GIAN FRANCESCO MALIPIERO (1883-1973): Symphonies, Vol. 1 - Sinfonia del mare, Symphony No. 3 "delle campane", Symphony No. 4 "in memoriam".

Description: This was one of the most interesting of Marco Polo's symphony cycles. Not only did it greatly increase the amount of Malipiero's music on disc but its notes are by Italian 20th century music specialist scholar John C.G. Waterhouse, who acknowledges the weaknesses as well as the strengths of this music in lucid, exemplary notes. Here are the early (1906) Sinfonia del mare, a 23-minute, single-movement work which is really a tone-poem with the sea its subject (and Malipiero could not have known Debussy's La Mer at the time he wrote it). The two numbered symphonies date from 1944-5 and 1946 and show the composer's unusual use of motifs which are not recapitulated or developed but which just lead to entirely different motifs and sections of music. As Malipiero put it in his description of "the Italian sinfonia",: "a free kind of poem in several parts which follow one another capriciously, obeying only those mysterious laws that instinct recognizes" - which applies perfectly to these two symphonies. Moscow Symphony Orchestra; Antonio de Almeida. Original 1993 Marco Polo release.