Bettinelli: Chamber Music

Album review

Any serious music survey will rank Bruno Bettinelli (1913-2004) among the leading Italian composers of the 20th century. His rich and varied catalogue of works confirms this status – as well as writing a number of works for the stage, inevitably enough for a musician nurtured in the self-appointed ‘land of opera’, he also composed seven symphonies and numerous other orchestral works, a series of concertos, and choral-orchestral works in which he combined structural expertise with vocal lines and an understanding of instrumental writing stemming from his long-standing dedication to chamber music – this saw his creation of a quite exceptional repertoire of works for different formations. Vocal writing loomed large in the latter years of his life, many of them compositions of compelling purity and emotional impact. He eschewed extra-musical messages and trends, writing music that was idiomatically unadulterated, formally clear and purposely cautious with an uncontroversial use of free tonality. Chronologically and artistically speaking, Bettinelli falls between Dallapiccola and Petrassi and his younger compatriots, going on to revolutionise the history of music – figures such as Maderna, Donatoni, Nono, Berio or Bussotti. His very individual style owes a debt, however, to the composers of the late 19th and early 20th-century avant-garde such as Respighi, Pizzetti, Malipiero or Casella, whose technical and formal achievements he admired and incorporated into his own work.

Bettinelli has been giving individual solo instruments a central role in a varied series of pieces. Of these, the Due liriche for soprano, mezzo or tenor and guitar (1977) underline his talent for vocal writing and bringing out the nuances of a text. Dating from 1982 is the Divertimento a duet for two guitars in which the two instruments converse on equal terms. This is a consistent, geometrically designed work, switching from mood to mood and sonority to sonority. The other two-instrument works included here are more elaborate and substantial. Improvvisazione for violin and piano was written in 1968. The title gives an indication of the unconventional structure to come – the work begins with an extended violin cadenza, its musical ‘gesture’ repeated several times. The Improvvisazione attests to Bettinelli’s unclassifiable modernity. This is reaffirmed by Due movimenti for viola and piano (1978), one of the most important and representative of his mature chamber works, and the first of his compositions to feature solo viola. The formally conventional Trio of 1991 is a four-movement symphony in miniature, with a lively scherzo in third position. It is a masterful embodiment of its composer’s instinct for and understanding of chamber music, bringing together the altogether modern conceptions of a then nearly 80-year-old Bettinelli. © SM/Qobuz