Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote two piano quintets: one in 1932, at the height of his Italian career; the other twenty years later, as “A Florentine in Beverly Hills,” looking back with nostalgia. The composer performed both of these quintets at their respective premieres and on other occasions; they were clearly works to which he was deeply attached. Following the publication of the previously unavailable Second Piano Quintet (“Memories of the Tuscan Countryside”) by Edizioni Curci, a new recording by Alessandro Marangoni and the Quartetto Adorno (Naxos) invites us to reconsider this pair of works.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco Piano Quintets marks the award-winning pianist’s fourth recording project of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s music for Naxos. Quartetto Adorno, meanwhile, released the first complete recording of the composer’s string quartets on the same label in 2024. Quartetto Adorno also recorded Mario’s renowned Quintet for Guitar and Strings with Giampaolo Bandini for Decca in 2021.
Marangoni and the first violinist of the Quartet, Edoardo Zosi, kindly agreed to speak with us about the project: their experience of working together, their impressions of the music, and its impact on them.
Interview with Alessandro Marangoni and Edoardo Zosi by Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco – June 2026
Although both of you had previously performed and recorded Mario’s music, this CD was your first collaboration. Tell us about this experience.
AM: Yes, it’s our first collaboration, and I am very happy to have worked with and made a recording with such an extraordinary quartet as Quartetto Adorno. It was a wonderful experience: an immersion in Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s marvelous music with collaborators with whom I resonated strongly. This music is complex and very difficult to play: it is for this very reason that I turned to Quartetto Adorno for this project, and, thanks to their incredible skill and talent, it was a complete joy. It felt like I had been playing with them for years.
EZ: Indeed, it’s our first collaboration with Alessandro, and we are very happy with it. And we are even happier because it was Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s music that provided the opportunity for an experience that was very fulfilling, artistically speaking.
What do you find distinctive about Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s music and why do you enjoy performing it?
AM: This music is incredibly rich: it offers a sense of continual discovery that fascinates and never becomes trite. Mario was a genius, a source from which new, fresh ideas continually sprang. I believe that the audience is also happy to listen to this music as well; and, ultimately, the service musicians owe to the music is exactly this: to create a living synergy between the composer and the listener. Furthermore, in the quintets there is always the distinctive hallmark of his style, the unmistakable signature of Castelnuovo-Tedesco that guarantees that it is well-received by the public and is so enjoyable to perform.
EZ: There are many composers who have written beautiful music throughout the centuries. However, few are recognizable and unmistakable from the very first time one hears them, and these are the great composers. Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s music has exactly this characteristic. The writing has a Mozartian transparency and a propensity to virtuosic writing for individual instruments, even in a chamber music setting. Another distinctive feature is his extended use of canons. Usually composers apply the canon form to a particular type of musical material. Mario, however, is able to make every theme, including extended ones, inherently lyrical and amenable to canonic treatment. Its appeal, in my opinion, lies in a perfect synthesis of classical, geometrically pure musical thinking and a distinctly Italian taste for free, expressive melody. A marvelous blend!
Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s two piano quintets were composed in different periods of his life, in different countries, and under different personal circumstances. It’s easy to cite the contrasts, but what is the “connective tissue” you found as you studied and recorded the two works?
AM: In my opinion, the two works share an extraordinary mastery: a deep knowledge of the instruments and the ability to achieve the desired sonorities through the very craft of composition. It’s always a pleasure to work with one of Mario’s scores, and in particular, the quintets. I would say that what the works have in common is a balance between structure and spontaneity, along with the beauty of the melodies.
EZ: I think what they have in common is the broad musical breadth that permeates them. In fact both [quintets] possess a powerful sense of expansiveness and expressive intensity; as a result, although they are scored for chamber ensemble, their character and overall effect are highly symphonic. His mastery of composition creates a kind of magic: even though only five musicians are playing, the result conveys the richness and grandeur of a full orchestra.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote the First Quintet at the height of his Italian career, shortly after composing his Second Violin Concerto (“The Prophets”). Just as Castelnuovo-Tedesco drew on his Jewish heritage in creating the themes of the Concerto, some have suggested that the First Quintet—particularly the Andante—also contains melodies that also reflect that heritage. What do you make of this idea?
AM: In the Andante there is a voice that sings in a different way: a more introspective line, almost a prayer, with a sense of nostalgia and spiritual depth that evokes that world. I would perhaps not speak of recognisable “Jewish melodies” in the sense of direct quotations, as much as a certain atmosphere: certain inflections in the musical line, a particular way of suspending time, and a simple dignity in the melodic line. In some respects, it reminds me of the emotional atmosphere of Evangelion for piano, another masterpiece that I had the good fortune to record and have performed many times. Castelnuovo-Tedesco had a very vast cultural background and an incredible ability to transform any reference into pure music: here, too [in the quintet], if there is a reference to his origins, it is filtered through a very elegant lens, and never becomes folkloristic.
EZ: I would say that this idea is right on target. The main melody has these intervals and this repeated dwelling on certain notes give it a distinctive character, which connects it to the inspiration behind themes by Joseph Achron and Ernest Bloch. This movement has great expressive depth and dramatic intensity, yet it concludes in an unexpectedly serene way. An atmosphere of profound suffering that ultimately finds a peaceful resolution.
The composer subtitled the Second Quintet “Memories of the Tuscan Countryside” and specifically mentioned the family home in Usigliano di Lari as his inspiration. What memories of your own went through your mind as you studied and interpreted Mario’s piece?
AM: What came to my mind were the lovely years when I was studying in Fiesole with Maria Tipo: dinners in the countryside, watercolors of the amazing natural beauty of those places, the stones of the convents, the Tuscan pine trees. I also recalled that splendid day a few years ago in one of the Maestro’s favorite places, spent with you, Diana, along with your family and other musician friends who share our love for this great Florentine composer.
EZ: The Tuscan countryside is a special, magical place. It represents the perfect meeting of humanity and nature: it’s not a wild landscape, but one that has been extensively shaped by human hands for agriculture since ancient times. It is a balance, achieved centuries ago, that has miraculously remained rooted in the rural and urban life of the past, largely untouched by modernity. This same special charm also pervades the Second Quintet. It is a twentieth-century composition, yet it is imbued with an ancient flavour that combines the simplicity of pastoral, bucolic inspiration with the masterful craftsmanship and refined artistry of its composer.
How does it feel to help revive music that was very significant to the composer but had remained in the shadows for decades?
AM: It’s always exciting to give new life to pieces that are seldom performed, have been forgotten or even never played nor recorded before: it is, in a certain sense, a “re-creation” – a collaboration in the creative act of the composer, in which one hopes to live up to the level of skill to be able to express the artistic truth that the composer had in mind. It’s also an act of hope: the hope that many people around the world will listen [to it] and that other musicians, particularly young ones, will be inspired by our recording and also wish to perform this stupendous music. The quintets are a veritable goldmine of beauty! And for this we must also thank Edizioni Curci for its new edition of the Second Quintet, and Naxos for their enthusiastic belief in this recording project.
EZ: We have by now a long-standing familiarity with Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s music, and, as was the case with his quartets, we were immediately enthusiastic about these quintets and found them profoundly inspiring. Although the name of our Quartet evokes the figure of Adorno, and we are therefore great admirers of the Second Viennese School, we have always regarded the twentieth-century Italian repertoire as important and worthy of attention, although it was overshadowed by the European avant-garde for historical reasons. Castelnuovo-Tedesco is a composer we are very fond of and we are proud to do everything we can to bring his music to audiences around the world. It is wonderful to witness, after concerts or in reviews of our recordings, the sense of amazement that his music inspires in listeners. Everyone says, “How could we have gone so long without knowing this wonderful music?”
Thank you both for sharing your insights and for these magnificent recordings, which are an excellent way to discover more of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s chamber music.
Photo: from left to right: Laura Moro, editorial director of Edizioni Curci; Alessandro Marangoni; Edoardo Zosi; Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco; Liù Silvia Pellicciari; Maria Salvatori; Benedetta Bucci. Photo by Stefania Varca taken at an event at Steinway & Sons Flagship Store in Milan on September 11, 2025.