Nino Rota : "La Strada", "Le Guépard" & "Concerto Soirée" (Josep Pons)

Album review

Nino Rota's ballet suite La Strada and the Dances from Il Gattopardo are frequently paired, being similar works that are related to his film scores, yet not really suites from film scores. In 1966 Rota fashioned a 12-scene ballet out of the story and music from La Strada, but also borrowed music from several other of his works. The suite in which the music from the film La Strada most frequently is heard, is actually from this ballet. The dances from Il Gattopardo were recycled from other film scores, with the addition of Rota's orchestration of a Verdi waltz for piano, and were not meant to be used as the underscore to the dramatic action of the film, but as the dances heard in a ballroom scene. Conductor Josep Pons obviously has a great sympathy for Rota's music. He has included the Concerto Soirée, a pure concert work by Rota (themes from which were also later recycled for film scores) with soloist Benedetto Lupo, with the two suites in this lavishly designed package from Harmonia Mundi. Pons and the Orquesta Ciudad de Granada give the La Strada suite a grandness that fits the ballet stage and emphasizes the tragedy of the story. The Dances are sparkling, and except for shades of Rota's humor, such as the mock serious beginning of the Mazurka theme, are thoroughly idiomatic of late-nineteenth century ballroom music. If there were any problems with the orchestra's intonation or ensemble work they would show up here, but Pons holds it to world-class standards. The Concerto Soirée is just as vibrant and full of feeling as the La Strada suite. It is by turns dreamy like Chopin, sensational like Rachmaninov, playful like Prokofiev, but always Rota, taking his turn at reinventing Romantic music. Lupo and Pons bring it to a thrilling end in the Can-can finale. The Concerto and the Dances certainly stand on their own as concert music, whereas it is hard to hear La Strada's music without imagining the story, just as it is hard to separate E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Nutcracker from Tchaikovsky's music, especially when it is performed with the intensity and meaning that Pons gives it.

© TiVo

Details of original recording : Enregistré en juillet 2004 à l'Auditorium Manuel de Falla à Grenade en Espagne