Rota: Cello Concertos (Sony)

It is doubtless: the pretext of Rota’s centenary allows us to meditate less hurriedly and without fallacies on his music presence. He did not claim the right to have a prearranged historical role – as he was convinced that the composer is mainly an artisan –, but he deserves anyway to be recognized thanks to his contribution. And without using the cumbersome tag of “soundtrack composer”.
In this couple of cello concerts, both the composing period (the Seventies) and the concert nature make thicker the dialogue between past and present, highly characterizing one of the most irritable and severe Italian composers’ (Pizzetti) eccentric pupil . Tone is light, quotes-reminiscences (mostly from Mozart or from nineteenth-century Belcanto melodism) are placed in a well-tissued and proudly built symphony stream, most of all in the first movements. Rovaris’ lively and meticulous conducting (he makes the orchestra play in a brilliant but also stylistically appropriated way) enhances the instrumental weave but embraces and releases with tender naturalness the rich and centerpiece cello line. Silvia Chiesa’s self-confidence and music fantasy enrich it with precious and romantic touch, but also with pyrotechnical shamelessness, cantabile naïve tenderness and, when required, with grouchy and fleetingly dramatic profiles.