CHANDOSCHAN 9832

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Nino Rota (19111979)

Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano (1973) 15:54I Allegro 6:04II Andante 5:07III Allegrissimo 4:40

Sonata for Viola and Piano (1935) 15:57I Allegretto scorrevole 5:48II Andante sostenuto 5:14III Allegro scorrevole 4:54

Trio for Flute, Violin and Piano (1958) 13:08I Allegro ma non troppo 4:20II Andante sostenuto 5:22III Allegro vivace con spirito 3:25

Sonata for Violin and Piano (1937) 17:44I Allegretto cantabile con moto 7:43II Largo sostenuto 4:39III Allegro assai moderato 5:19

TT 62:53

Ensemble Nino RotaSuela Mullaj violin/violaCecilia Radic celloPaolo Beltramini clarinetPaolo Ferrigato flute

Massimo Palumbo piano/director

12

11

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7

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5

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Nino RotaPi

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arco

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Nino Rota (19111979)

Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano (1973) 15:54I Allegro 6:04II Andante 5:07III Allegrissimo 4:40

Sonata for Viola and Piano (1935) 15:57I Allegretto scorrevole 5:48II Andante sostenuto 5:14III Allegro scorrevole 4:54

Trio for Flute, Violin and Piano (1958) 13:08I Allegro ma non troppo 4:20II Andante sostenuto 5:22III Allegro vivace con spirito 3:25

Sonata for Violin and Piano (1937) 17:44I Allegretto cantabile con moto 7:43II Largo sostenuto 4:39III Allegro assai moderato 5:19

TT 62:53

Ensemble Nino RotaSuela Mullaj violin/violaCecilia Radic celloPaolo Beltramini clarinetPaolo Ferrigato flute

Massimo Palumbo piano/director

12

11

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

Nino Rota

Pier

mar

co D

e Sa

nti A

rchi

ves

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relevance, yet relevance is there in thesubstance. Above all he never worries about thepossibility of his own transparency betrayinghis borrowings. To the critic Lorenzo Arruga heonce confided that he was

absolutely convinced that there is no such thing as

plagiarism in music. Musical material is common

property: if someone takes it and makes it his own,

he owes only gratitude to his predecessor.

He was always true to himself, whether writingfilm scores for La dolce vita (1960), Otto emezzo (1963) and The Godfather (1971),theatre music for Napoli milionaria (1977), thesacred composition Mysterium (1962),symphonic music or the chamber workConcerto-Soire (1961). When Rotas operaAladino e la lampada magica was produced in1968 Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco remarked tohim, Commitment? Fiddlesticks! The onlycommitment a composer has is to writinggood music!. Indirectly, in an interview, Rotareplied to this with his customary simplicity:

You see, when someone says that all I seem to be

doing in my music is trying to convey a bit of

nostalgia and a good deal of humour and

optimism, I think that that is just how I should like

to be remembered, with a little bit of nostalgia and

a good deal of optimism and good humour.

One must be on ones guard in speakingabout the art of Nino Rota. To say that hismusic appeals to the listeners heart withoutrequiring any particular effort of understanding

is not to imply that his is a simple, much lessan elementary, technique. Close study of any ofhis scores reveals an idiom so direct that itcommunicates immediately but without givingeverything away on its first hearing. Thoseengaging, heart-warming tunes hide supremecraftsmanship and a deep emotional awarenessof the problems of the contemporary world.The music of Nino Rota, wrote Guido Agosti,

is the clearest of springs. It has many excellent

qualities: spontaneity, crystalline transparency, an

infallible balance of each element of composition.

Here we never encounter forced rhetoric, violence,

heaviness, opaqueness, but can admire the terse

limpidity of every detail. Nino Rota possessed

not as something laboriously acquired but as a gift

an innate, almost Hellenistic sense of the form

and mystery of style.

The time-lag between Rota and a composersuch as Martucci seems almost negligible. Andyet in the intervening years the world had seenImpressionism, Viennese twelve-tone music, theBallets russes for which Stravinsky wrote, andthe Great War. To all of this Rota respondedwith the serenity of a deliberately tonalinspiration, invulnerable because of his candidexpressivity, simple forms and indisputablequality of beauty. Note that word, because thegoal of Rotas art seems to be precisely this, toaffirm pure beauty as the raison dtre of art,especially the art of a period like the twentiethcentury so aggressively attentive to (or

One of the very few sources of information wehave about the life of Nino Rota is anaffectionate account written by his mother,Ernesta Rota Rinaldi. This only takes us up to1944, the year it was written, but the followingpassage gives a useful glimpse into his earlydevelopment and the easy-going nature thatwould be a hallmark of his art.

In the summer of 27 Toscanini, an old friend and

champion of my father [Giovanni Rinaldi, writer of

much good music for the piano] who took a

discreet interest in Ninos fortunes, supported his

candidature for a scholarship to the Curtis Institute

of Philadelphia [which he eventually won].

Toscanini, the sworn enemy of avant-garde music

and its major exponent Alfredo Casella, was

sincerely afraid that Nino might be influenced by

cerebral, arid teaching. In this he was mistaken, for

Nino was as pigheaded as they come, with a

natural inclination to cock a snook at his teachers

by writing, for instance, in the style of Casella while

being taught by Pizzetti [1925 and 1926], and in

the style of Malipiero while studying with Casella

[until he obtained his diploma in Rome, in 1929].

He only forged a personal style later, after

abandoning his old circle in the North, with its

cliques and parochial attitudes, and repairing to

Puglia.

He later became Director of the BariConservatory, where he remained for more thantwenty years.

The child prodigy who composed andconducted an oratorio, Linfanzia di SanGiovanni Battista for soloists, chorus andorchestra at the age of twelve, grew up tobecome an outstanding personality of thetwentieth century, a time he observed with aclear, cultured mind and innate optimism but towhose fashions he was never enslaved. Therewere those, like the critic Fedele DAmico, whoconsidered him to some extent non-contemporary, yet although his music was notmainstream, neither was it in any wayanachronistic; directly expressive, spontaneous,free of theoretical baggage and with nopreconceptions, it could certainly be calledcontemporary in feel. But the idiom is that ofthe nineteenth century. It is melodic, avoidscomplex harmonies, is redolent of a spirit ofawareness and, for that reason, is not polemical.This is the language of a man who took anintelligent view of his own age as he did of thework of his friend Stravinsky, especially in hisyouth. He writes for the listener and is neverafraid to be orecchiabile, easy on the ear, towrite tunes. He never strives for superficial

Nino Rota: Chamber Music

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relevance, yet relevance is there in thesubstance. Above all he never worries about thepossibility of his own transparency betrayinghis borrowings. To the critic Lorenzo Arruga heonce confided that he was

absolutely convinced that there is no such thing as

plagiarism in music. Musical material is common

property: if someone takes it and makes it his own,

he owes only gratitude to his predecessor.

He was always true to himself, whether writingfilm scores for La dolce vita (1960), Otto emezzo (1963) and The Godfather (1971),theatre music for Napoli milionaria (1977), thesacred composition Mysterium (1962),symphonic music or the chamber workConcerto-Soire (1961). When Rotas operaAladino e la lampada magica was produced in1968 Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco remarked tohim, Commitment? Fiddlesticks! The onlycommitment a composer has is to writinggood music!. Indirectly, in an interview, Rotareplied to this with his customary simplicity:

You see, when someone says that all I seem to be

doing in my music is trying to convey a bit of

nostalgia and a good deal of humour and

optimism, I think that that is just how I should like

to be remembered, with a little bit of nostalgia and

a good deal of optimism and good humour.

One must be on ones guard in speakingabout the art of Nino Rota. To say that hismusic appeals to the listeners heart withoutrequiring any particular effort of understanding

is not to imply that his is a simple, much lessan elementary, technique. Close study of any ofhis scores reveals an idiom so direct that itcommunicates immediately but without givingeverything away on its first hearing. Thoseengaging, heart-warming tunes hide supremecraftsmanship and a deep emotional awarenessof the problems of the contemporary world.The music of Nino Rota, wrote Guido Agosti,

is the clearest of springs. It has many excellent

qualities: spontaneity, crystalline transparency, an

infallible balance of each element of composition.

Here we never encounter forced rhetoric, violence,

heaviness, opaqueness, but can admire the terse

limpidity of every detail. Nino Rota possessed

not as something laboriously acquired but as a gift

an innate,