Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948) is a composer difficult to classify. As the son of a German father and an Italian mother from an aristocratic family, he was born in Venice and went to study in Munich. He became famous as a composer for the stage with works such as Il Segreto di Susanna and I gioielli della Madonna. His name is now emerging from the shadow cast by his wartime collaboration with Italy’s Fascist regime, and a series of albums on Brilliant Classics have revealed his gifts as a composer of chamber and instrumental music, including violin sonatas (96093), piano trios (95624) and a sequence of his piano works (95868).
Following on from the piano trios, the Piano Quintet, op.6, dates from 1900. Some of the cantabile melodies may remind us of Brahms, and the delicately embroidered harmony of Hugo Wolf, but Wolf-Ferrari’s characteristic sweetness of tone does not descend into decorative mannerism or affected sentimentalism: he was, to the core, a German-Italian composer with a foot on both sides of the Alps. More than any other of his early chamber works, the Piano Quintet successfully embodies his declared aim as a composer, to create a “universal beauty” where no rules apply, but only a feeling of well-being and sensuousness – especially in the ebullient Scherzo and Trio.
The Cello Sonata (1945) and Duo for violin and cello (1946) share the Romantic language of his early chamber music, but now refined by an escapist mode of neo-classicism, particularly in the lively dialogue of the Duo. The Cello Sonata is imbued with a gentle radiance throughout its brief, traditionally structured quarter-hour duration, drawing on a nostalgic vein of expression which comes naturally to the cello, and including literal echoes of Brahms in the slow movement.
Previous albums in this Brilliant Classics series have also featured Italian pianist Costantino Catena, of whom the Italian classical magazine Amadeus wrote: ‘A pianist rare in his generation, in him shining above all the art of singing on the keyboard with an inventiveness of phrasing that demonstrates his exquisite musical intelligence.’
