La Scala Brass Quintet

Tutta Forza - Music for Brass Quintet

Gavin Plumley

The history of La Scala, arguably the most significant theater in Italy, began in 1776. The Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa had granted permission for a new theater to be built in the city of Milan and it was constructed on the site of the Church of Santa Maria della Scala, hence the opera house’s name. The power of the Vienna-based Habsburgs was immediately apparent when its Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri’s L’Europa riconosciuta was chosen as the work to open the theater, although he was, at least, Italian in origin. And although Austrian power was soon to concede to that of the French, under Napoleon’s aegis the Italian life of this bastion of opera endured. Firstly, it was due to composers such as Cimarosa and Paisiello, but a truly golden era was then inaugurated with the advent of Rossini and his juniors, Bellini and Donizetti. Ever since, the Teatro alla Scala and its musicians have been de facto agents for the development of opera on Italian soil, with Verdi and, later, Puccini dominating the bills—though the latter had a somewhat chequered history at the address.

La Scala was also home to the Italian premieres of many foreign works, so it is fitting that this evening’s brass cavalcade, featuring musicians from the orchestra of La Scala, begins with a score from Russia, indeed, with a procession. Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Mlada, first seen at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg in 1892, followed an earlier, collaborative work of the same name. For that original project, with a libretto by César Cui’s regular partner Viktor Krilov, Rimsky-Korsakov had planned to write the music of Acts II and III in tandem with Mussorgsky; Cui contributed the first act to the opera-ballet spectacular, while Borodin composed Act IV. Sadly, the idea never got off the ground, so the colleagues stripped the original of its parts, with Borodin folding some of the material into Prince Igor and Rimsky- Korsakov using a portion for his String Quartet Op. 12. But unlike his other partners, Rimsky-Korsakov also Bellini’s opera Norma is similarly based in the pre- Christian world, namely Gaul during the Roman occupation around 50 BC. Composed between September and December 1831, Norma was first given at La Scala that Christmas. The opera is often imbued with music of noble simplicity, though it likewise places considerable demands on its interpreters. As such, Norma became one of the most popular operas during the 19th century and a vehicle for great singers ever since. It tells the story of a druidess who sacrifices herself in the face of duty: Norma has been jilted by her lover Pollione, with whom she has two sons. The object of Pollione’s affection, the young acolyte Adalgisa, manages to persuade Norma to have hope in the future for the sake of her children. And although inevitable tragedy awaits, Norma will indeed be reunited with Pollione in death. The opera’s dramatic overture, heard tonight, makes for a powerful curtain-raiser.

Eight years after the premiere of Norma, an opera by a young romagnese composer was staged at La Scala. Verdi’s Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio may not have been the most sophisticated of scores—it was too enthralled to the methods and melodramas of Verdi’s bel canto predecessors—but it nonetheless opened a distinguished career in Milan that would span six decades and ended with the premiere of Falstaff on February 9, 1893. These outer pillars are, of course, crucial points in Verdi’s output, but the most important is arguably his triptych of operas that appeared in quick succession between 1851 and 1853: Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and La traviata.

Verdi began work on Rigoletto, librettist Francesco Maria Piave’s adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Le Roi s’amuse, in 1850. At first, it looked set to suffer the same problems as its predecessor, Stiffelio, which had fallen foul of the censors in Trieste, but Piave’s judicious adjustments to Hugo’s text paved the way for the work’s riotous success at its premiere at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851. Within a decade, Verdi’s thriller had been staged in more than 250 theaters worldwide. The vivacious score, embracing both the court of the lascivious Duke of Mantua and the violence of his city’s underworld, attracted many an interpreter and arranger, not least Franz Liszt. This evening’s brass quintet arrangement is therefore in sparklingly good company, even if the music of Monterone’s curse, with which the fantasy begins, strikes a much darker note.

Leonard Bernstein’s music often had a terpsichorean bent. Shortly after he became a household name, thanks to his last-minute substitution for Bruno Walter at a New York Philharmonic concert in 1943, he made his mark as a composer with Fancy Free. The ballet was written for choreographer Jerome Robbins and staged at the Metropolitan Opera by American Ballet Theatre. Its central idea was soon to become the basis for Bernstein’s first Broadway musical, On the Town, while its inimitable brand of sassy, jazz-inflected dance would be the hallmark of many later scores, including Wonderful Town and West Side Story, as well as more “serious” works, such as Bernstein’s Second Symphony, The Age of Anxiety, and the Chichester Psalms.

The Dance Suite, written in 1989, was the composerconductor’s final work. It is structured over five movements, each of which is dedicated to a major figure in contemporary American dance. The opening “Dancisca,” written for Antony Tudor, fuses Monteverdian fanfares and a more strutting style, while the curt “Waltz” that follows was imagined for Agnes de Mille. The even briefer “Bi-Tango” was invented with Mikhail Baryshnikov in mind. Following a tribute to the great George Balanchine, Bernstein closes his final work with its most extended movement, “MTV,” for Jerome Robbins, whose choreography had so brilliantly invigorated both Fancy Free and the ever-popular West Side Story.

The Paris-based Eugène Bozza had a similarly diverse career, as both composer and conductor. Having studied at the Paris Conservatoire, he won several composition prizes, including the Prix de Rome, and conducted at the Opéra Comique for a decade from 1938. His Sonatine for two trumpets, horn, trombone, and tuba dates from 1951, three years after he had left the post, the same year that he was appointed director of the École Nationale de Musique in Valenciennes, where he was to remain until his death in 1975.

The piece opens with a discursive Allegro vivo, in which motifs are thrown between the players with the same abandon that they hurtle through various key centers. There is a more lyrical vein here too, though it is the music’s comic nature that dominates. The former’s longer lines then return in the pensive, mournful Andante ma non troppo, which reaches fever pitch over a series of tolling tuba notes, before all seriousness scampers away in the virtuoso third movement. Something of the gravity of the Andante returns, however, in the Largo that opens the finale and, although its richly variegated harmonic palette is manifest right to the end, the work closes with another dose of high jinks.

Davide Sanson’s Saltimbanchi brings us right up to the present day. Based in Turin, where he is principal trumpeter of the city’s Orchestra Filarmonica, Sanson has also made a name for himself as a composer, both of brass chamber music and musical shows for children, as well as writing a soundtrack for Buster Keaton’s 1926 silent film The General. A similarly dramatic spirit informs Saltimbanchi, the title of which refers to a group of street tumblers who, like the present quintet from La Scala, constantly dazzle with their skill.

Gavin Plumley is a writer and broadcaster specializing in the music and culture of Central Europe. He appears frequently on the BBC and writes for newspapers, magazines, and opera, concert, and festival programs worldwide. He also commissions and edits the English-language program notes for the Salzburg Festival.