Maria Giacchino Cusenza: Piano Works

This recording devoted to Maria Giacchino Cusenza (1898–1979) offers an opportunity for rediscovery. A pianist and composer best known in her native city, she left a strong mark on the cultural life and piano teaching of twentieth-century Palermo. She worked at some distance from the principal Italian and European musical centres during years that were decisive for the development of contemporary musical languages.

Her principal compositions date from the final years of Fascism, through the nightmare of the Second World War and into the post-war period. The Preludio e Fuga in G minor for piano, published by Ricordi in 1936, marks the beginning of her mature career; it received an award from the Accademia d’Italia in 1937. The Sonata in un tempo attracted attention in the Barbera publishing competition in 1946, while Canto notturno, also published by Ricordi, won first prize in the Ada Negri competition in 1942. In the years leading up to the war, she wrote songs and distinctive piano pieces such as Umoresca and the powerful Basso ostinato, as well as Tre pezzi and Aria e Danza for violin and piano (Ricordi, 1940). Carisch published Tre pezzi facili in 1941; works including Evocazione and Trittico ericino remained unpublished.

The Preludio e Fuga won praise from several prominent musicians. Casella admired its accomplished craftsmanship; Frazzi emphasised its harmonic taste, part-writing, expressive character and effective piano writing; and Pizzetti praised both the quality of the writing and its pianistic appeal. Tagliapietra noted its fluency and clarity. Tebaldini admired the majestic fugue and the opening movement, hearing an affinity with Debussy in the theme that emerges within its singing upper voice. Further piano works appeared from Ricordi in the mid-1950s, at a time when European musical experimentation was moving from the integral serialism associated with Darmstadt towards the aesthetics of chance explored by John Cage. The Studio esatonico and Studio canonico appeared in 1954, followed by Corale e variazioni in 1955. The latter had already received an award from the Sindacato Nazionale Musicisti during the Fascist period for its clearly defined, tradition-conscious musical language.

Giacchino’s carefully shaped music, with its restrained titles, references to early Italian music and Bach, and affinities with the Italian Generation of the 1880s, grew from extensive experience as a performer and teacher. Beethoven and Debussy were particularly important to her. She completed her composition diploma in 1936, having resumed her studies in the 1930s on the advice of her husband, the journalist Francesco Cusenza. By then an established conservatory teacher herself, she studied with her colleague Mario Pilati, who taught composition in Palermo while his former Naples teacher Antonio Savasta was director.

She had previously studied with Alberto Favara, a distinguished teacher and ethnomusicologist who helped renew the city’s musical life, notably through complete performances of Beethoven symphonies at the newly opened Teatro Massimo. Her studies were interrupted when the composition course was abolished in 1917. This followed the appointment of Guido Alberto Fano as director in succession to Francesco Cilea and the ensuing conflict with Favara.

Her pianistic training began in the school of Alice Ziffer, a pianist from Trieste who joined the Palermo Conservatory in 1892. Ziffer subsequently became the partner of the cellist Giacomo Baragli, both in the pioneering Società del Quintetto and in life. Both had taken part in Giovanni Sgambati’s efforts to promote instrumental music in Rome. Giacchino grew up in an unusually musical family: her father, sisters and brothers Carmelo and Oreste were all musicians. She also responded to the expressive teaching of Torregrossa and the violinist Tùfari, before refining her technique with Fano. His teaching helped her combine Ziffer’s Lisztian approach with a deeper legato and greater interpretative sensitivity. She later studied with Alfredo Casella, whose activities through the Palermo branch of the Corporazione delle Nuove Musiche brought a more cosmopolitan outlook to the city in the 1920s.

This rigorous training informed more than forty years of conservatory teaching, from 1926 to 1970. Her pupils included Eliodoro Sollima, Sara Patera, Marisa Tanzini, Filomena Longo and her niece Anna Maria. She had already taught at home alongside her sister Livia and at the Istituto Cherubini, founded in Palermo during the Belle Époque to meet the growing demand for music education. Her post-war teaching research produced Esercizi di lettura, divertimenti e studi and Sei personaggi in cerca di esecutori. The latter, whose title alludes to Pirandello, comprises accessible pieces for young pianists already capable of expressive playing.

Giacchino began performing in Italy and abroad in the 1920s, drawing on a wide repertoire and an exceptional memory. This coincided with renewed activity at the Bellini Conservatory, encouraged by teachers arriving from mainland Italy, including Michelangelo Abbado and other distinguished violinists. As public concert life expanded, she helped found the Associazione Palermitana Concerti Sinfonici. It existed alongside the Amici della Musica and the experimental Corporazione delle Nuove Musiche, which brought musicians including Bartók and Hindemith to Palermo. Her own critical response to Bartók nevertheless reveals the distance she felt between his musical language and her artistic outlook.

She remained active in the city’s aristocratic circles, established a local branch of the Unione Cattolica Artisti Italiani and played an important role in the Società degli Scrittori e Artisti. In 1944 she also joined a new concert society at the conservatory.

During the 1930s, despite a less stimulating period in Palermo’s musical life, the experience she had gained in women’s chamber ensembles led to the creation of the Quintetto Femminile Palermitano, in which her sister Maria Antonietta, known as Tonì, played the cello. Her younger sister Livia remained close to her as a fellow piano teacher through many years of conservatory activity. Livia carried this important pianistic legacy into the closing decades of the twentieth century, passing it on with care and affection to pupils who continued to teach in Palermo.

Album notes by Consuelo Giglio. Original English translation by Theresa Williams; English revised for this edition of the webpage.