Despite that musical styles of Italian origin dominated all of Western music in the two centuries between 1600 and 1800, beginning in 1800 history witnesses a gradual ghettoization of Italian music into opera. Although Respighi, Busoni, Malipiero, and others revived the notion of non-operatic Italian music at the beginning of the twentieth century, a composer born in the middle of the nineteenth was the first to buck this trend: Giuseppe Martucci. While there is hardly a music lover who has not had exposure to The Pines of ...
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Despite that musical styles of Italian origin dominated all of Western music in the two centuries between 1600 and 1800, beginning in 1800 history witnesses a gradual ghettoization of Italian music into opera. Although Respighi, Busoni, Malipiero, and others revived the notion of non-operatic Italian music at the beginning of the twentieth century, a composer born in the middle of the nineteenth was the first to buck this trend: Giuseppe Martucci. While there is hardly a music lover who has not had exposure to The Pines of Rome, outside Italy Martucci remains a rara avis, an acquired taste that hardly any non-Italians ever manage to acquire. In 1989, conductor and composer Francesco d'Avalos decided it was time for that notion to change and recorded Martucci's entire orchestral output on four ASV discs with the Philharmonia Orchestra. The following year, ASV combined the four into a single set. There are ample reasons to want it in such a form; Martucci's orchestral output is small and his style easy...
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