Wolf-Ferrari, Ermanno

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Wolf-Ferrari, Ermanno

Concertino for English horn, string orchestra and two horns in A flat major op.34

SKU: 4212 Category:

18,00 

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari – Concertino for English horn, string orchestra and two horns in A flat major op. 34

(born Venice, 12 January 1876 – died Venice, 21 January 1948)

Preludio p.1
Capriccio p.9
Adagio p.19
Finale p.25

Preface
The repertoire for English horn – especially the concertante – is extremely small; it is all the more remarkable that a concerto that was written by a composer who is generally associated with opera enjoys great interest among performers: Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s Concertino for English Horn, String Orchestra and Two Horns op. 34 was written as a late work of the Venetian composer in 1946, two years before his death.

Hermann Friedrich Wolf was born on 12 January 1876 in Venice, the son of a Venetian mother and the German painter August Wolf. He grew up in Italy until the age of 15. His great talent for painting led to a first training at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome and later to the private painting school of Simon Holosy in Munich, where he finally passed the entrance exam at the Royal Academy of Music in 1892 and was able to cultivate his second talent: Wolf-Ferrari (who took this name since a student concert in 1894) studied under Josef Gabriel Rheinberger, the highly sought-after composition teacher at the Munich Academy in the second half of the 19th century, as well as conducting under Ludwig Abel.

Without obtaining a regular degree, Wolf-Ferrari returned to Venice in 1895 after completing his studies. Of particular importance was his encounter with Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, where Wolf-Ferrari worked as a conductor of a German choir in 1897. The composer became famous with the premiere of La vita nuova op. 9 for choir and orchestra on texts by Dante Alighieris, which took place in Munich in 1903. The work was performed several hundred times until the Second World War.
Wolf-Ferrari had been director of the Liceo Civico Musicale “Benedetto Marcello” in Venice since 1903, a post from which he was to be granted leave of absence in 1909 – polyglot living in Germany and Italy; he later stayed in Zurich, then in Zollikon on Lake Zurich. Above all the impressions of the First World War weighed on him, who saw himself as a “rootless” person – with the result of depressions, creative crises and a divorce. In 1939 he was appointed professor of composition at the Mozarteum in Salzburg – and lead a withdrawn life again in Munich and Venice, unaffected by both Italian fascism and National Socialism. Wolf-Ferrari spent the post-war period in Zurich again and died unexpectedly of heart failure on 21 January 1948. His grave of honour is on the Venetian cemetery island of Isola di San Michele.

Wolf-Ferrari played a decisive role in the revival of the Opera buffa (with only rare excursions to the Verismo); his greatest successes include Le donne curiose (“The Curious Women” after Carlo Goldoni), premiered in 1903 – with which Wolf-Ferrari was to initiate the fundamental renewal of the Opera buffa – Quatro Rusteghi (“The Four Grobians”, also after Goldoni), premiered in 1906, and the short opera Susannens Geheimnis, premiered in 1909.

Read full preface > HERE

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