Ghedini: Chamber Works for Violin, Cello and Piano (1915–1946)

Description

«Ghedini was a great musician, and an uncomfortable and solitary figure. I believe the history of Italian music will soon be in need of him, and he may therefore be seen in a proper, and in some respects new, light» – Luciano Berio, who had been Ghedini’s pupil, in the Intervista sulla Musica edited by Rossana Dalmonte in 1981. Today, after many years, one may say that this reassessment is almost complete. Moreover, thanks to new recordings, his major works are finally “available” to listeners, even if part of his catalogue still awaits rediscovery. Critical opinion of Ghedini’s music has proved uncertain, oscillating between enthusiasm and censure, owing to his proud independence. Although attentive to the evolution of the music of his time, he was jealous of his artistic freedom and never aligned with any school. From contemporary idioms he accepted only what coincided with his own aesthetic, far removed from any dogma and focused on musical substance: for him, extraordinary technical mastery was always placed at the service of expression. To quote Berio again, he was «the first and only Italian musician to have built a bridge of the highest quality across two centuries of operatic paralysis, between the vocal and instrumental Baroque and today». He found his “models” in the Italian musical culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, applying himself to the study and transcription of works by the two Gabrieli, of Monteverdi in particular, of Frescobaldi, Schütz, Vivaldi and others, without forgetting Bach, with a splendid realisation of the Musical Offering.
Giorgio Federico Ghedini was born on July 11th, 1892 in Cuneo, where his father, a fervent Wagnerian, had moved from Bologna as an engineer in the civil engineering service. He began studying music at a very early age with Evasio Lovazzano, an organist and much respected teacher. In 1905 he moved to Turin, where he studied cello with Samuele Grossi at the Liceo Musicale and, privately, composition and harmony with Giovanni Cravero. In 1911 he graduated in composition at the Liceo of Bologna, then directed by Marco Enrico Bossi. For a time he conducted opera seasons in several cities of northern Italy and gained experience as a répétiteur at the Teatro Regio in Turin, but before long he decided to devote himself to composition. From 1922 he taught at the Liceo Musicale of the same city, with posts of increasing responsibility, where he found a culturally lively environment and met figures who proved decisive for his development (Guido Maggiorino Gatti, Andrea Della Corte, Romualdo Giani). He then taught composition in Parma from 1938 to 1941, the year in which he moved to the Conservatorio di Milano. There, in 1951, he was appointed director, leading the institution’s revival after the dark years of the war. Among his pupils, and among the musicians whom he invited to collaborate, are some of the finest names in Italian twentieth-century music: Berio, Castiglioni, Cantelli, Abbado among the former; Vidusso, Donatoni, Manzoni, Canino, Ballista, Giuranna among the latter. Meanwhile, his reputation grew; his compositions were regularly published by leading publishers, performed in Italy and abroad by some of the most distinguished conductors of the time (De Sabata, Karajan, Celibidache, Giulini, Cantelli) and broadcast on the radio. His final years were embittered by heated polemics with the avant-garde and by disappointment surrounding his retirement in 1962. He died in Nervi, near Genoa, on March 25th, 1965.
Ghedini’s output encompasses every musical genre. In addition to the Concerto dell’Albatro of 1945, his most famous and most frequently performed work, we may recall among the concerti at least those bearing titles: Belprato (1947), Alderina (1950) and Olmeneta (1951), and the formidable Contrappunti per tre archi e orchestra (1960-1961); among the orchestral works: Partita (1926), Concerto grosso (1927), Marinaresca e Baccanale (1933), Architetture (1940), Musica notturna (1947), Studi per un affresco di battaglia (1961), Ouverture pour un concert (1963); among the stage works: Maria d’Alessandria (1936), Re Hassan (1937-38), La Pulce d’oro (1939), Le Baccanti (1941-44), Billy Budd (1949) and Lord Inferno (1952); among the works of sacred and religious inspiration: Il pianto della Madonna presso la Croce (1921), Cantico del sole (1932), Concerto spirituale De l’Incarnazione del Verbo Divino (1943), Concerto funebre per Duccio Galimberti (1948), and Credo di Perugia (1961-62). In addition, he wrote an abundance of a cappella vocal music and chamber music, incidental music, and soundtracks for films and documentaries.
His output for keyboards and his chamber music are also extensive and always of excellent quality, with works for traditional ensembles (string quartets, wind quintets, trios for various ensembles, etc.) or for particular combinations such as the Doppio quintetto for winds, strings, harp and piano, winner of a competition in 1922, and the septet for winds, strings and harp of 1936. Drawing on this vast section of Ghedini’s catalogue, the present CD contains a series of works for violin, cello and piano, presented in every possible combination of two and three players. These works offer a clear cross-section of his stylistic evolution over thirty years and illustrate the multiple qualities of his music.
A form cultivated especially in Italy between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Ricercare – as its name suggests – seeks to explore either the technical possibilities of a particular instrument or the contrapuntal possibilities of a theme. It was taken up and freely reinterpreted by composers who, in the twentieth century, rediscovered Italy’s ancient musical culture. Among them was Ghedini, with a Ricercare for piano of 1944, but above all with the Sette Ricercari for violin, cello and piano of 1943 recorded here. As observed by Dario De Rosa, pianist of the Trio di Trieste, to whom the composition is dedicated:

«The Sette Ricercari are a landmark within the Master’s oeuvre: for their high poetic content, for the formidable technique with which they are conducted, […] and finally because they represent an act of faith at a time when a great part of humanity, swept up in the events of war, seemed to have lost awareness of the fundamental values of the spirit.»

Ghedini himself, in a letter of 30.10.1943, spoke of them as follows:

«The style is predominantly fugal (hence the title Ricercare). In substance there are seven fugues in which every sort of contrapuntal device is deployed. The second piece, for example, is a mirror fugue, that is, from the mid-point to the end the piece is nothing but the first half retraced in reverse, and so on. Yet, for all these devices, the work as a whole remains entirely free and artistic. Magical music, someone once said. Let’s leave that alone… I shall simply say it is music written with devotion, and that is presumption enough.»

It has been observed that the work comprises three asymmetrical spans (ricercari I-III, IV-V, VI-VII). Sections I, IV and VI are the fast, propulsive movements, while the others, characterised by slow tempos, stand out as contemplative oases, immersed in dazed timbral atmospheres and studded with singular sonic effects.
Ricercare I – Vivace – opens with a decisive unison gesture in the strings, then taken up and developed by the piano. A pizzicato passage follows, with hammered chords of Bartókian flavour, a prelude to an intense dialogue that becomes ever more contrapuntally dense (always animated) amid frequent changes of rhythm. From the density and vitality of the first Ricercare one moves to the more rarefied texture of the next two. Ricercare II – Allegretto – has a sombre, processional character that recalls the Andante sostenuto of the future Concerto dell’Albatro. Frequent tremolos punctuate the texture, which unfolds on “different”, superimposed planes until it fades away. In Ricercare III – Molto sostenuto – from the silence of the preceding movement there emerges a plaintive recitative in the violin, then taken up by the cello over scarcely audible chords, in ppp, in the piano, and finally repeated and concluded by the violin. Ricercare IV – Allegro mosso – opens with a swirling figure entrusted for many bars to the piano, later drawing the strings into its orbit and unfolding in a relentless race that is stilled only in Ricercare V – Andante un poco mosso – characterised by a highly expressive melody and an atmosphere that once again recalls the icy, suspended world of the Albatro, a masterpiece that was evidently already in gestation. The voices of the three instruments entwine in a stringent counterpoint. Ever tighter connections in the strings over the piano’s chordal, fluid support lead, in an expressive crescendo, to an unforced close that precedes Ricercare VI – Allegro moderato – once again animated by the motoric “demon” typical of a certain Ghedini. The agitation resolves into sustained trills that lead into the final ricercare, VII (Grave e dolce). The first fourteen bars are filled with prolonged shivers that then subside over insistent octaves in the piano. The strings present a melody in canon that moves towards the close. Slowly the texture unravels and continues deliberately and with effort. In the score we find the indications “teneramente” and “più lento” and finally “ancora più lento”. The ending is wholly anti-rhetorical and all but silent: «something suspended and in part distant», as Ghedini said of this section, commenting on the first performance.
The Canoni for violin and cello of 1946 are a “severe” work, so much so that at the premiere they were repeated in full at the end of the concert to aid comprehension; yet they are nevertheless marked by a clear and intense expressivity. For the first time Ghedini approached twelve-tone technique, which he would soon abandon in order to continue along his own original creative path, rather impatient of the avant-gardes. «It is courageous music and will lay itself open to fierce polemics» he wrote as he dispatched the work, «…the contrapuntal play of these canons is particularly interesting, because they employ the twelve-tone system and many of the devices inherent in it». Composed for Libero Lana and Renato Zanettovich, members of the celebrated Trio di Trieste, they are however dedicated to Alberto Mantelli, music critic, creator of the radio «Terzo Programma» (today RadioTre) and co-founder, in 1955, of the Istituto di Fonologia of RAI in Milan. Articulated in an Adagio (alla IIa inferiore per moto contrario e alla VIa inferiore) and an Allegretto moderato (canoni diversi), they never sacrifice the cantabile line despite the numerous technical devices employed. Of particular interest in the second section is the insistent use of pizzicato.
Ghedini’s output for violin and piano, in addition to his two Sonatas, in A major (1918) and in E-flat major (1922), includes several short pieces: Bizzarria (1929), Due Poemi (1930) and Elegia Drammatica (also 1930 and immediately published by Leduc), recorded here for the first time. After a slow and calm opening, with a plaintive theme that the violin will restate in varied form, the piece gradually becomes more animated over the piano’s triplets, until it reaches a climax around at around two-thirds of the piece. The indications “douloureux et intimement expressif”, “très soutenu et douloureux” and “désespérément”, precisely at the culmination just mentioned, seem to suggest an intimate and desolate inner structure that would well explain the title. A similar indication, “très douloureux”, appears at the ending, marked “morendo” is further evidence of how the composer followed his inspiration, granting nothing to external effect.
Ghedini wrote extensively for the cello. Setting aside those works in which the instrument is the protagonist with orchestra and remaining within chamber music, besides the Sette Ricercari and the Canoni we may recall two other works, both for cello and piano: the Largo appassionato e rondò of 1913 and the Sonata-fantasia of 1924. The Elegia offered here dates from 1923 and is dedicated to the celebrated cellist Livio Boni. It should be remembered that Ghedini had studied and practised the instrument and therefore knew it extremely well. At the time he was a thirty-year-old composer, stylistically still close to tradition; yet the Elegia is a fine work, full of pathos, in which one appreciates the firm construction and the noble line of the cantabile.
Moving backwards chronologically, the recording closes with the Due intermezzi for violin, cello and piano (1915), in which one admires the «dense and compact writing, which is yet fluid and free of effects» (E. Neill). In the first, entitled Tranquillo, the strings alternate between unison and contrapuntal passages. The piano’s entry presents a theme characterised by a descending line that recalls a similar motif from the first movement of the Sonata in A major for violin and piano, and that will return repeatedly in the course of this work of restrained passion. The second intermezzo, Bizzarro, is particularly curious, bringing to light a quality usually kept in the background by the Piedmontese composer: humour. A skipping, irreverent gait pervades the whole piece, and when it turns serious it seems to do so in jest. Ghedini draws on an entire repertoire of effects – dissonances, glissandi, pizzicati, grace notes, skewed turns, disproportionate vehemence around specific chords or notes – and creates a melodic writing that wavers, like someone in high spirits, to reach a conclusion after which, continuing the metaphor, this curious “character” seems to wander off the stage.
Flavio Menardi Noguera © 2026