Luigi Perrachio: Quintetto for Piano, 2 Violins, Viola and Cello (1919) [with Set of Parts]

Description

Score with a set of parts for piano, two violins, viola and cello. Edited by David Korevaar.

Preface

In the early 2000s, shortly after joining the faculty of the College of Music at the University of Colorado Boulder, I worked with my colleague Dr. Laurie Sampsel, then the head of the Waltz Music Library, to reconstruct the University’s Ricardo Viñes Piano Music Collection.1 In the course of looking through the scores in the collection, I came across Luigi Perrachio’s Nove Poemetti and immediately recognized the beauty and originality of this music. Twenty years later, I continue to explore the output of this fascinating and largely forgotten figure, so important in the musical culture of Turin for his entire adult life.2 In September 2019, while on sabbatical, I was graciously welcomed to investigate the manuscripts and published scores by Perrachio housed in the library of the Giuseppi Verdi Conservatory in Turin. I came with definite goals, and one of those was to find a copy of the unpublished 1919 Piano Quintet mentioned in the available dictionary biographies of the composer.

Italian instrumental music was developing quickly in the early twentieth century, with composers like Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936), Ildebrando Pizetti (1880-1968), Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973), Alfredo Casella (1883-1947), and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) all making their presence known on the international music scene by the 1920s. These and others were promoted by the musicologist and composer Guido Gatti (1892-1973), who was an important advocate for Italian instrumental music at a time when the world still saw Italy primarily as a home for opera. He was also an early admirer of Luigi Perrachio, publishing an enthusiastic article in 1918. The present Piano Quintet, composed in 1919, is dedicated to Gatti.

Luigi Perrachio (May 28, 1883—September 6, 1966) was born in Turin, and studied cello and piano with his father, an amateur musician. His continued studies brought him to Vienna, where he worked with the Moravian pianist and composer Ignaz Brüll (1846-1907). He received a law degree from the University of Turin in 1908. He entered the Liceo Musicale (now the Martini Conservatory) in Bologna, receiving a diploma in piano and composition in 1913. As a composer, he was largely self-taught, as he apparently did not get along with his composition professor.3 At some point in these years, he also spent time in Paris, where he encountered Ravel and Ricardo Viñes, among other important musical figures. He ultimately returned to Turin, where he had a long career as a performer, composer, promoter of new music, and, from 1925, as teacher of piano and (later) composition at the Liceo Musicale (later Verdi Conservatory).

The years from 1912-1921 were among his most productive compositionally, with works that included the unpublished Violin Sonata in F-sharp minor (1912), the unpublished Piano Sonata Autunno (1916), the Nove Poemetti for piano (1917-1920),4 the unpublished 4 Autunnali for piano (1921), and the present Piano Quintet. These works established Perrachio’s compositional voice, while showing his influences from French and Russian sources in particular.

In 1922, he became the director of the Double Quintet of Turin—an ensemble of string quartet, wind quintet, piano, and sometimes harp. The group’s programming brought together a wide variety of music, from Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Franck, to Debussy, Ravel, Roger-Ducasse, Roussel, and Pierné. This group also presented new works by Italian composers including Giorgio Ghedini, Leone Sinagiglia, Alfredo Casella, and Perrachio himself.5

Perrachio continued to compose prolifically, but he published only sporadically. Some important compositions from the 1920s on include the 25 Preludi for piano (1929, published by Ricordi), a violin concerto and a piano concerto (1932, both unpublished), and a set for piano entitled Contes dedicated to his friend Alfred Cortot (1948, also unpublished). Some of his short piano works based on Piedmontese folk material were published by small local houses, but the bulk of his music remains unpublished; what is accessible is in manuscript form in the library of the Verdi Conservatory in Turin. He also wrote about music that was close to his heart, producing books on Debussy’s piano music and Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.6

This first publication of Luigi Perrachio’s Piano Quintet is based on the meticulously copied ink autograph manuscript housed in the Library of the Verdi Conservatory of Turin (catalogue no. MS II 1257). The library also has a pencil draft of the Quintet (same catalogue number) that was not used in the preparation of the present edition. Special thanks to Prof. Giuliana Maccaroni of the Verdi Conservatory for providing me with access to the library’s Perrachio materials, and to the library for allowing me to photograph the manuscript in preparation of this edition.

Editorial additions or corrections have been indicated with square brackets []. The autograph includes some evidence—including penciled performance markings, added fingerings in the piano part, and minor corrections—that it was used for a performance at the time, although there is not a set of parts included with the manuscript. The author has not been able to find confirmation of a performance. The present score and parts were engraved in Finale by the indispensable Douglas Passoni, who was willing to go back multiple times to get things just right. In preparing the first modern performances of the piece, the members of Carpe Diem String Quartet (Charles Wetherbee, Marisa Ishikawa, Korine Fujiwara, and Ariana Nelson) were invaluable in helping me catch errors of copying and inconsistencies in articulations and dynamics—both in the original source, and in the earlier version of the engraving that we used for the performance.

David Korevaar June 2022

Notes

1 David Korevaar and Laurie Sampsel, “The Ricardo Viñes Piano Music Collection at the University of Colorado at Boulder,” Music Library Association Notes 61, no. 2 (December 2004), 361-400. The Catalan pianist Ricardo Viñes (1875-1943) was a close friend of Ravel, and gave the first performances of most of Debussy’s and Ravel’s piano works of the first decade of the twentieth century. The portion of his library housed at the University of Colorado contains mostly scores of works dedicated to him or sent to him by composers in the first decades of the twentieth century.

2 For more on my personal Perrachio journey, see https://davidkorevaar.com/shrouded-turin-praise-luigi- perrachio-1883-1966/, accessed June 2, 2022.

3 “Luigi Perrachio,” in Italian Wikipedia https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Perrachio, accessed June 2, 2022.

4 Recorded by the author on Luigi Perrachio: Piano Music, MSR Classics, MS 1710 (2018).

5 Stefano Baldi, “Un episodio del modernismo torinese: il ‘Doppio Quintetto di Torino,’ 1920-1925,” in Giorgio Federico Ghedini, Doppio quintetto per archi e fiati con l’aggiunta di arpa e pianoforte, a cura de Stefano Parise (Turin: Zedde, 2000).

6 Luigi Perrachio, L’opera pianistica di Claude Debussy (Milan, 1924); II “clavicembalo ben temperato” di J. S. Bach (Milan, 1926).