This month's program will shine some much-needed Italian sunshine into our wintry landscape with music by Rossini, Dallapiccola, Casella, and Respighi. Pour yourself a glass of vino, and celebrate 2/2/22 and Bell’Italia with Gianandrea and the National Symphony Orchestra on NSO Showcase.
Show Notes
Program
Luigi Dallapiccola
Partita
Corinne Winters, soprano
Gianandrea Noseda, conductor
Ottorino Respighi
Trittico Botticelliano
Gianandrea Noseda, conductor
Alfredo Casella
Symphony No.2
Gianandrea Noseda, conductor
Reflections by Nicole Lacroix
2/2/22 is a significant day. First of all, it’s a palindrome: you can read it backwards and forwards. It’s Groundhog Day, where we find out if we have 6 more weeks of winter, and it’s the day Washington Football Team reveals its new name! But most significant of all for Classical WETA listeners, it’s the day we broadcast our February National Symphony Orchestra Showcase, Bell’Italia with music recorded at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts!
Why are we so excited? Bell’Italia is conducted by our own musical ambassador for Italy, Gianandrea Noseda. We’ll hear Luigi Dallapiccola’s Partita, his breakthrough piece from 1933. A memorial for a departed friend, the Partita features a vocal final movement, Lullaby of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which will be sung by the American soprano Corinne Winters.
No matter what Punxsutawney Phil declares on this Groundhog Day, Bell’Italia celebrates all the beauty of spring, as Respighi, that wizard of orchestral color, depicts 3 of Botticelli’s best-known canvases...La Primavera (Spring), The Adoration of the Magi, and The Birth of Venus. The Triptych was written as a thank you gift to arts patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who had sponsored his 1927 US tour. (Mrs. Coolidge is well-known to DC music lovers as the funder of the Library of Congress’ Coolidge Auditorium.)
The “pezzo forte” -- the showpiece of the program, is Alfredo Casella’s Symphony No.2 in its DC premiere. The successful first performance took place in 1910, but the symphony fell into oblivion due to the upheavals of WWI. Maestro Noseda has championed it, introducing it to audiences in Italy, Germany, Japan and the U.S. “It’s a fantastic symphony,” he told Susan Lewis at WRTI radio. “There are elements of Mahler, of Strauss...of French music...The Trio in the second movement is a crazy tarantella...The Trio reminds me of the crowd at Piazza Novona during the Christmas holiday.”
When you visit Italy, you enjoy the weather, the art, the music, the legends, the characters, the dance, the people. All that’s missing in our Italian journey is the cibo...the food....so why not set the table, pour yourself a glass of vino, and celebrate 2/2/22 and Bell’Italia with Gianandrea and the National Symphony Orchestra on NSO Showcase.