl Maesta 10k.
The booklet identifies tracks 7–10 and 13 as dedicated to the duo Berti–De Marchi, and tracks 7–10, 12 and 13 as world premiere recordings.
To Mina, Naomi and Sofia, our companions on the journey.
Selected awards, reviews and interviews. Radio broadcasts and podcasts are listed separately below.
Musica
Musica's official index records a 4/5 review in issue 307, page 115. The full review has not been consulted.
Read the review ↗ - MusicaNeuGuitars
“un repertorio diverso e interessante”
A favourable feature places Enantiosemie alongside two other clarinet-and-guitar recordings. It introduces the album’s contrasting musical languages and draws on its booklet notes; no numerical rating is given.
Explore the coverage ↗ - NeuGuitarsIl Fronimo
El Khouri welcomes the originality and adventurous repertoire of the clarinet-and-guitar project, discussing its contemporary works and the performers’ contribution. Il Fronimo, no. 189, January 2020, pp. 57-58. No numerical rating is assigned.
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