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CHAN 10867 – BOTTESINI
Bottesini:Gran Quintetto / Capriccio / Duetto
Giovanni Bottesini was an extraordinary personality as a musician and traveller in the age of romanticism. An exceptional double-bass virtuoso, inspired composer, and able orchestral conductor, he tirelessly brought his art from London to Cairo, from Paris to Calcutta, from Havana to Buenos Aires, from Saint Petersburg to New York, from Madrid to Constantinople, to name only some stages of his incessant musical pilgrimage. Born in Crema in 1821, he began his musical practice within the environment of his family, moving on to the Conservatory of Milan, where he studied double-bass and composition under the guidance of Luigi Rossi and Nicola Vaccaj, respectively. Quickly recognised everywhere as an incomparablevirtuoso on the double-bass, Bottesinidid not content himself in this role, but promptlydedicated himself to orchestral conducting and to composition. In this sphere he distinguished himself, with respect to thedominant culture in Italy at the time, by astrong interest in chamber music, such that Verdi defined him as being ‘smeared with quartetism’. On the operatic stage he achieved great successat the Teatro Regio in Turinwith Ero e Leandroin 1879, which was followed one year later,in the same Savoy theatre,by a performance of the splendid Messa da Requiem.
Naturally, the most significant part of his compositional output was that devoted to the double-bass as a solo instrument.Numerous were the compositions in this category that were designed for performancein chambervenues, the so-called ‘academies’ and ‘benevolent societies’, often held in the drawing roomsand circles of the nobility and the bourgeois. Bottesini died in 1889in Parma, where ona recommendation byVerdi– who already in 1871 had entrusted to his batonthe first performance of Aida, in Cairo – he had just been named Director of the Conservatory.
© 2015 Davide Botto
Translation: Lynn Westerberg
Gran Quintetto
Bottesini composed the Gran Quintetto in C minor in the spring of 1858 while in Naples, dedicating it to Saverio Mercadante. The first performance took place shortly afterwards in Venice, in July the same year, while the first editions saw the light ofday in Naples under the auspices of the publishing housesof Girard and Clausetti. The interest in chamber music induced Bottesini to compose, starting in 1845, seven quartets and four quintets, and to participate in the founding of the Società del Quartetto in Florence (1861) and in Naples (1862), in addition to taking part in countless chamber music performances, mastering as well the violin, viola, cello, and piano. Furthermore, in Florencein 1862, with theQuartet in D major,he won the Basevi Competition for composers.
Compared to other chamber works, in which the distribution of musical material among the parts is rather homogeneous, the Gran Quintetto is characterised by a particularly prominent role for the first violin. It is quite likely that Bottesini was influenced in this by the Gran Quintetto in A minordedicated to Paganini by the Parmesan composer Luigi Savi (1803 – 1842) in 1834. Most probably, the musician from Crema knew this piece well, given that the interpreter of the first violin part at its première, in the presence of Paganini himself, wasAntonio Bazzini, the artistic partner of the self-same Bottesiniat the time when he was drafting his Gran Quintetto. Concerning the employment of the instruments, it should be noted that the double-bass, contrary to what one might expect, carries thefunction as harmonic and rhythmic support without any soloistic prominence. The part also requires the use of the fourth string, an anomaly in the work of Bottesini, who normally abhorred this string. The Gran Quintetto is made up of four movements, with a Scherzoin second position and an Adagio in the third, following a practice that was fairly widespread in Italy and France. The first movement, Allegro moderato, is written in sonata form but without a second theme. The first theme – preceded by a short introduction unfolding as a cadenza – after the exposition in minor mode is elaborated to such a degree that one fails to notice the absence of the traditional two-theme structure. The elements of the introduction, too, are extensively recapitulated, so much so that they become the material of which the coda is constructed. A Scherzoof a dancing, almost rustic nature follows, which contrasts with the inspired tunefulness of the Trio. The third movement, Adagio, constitutes the lyric culmination of the whole composition, which legitimates this distance from the already densely packed first movement. The Finale, an Allegro con brio written in sonata form without ritornello, presents an initial theme whichproved particularly dear to Bottesini, who re-used it in November of the same year (1858) when writing the Sinfonia to his opera Il diavolo della notte. Also remarkable is the coda, in which echoes of classical motifs are treated in the form of a strict fugato.
With his Gran Quintetto in C minor Bottesini demonstrates his success in expressing – within forms largely common with the great European sonata tradition of his time – a specific chamber-music idiom which sinks its rootson the one hand in the great Italian instrumental civilisation (Tartini, Pugnani, Boccherini, Dragonetti, Viotti, Paganini, and others) and on the other in the poetics of bel canto and romantic opera, thus contributing to outline a true ‘Italian path’ to chamber music.
© 2015 Davide Botto
Translation: Guido Vogliotti
Capriccio
The Capriccio for two double-basses with piano was in all likelihood written by Bottesini during his Conservatory years (1835 – 39), judging from the fact that its undated autograph manuscript may be found in the library of that Milanese institution. For another, all his works for two double-basses date fromthis period: the Tre grandi Duetti, the Fantasia for two double-basses on theCanzonette by Rossini, the Concerto for two double-basses (whichwould later become the Gran duo for violin and double-bass), and possibly thePassione amorosa, the autograph manuscript of which has not to date been traced. The proximity at that time with the double-bass player Giovanni Arpesani (1820 – 1855), a fellow student and musical partner, strengthens this tentative,hypotheticaldating.
According to what Gaspare Nello Vetro reports in his authoritative text on Bottesini, in 1844 the two musicians played the Concertoand the Fantasia at the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice, but no performance of the Capricciois documented. This starts with a short (albeit majestic) introduction, an Allegro moderato, which is followed by cadenzas in which the two instrumentalists, starting with the second double-bass, present themselves individually. Next opensa melodious section in which each soloist can display the ‘warm’ sound of his instrument, arrivingat some virtuoso passages played ‘a due’, in which the composer displays all the technical possibilities of the double-bass in a profusion of arpeggios and harmonics. The acrobatic use of the left hand, the very frequent recourse to the most extreme register of the instrument, was highly effective and, at the end of each performance, the public showed their appreciation for the musical and ‘physical’‘exploits’ of the double-bass players.The final coda is very similar to that of the Duetto with clarinet. The entire composition is pervaded by astrongly theatrical flavour, in which it is not difficult to recognise the powerful influence of the contemporary Italian operatic culture.
© 2015 Michele Cellaro
and Leonardo Presicci
Translation: Guido Vogliotti
Duetto
The manuscript –it, too, undated – of the Duetto for clarinet and double-bass with pianoaccompaniment is kept in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma, to which the heirs toBottesinidonated the body of those works by the musician from Crema that remained in their possession. It is thus probable that the Duetto was written during a period subsequent to that of the compositions for two double-basses.Concerning its performance, the biographer Gaspare Nello Vetro cites a performance given in Paris in March 1856 by Bottesini with his father, Pietro, a talented clarinettist. No doubt the presence in the family of a skilled player of this instrument will have prompted the young Bottesini, from very early on, to devote himself to the composition of works with clarinet. The same Nello Vetro reports that in Crema in 1841, in the interval following the first Act of the opera Il giuramento by Mercadante, Bottesini performed with his father an Adagio e variazioni for clarinet and double-bass, of which, nevertheless,today no trace remains. In the years that followed,the association with the Milanese virtuoso Ernesto Cavallini (1807 – 1874) proved important, and it brought the two successfully to the stage of the Teatro alla Scala in 1860.
The characteristics already observedin the Capriccio for two double-basses – that is,a majestic introduction, cadenzas, melodiouspassages, and subsequent virtuoso sections – are also to be found in the Duetto for clarinet and double-bassand, as has already been remarked, the two compositions also share an uncommonly similar coda. What instead mainly differentiates the two pieces, apart from the instrumentation involved, is a more intimate and exquisite chamber-music dimension in the Duetto for clarinet and double-bass, which,of its kind,may certainly be considered one of the masterpieces by the musician from Crema.
© 2015 Michele Cellaro
and Leonardo Presicci
Translation: Guido Vogliotti