A few years ago I came across this beautiful Sonata for clarinet and piano by Nino Rota, and during this year of the pandemic I had the pleasure of recording it along with the excellent piano track performed by Mohamed Shams. Below you can read some notes about the composer, his Sonata, and the videos of the first and second movements. Soon I will record the third and last movement.
Nino Rota's name generally elicits little response, even among concertgoers and musicians. But when music from the movie "The Godfather" is mentioned, there is often a flash of recognition.
Today this seems to be the fate of many good composers (for example, Erich Korngold and Miklós Rózsa) whose output is mainly known through their film music. However, Rota's simple and clear writing in his concert music has a very different direct appeal to the listener than his film music. This does not mean that it is necessarily simple in its harmonic or formal structure. In fact, the sinuosity and abruptness of its harmonic variations are both amazing and seductive.
Rota definitely knew the musical trends of his time, and glimpses of them can be recognized in his music. Although his writing is grounded in 19th-century sensibilities and aesthetics, his works cannot be conceived without the influence of many of his 20th-century contemporaries. An example of this is the Fantasia on twelve notes from "Don Giovanni" written in 1962. Although the work is based on a series of twelve notes that Milhaud discovered at the end of the opera, Rota writes a deeply moving work based on the series, not in a serialistic way, but in his own unique style.
Although a friend of Stravinsky, Copland, Barber, Menotti, and other composers, and educated in the aesthetics of the day, Rota remained loyal to his own personal vision. His music is often characterized by dreamy and heartfelt melodies, tinged with longing and melancholy, suddenly interrupted by boisterous, circus-like passages, breaking the previously woven spell.
Although criticized for his simple and immediate appeal to the listener, as if this were a flaw, Rota responded in an interview:
“Look, when they tell me that in my works I am only concerned with bringing a little nostalgia and a lot of good humor and optimism, I think that is how I would like to be remembered: with a little nostalgia, a lot of optimism and good humor.”
These are the words of a truly humble and unassuming man, who was in fact a great classical composer of hundreds of works, including chamber, symphonic and sacred music, songs and operas.
Nino Rota was born in Milan in 1911 and died in Rome in 1979. He was a child prodigy, driven by a musical environment. His mother Ernesta Rinaldi was a pianist and his grandfather Giovanni Rinaldi, a composer. Like Mozart, he was already composing at the age of eight, and by the age of twelve his oratorio L'Infanzia di S. Giovanni Battista was performed in Milan and Paris to great success. That same year he was accepted at the Milan Conservatory and three years later at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, where he studied with Alfredo Casella. Toscanini recommended that he study at the Curtis Institute, which he attended from 1931 to 1932, at the same time familiarizing himself with American popular music.
When Rota returned to Italy, he composed numerous works, mainly orchestral and chamber music. His writing at this time, original but retaining traditional lyricism and form, contrasts sharply with the then prevailing Italian aesthetic. In 1939 he became professor at the Bari Conservatory, and later director from 1950 to 1977. After World War II, however, criticism of his work grew. His music was considered to be out of touch with contemporary trends, and his film music was used as partial evidence. In 1952 he began his association with Federico Fellini, and this association lasted until the composer's death. They collaborated with great success in sixteen films. Rota worked with several other directors, including Francis Ford Coppola, for whom he wrote the theme song for The Godfather (1972) and the Academy Award-winning score The Godfather II.
Throughout his successful career as a film writer, Rota continued to compose plays, oratorios, concertos, and chamber works, enriching each genre, thus producing a wonderful legacy. Notes by Mary Kenedi for the CD Nino Rota (Naxos 8.572778)
SONATA IN D FOR CLARINET AND PIANO
Notes by Israel Sánchez López, for the album Clarinet Sonatas 20th century (LBS Classical).
Calm, as if emerged from a dim light, the Sonata for clarinet and piano by Nino Rota, composed in 1945, offers us a musical image overflowing with Mediterranean light. Kindness, beauty, simplicity and pleasant repose merge into a piece of scholastic organization in which solid formal structures guarantee the listening and understanding of a fundamentally melodic discourse, always well articulated.
1st movement: Allegretto scorrevole The sonata form that sustains the Allegretto scorrevole of the first movement is offered to us clearly arranged in its traditional compartments without in any way forcing the melodic lightness that dominates the entire work. Two sections, in tonic (Re) and dominant (A), supporting two different themes are later expanded with never disturbing transformations of the melodic material until a re-exhibition (at minute 3:46 of the video) merged with the last harmonic surprises of the development brings us back to the placid atmosphere full of Mediterranean light that characterized the beginning.
2nd movement: Andante quasi adagio The second movement, Andante quasi adagio, from a timbre point of view, abandons the pleasant sonority exhibited in the preceding movement to increase the expressive demands of the clarinetist especially, who makes him interpret large lines of expression contained in different registers, encouraging a listening always active of an intense material in spite of its apparently calm physiognomy. The key of F sharp minor is the one chosen as the fundamental axis, it is offered more stable in the first theme, contrasting with the D major chosen in the second (at minute 1:22 of the video) and the continued instability that characterizes the third (minute 2 :18). Using a procedure similar to the previous movement, Nino Rota concludes his work without restating the two initial themes, giving all the prominence to the first, arranged in the low register (minute 2:55), and reserving for the second only a brief quotation hidden in the coda (minute 4:21).
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