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27 Dec
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Castelnuovo-Tedesco Guitar Chamber Music Bandini Interview

Chamber Music with Guitar: Giampaolo Bandini Interview

Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco / Uncategorized /

Guitarist Giampaolo Bandini has performed, championed and taught Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s music for many years. In 2017, at the l’Istituto Musicale “Luigi Boccherini” in Lucca, Italy he organized the most extensive festival ever dedicated to the Florentine composer’s guitar music. After releasing more than 10 CDs, Giampaolo chose to dedicate time during the pandemic to an exploration of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s complete chamber music with guitar. He put together an outstanding  group of musicians to collaborate with him on the project: the Quartetto Adorno (Edoardo Zosi violin, Liù Pelliciari, violin, Benedetta Bucci, viola, and Danilo Squitieri, cello); Stefano Cerrato, cello; Francesco Di Rosa, oboe; Alberto Miodini, piano; Augusto Mianti, English horn; and Andrea Oliva, flute. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco Guitar Chamber Works: The Complete Edition (Decca)  was released in Fall 2021. The recording includes extensive liner notes by Professor Stefano Campagnolo.  Giampaolo graciously agreed to talk with us about his long standing interest and recent immersion in Mario’s chamber music. 
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18 Dec
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Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco Guitar Chamber Music Sharon Isbin

Chamber Music with Guitar: Sharon Isbin Interview

Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco / News, News, News, News, News, News, News, News, News /

We are thrilled to begin our series of conversations about Mario’s Guitar chamber music with Sharon Isbin, multiple Grammy Award winner, Musical America’s 2020 Artist of the Year, and the director of the guitar departments at the Aspen Music Festival and the Juilliard School. Sharon recently recorded the Quintet for Guitar and Strings Op. 143 with the Pacifica Quartet (Simin Ganatra, violin; Austin Hartman, violin; Mark Holloway, viola; Brandon Vamos, cello) on their CD, Souvenirs of Spain & Italy (Cedille). 
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17 Dec
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Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco Chamber Music with Guitar

Chamber Music with Guitar (1950-1968)

Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco / Uncategorized /

After nearly two decades of writing for the guitar, in 1950 Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote his first works of guitar chamber music. What began as experiments of a curious mind evolved into a group of works that are beloved today by both musicians and audiences.  The Quintet for Guitar and Strings op 143 (1950) is without a doubt the most high-profile of these works, since it was requested, premiered* and first recorded** by his friend Andrés Segovia.
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28 Jul
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Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Ophelia

Ofelia returns to “her” Florence

Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco / Uncategorized /

Two of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s lifelong passions were Shakespeare and the visual arts. So it’s no wonder that he was drawn to Ofelia (Ophelia), a terracotta sculpture by Arturo Martini when he saw it at an exhibition in Florence in 1932. Castelnuovo-Tedesco acquired the sensual and tragic representation of the young Danish noblewoman of Hamlet for his personal collection. This work has now returned to Florence for the exhibition Arturo Martini and Florence at the Museo Novecento through November 14, 2021.
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03 Jul
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Castelnuovo-Tedesco Chamber Music

Mario’s Return to Chamber Music (1945-1950)

Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco / Uncategorized /

In the mid-1940s, with the trauma of emigration starting to fade, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco returned to writing chamber music. During the period from 1945-1950, he wrote the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano (Ricordi), the String Trio (Curci) and his Second String Quartet (Curci).  This second wave of chamber music also includes a series of three sonatas for string instruments, in which he enjoyed experimenting with the technical and expressive possibilities of different combinations.
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14 Jun
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Premiere of Castelnuovo-Tedesco Cello Concerto in Poland

Premiere of the Cello Concerto in Poland

Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco / Uncategorized /

Since 2018, the Italian cellist Silvia Chiesa has been reintroducing Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Concerto for cello and orchestra, opus 72, to European audiences. On Friday 18 June 2021 she will premiere the work in Poland, in Jelenia Góra, with the Lower Silesian Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Massimiliano Caldi. This performance had been planned for March 2020, but it was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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07 Jun
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New Ricordi edition Castelnuovo-Tedesco Complete Greeting Cards for Piano

The Complete Greeting Cards for Piano

Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco / Uncategorized /

Mario Castelnuovo Tedesco composed 52 Greeting Cards for various instruments between 1953 and 1967, which he developed in a non-systematic manner up to the year before his death. These pieces were conceived as gifts for his interpreters, friends, and students, whom the author wished to delight with short musical portraits. The 18 Greeting Cards for piano (17 for solo piano and one for two pianos) represent an equilibrium between experimentation and tradition. During the composer’s life, only a handful of these short works were published. Now, for the first time, Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s complete Greeting Cards for piano are available in a critical edition, edited by Luca Ciammarughi and published by Ricordi. 
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10 May
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New book of Essays

Exile and Creativity: An Anthology

Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco / News /

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco is among the men and women featured in Exile and Creativity, a volume of essays inspired by a series of programs held in 2017-18 by the Italian Cultural Institute in New York jointly with Centro Primo Levi. The essays examine the lives of intellectuals, artists, and scientists who were forced into or chose exile during the Fascist era.  Among those highlighted in the book are the Nobel-prize winning physicist Enrico Fermi, the sculptor Costantino Nivola, the writer and cultural figure Amelia Rosselli, and the legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini. 
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17 Mar
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Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco music for solo piano, now newly publshed

Three New Piano Editions

Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco / Uncategorized /

Edizioni Curci has just published three new editions of previously unavailable works for solo piano by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: a volume of early compositions from the composer’s years in Italy, titled Piano Works – Vol.1 “Firenze”; a volume of works written during his time in America, titled Piano Works – Vol. 2 “Hollywood”; and a third, stand-alone publication of his Six Pieces in the Form of Canons (1947). All three have been edited by the eminent composer and musicologist Angelo Gilardino and join Curci’s already extensive Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco Collection. 
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06 Jan
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Castelnuovo-Tedesco 2019-2020 Guitar CDs

2020 Recordings: Music for Guitar

Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco / Uncategorized /

Year upon year, guitarists around the world explore the compositions of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and to bring them to life in new recordings. 2019 brought important monograph CDs by Angelo Marchese and Giacomo Palazzesi, the release of a pair of two exceptional recordings of the Guitar Quintet (one by Sharon Isbin and the Pacifica Quartet and the other by Jason Vieaux and the Escher Quartet), and many more.  In 2020 guitarists continued to interpret Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s masterworks on their latest recordings.
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