PONCHIELLI
11 videos • 2,903 views • by maisonvuillod Amilcare Ponchielli (1834 -- 1886) Fruit of the imagination of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814), Paul and Virginie were to stand as symbols of utopian, uncorrupted humanity for generations of readers (especially female readers). It is hardly surprising that a story like this should have inspired so many composers of opera and ballet. It is, however, not so easy to accept that it should have caught the fancy of a composer like Ponchielli; and yet this was the title he gave to a duet for violin and clarinet which he composed in Rome on 17th March 1877. Ponchielli had moved to Rome in the closing weeks of 1876 to supervise a new performance of his masterpiece, La Gioconda, due to be staged at the end of January. His mind then was on quite a different drowning from that chaste, and rather silly, death of Virginie: the finale of the opera where the sinister Barnaba yells at the dying Gioconda, telling her that he has drowned her mother, plunged Italian opera into depths of horror and anguish that it had rarely known before. We need, however, merely leaf through the catalogue of any opera composer to see that it was perfectly normal to have, side by side, ample, bloodthirsty operas and bright, even cheeky little things: nugae, trifles, as Latin poets called them; but in this definition there was all the irony of a world that had come to love not only great epic poetry but also the light, refined yet profound jewel. Catullo's most beautiful poems, for example, are nugae. It is not surprising then that Ponchielli's production should include a wealth of fairly small-scale instrumental works - for chamber ensembles, bands and orchestras - works written to balance, or perhaps for "therapeutic" reasons, to distract his mind from the grim colours of nineteenth century drama (we are thinking here of such titles as Elegia for piano) or again simply as tributes to a friend. Nor is it surprising that we should detect that same mask of irony and snobbery that Rossini had used in Paris in Ponchielli's choice of rather dainty titles, like Gavotte poudrée (Dusty Gavotte) for piano (1884, opus 91), or Simple Pensée (Simple Thought) for piano and violin, for works composed with skill and dedication. The composer himself treated these works with such distance that it is often difficult for us to ascertain what sort of instrumental group they were written for created for entertainment, they could be adapted to suit circumstances and so, for example, we come across pieces like Il Convegno (1857, opus 76) of which there is one manuscript version for two clarinets and piano, one for a full orchestra and yet another for string quintet. Some of these pieces were written for official occasions, like the inauguration of a statue dedicated to some notable or other (like Elegia funebre for piano, "in affectionate memory of Maestro Cavalier Felice Frasi, formerly censor and professor of composition at the Royal Milan Conservatory, composed by his pupil Amilcare Ponchielli"), or as devote homage to a great master of the past, as we find in the Cantata a Gaetano Donizetti for soloists, choir and orchestra (opus 12) on a text by Ghislanzoni, completed on 28th July 1857 and first performed in Bergamo, but later much better known in its piano transcription (also of separate movements, such as the splendid Preludio). Some of these pieces have attracted the attention of contemporary critics; the Quartet for flute, oboe, small clarinet in E flat and clarinet in B flat with piano accompaniment, opus 110, for example, first performed in orchestral version at the Teatro della Concordia in Cremona on 16th September 1857, was immediately greeted with enthusiastic comments in the newspapers. Today several critics have detected in the brilliance of its form a foretaste of the parodying qualities of some of Busoni's music and even (in the ironic, cutting use of woodwind timbres) attitudes which will later be found in Stravinsky's Petruschka. The piece was dedicated to Cesare Confalonieri, fellow student at the Milan Conservatory and lifelong friend. Confalonieri who went on to become oboe teacher at the Conservatory is found in many dedications on the elegant, art nouveau frontispieces of the scores of Ponchielli's instrumental works: they include the Piccolo Concertino opus 75 for oboe and piano, which, was written in the years when Ponchielli was still a student (it is dated 14th February 1848), or the later Capriccio for oboe with piano accompaniment opus 80 published in 1889. Far removed in spirit and substance from that romantic image of an artist driven in his creation by wild inner urgings, and often kept out of the public gaze by the very composers who wrote them, these works follow their own modest, yet uninterrupted path, offering today as in the past the poetry that they hold within, asking of the listener nothing other than a scrap of the spirit of lightness.