“The rediscovered symphonies of Bruno Morpurgo”, for the first time a CD with the music of Bruno Morpurgo
The project “The symphonies rediscovered by Bruno Morpurgo” was presented today, Monday 11 July, at the Museum of the Jewish Community of Trieste, Davide Belleli (in the photo together with Davide Casali) and by the President of the Free Music Association, Davide Casali in the presence of Livio Vasieri, Councilor for Culture and at the Museum of the Jewish Community of Trieste.
The project, which saw the creation of a CD containing for the first time ever in the world two recordings by the composer Bruno Morpurgo performed by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Symphony Orchestra and the Mark Rothko Quartet, was born from the collaboration between the Associazione Musica Libera di Trieste (which won a funding tender from the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region), the “Carlo and Vera Wagner” Museum of the Jewish Community of Trieste, the Municipality of Gradisca d’Isonzo, the Friuli Venezia Giulia Symphony Orchestra and the Mark Rothko Quartet.
It deals in the mirror of the Symphony n. 1 in C minor (dated 12 June 1899), performed by the FVG Orchestra conducted by Maestro Davide Casali, and by the Quartet in A minor (composed in 1897) performed by the Mark Rothko Ensemble. During the meeting with the press, the steps that led to the realization of the project and the objectives achieved were described. The live performance of the Quaretto by the Mark Rothko ensemble is scheduled for the month of October, while the Symphony no. 1 in C minor will be staged next year.
The CD, recently published, is intended for students of schools and conservatories in Friuli Venezia Giulia and can be requested free of charge from the Museum of the Jewish Community of Trieste “Carlo and Vera Wagner”.
The project of the Free Music Association on the symphonies of Bruno Morpurgo (Vienna, 1875 – Gorizia, 1917) – in collaboration with the “Carlo and Vera Wagner” Jewish Museum, with the Municipality of Gradisca d’Isonzo and with the Friuli Venezia Regional Orchestra Giulia, proposed the rediscovery of this composer originally from Trieste and died near Gorizia during the First World War.
Information about his life was little known and the symphonies, handwritten and preserved by a nephew in Vienna, had never been performed and published.
The recovery of this music is of particular importance for its high historical-artistic value and makes known an unjustly forgotten musician.
Bruno Morpurgo was a very prolific composer, he wrote numerous chamber music, two symphonies, lieder and instrumental music. He studied with the famous Austrian musician Robert Fuchs who had, among other things, Gustav Mahler, Jean Sibelius, Richard Strauss, Alexander Zemlinsky and Erich Korngold as students and at the University of Vienna with the teacher Anton Bruckner.
After his studies he has and counterpoint, composition harmony in Vienna.
The aim of the project was to make available to the possible number of people through digital music and the audio recording of his two symphonies by publishing a cd also from free music targets of the region.
The scores and free copies of the CD can be requested by those interested by contacting the “Carlo e Vera Wagner” Jewish Museum.
“The two recordings presented on this CD (first absolute world recordings) – writes the musician Pierpaolo Levi in the libretto accompanying the disc – are part of an ambitious project for the rediscovery of the composer Bruno Morpurgo: born in Vienna in 1875 from a family of Jewish origins and died fighting with the Austrian army, during the First World War, on 9 October 1917 near Gorizia.
Thanks to the tireless research carried out by Maestro Davide Casali and the indispensable help from Helmut Morpurgo, grandson of Bruno Morpurgo – adds Levi – it was possible to digitize the original manuscripts and subsequently modify them in order to make them usable to the public and accessible to musicians who will want to perform them. Further Bruno Morpurgo manuscripts are currently under development and will be accessible in the near future.
The work of digitization, recording and graphic processing has seen the collaboration of various people and professionals engaged in this project for more than a year and to them – concludes Levi our thanks. The importance of this project lies in having rediscovered and performed an important composer of the last century, hitherto unknown “.
“As an Association – explained the President of Musica Libera, Davide Casali – we have won the regional competition” Culture, History and Ethnography “, annual studies and research for studies and research, recording of testimonies, digitization, multimedia products and storytelling. thank you
Finally, Casali explained the reasons for the author’s choice. “Morpurgo’s music – he stated – is influenced by the Viennese atmosphere of the early twentieth century, where a rigorous writing was contrasted by a melodic research conforming to the trends of the time.
The desire to include the quartet in this record production stems from the importance of this composition from a stylistic and musical point of view.
The memory of Bruno Morpurgo and the recovery of his compositions are one of the objectives that the Musica Libera association has been trying to pursue for almost ten years by organizing the Viktor Ullmann Festival, as a tool for the rediscovery, promotion and dissemination of the “forgotten” music of the twentieth century. “.
I track
Symphony n. 1 in C minor (June 12, 1899)
At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the cosmopolitan and effervescent Vienna that was competing with Paris for the title of European capital of culture and the arts, the European composer Baron Bruno de Morpurgo came out of the important school of Robert Fuchs who for almost forty years had taught theory music at the Conservatory of Music. Robert Fuchs was a leading exponent of the Austrian musical tradition: gifted with refined melodic inventiveness and prodigious compositional technique, he was highly appreciated for his chamber compositions and in particular for his five Serenades which earned him the nickname of Serenaten Fuchs (a game of words for “Fox of serenades”). Brahms himself, so reluctant to express judgments on other composers, we remember with sympathy the anecdote of “saving” sleep during Liszt’s performance of the Sonata in B minor), wrote of him “Fuchs is a splendid musician, everything is like this beautiful and so clever, invented in such a fascinating way, that one is always happy. ” This path is joined by Bruno de Morpurgo born in Atzgersdorf (today Wien XXIII) in 1875, prolific composer of two symphonies, two quartets for strings, a trio with piano, music for duo piano and violin and for solo piano, lieder and a Psalm. His trio was performed in 1910 in the Bosendorfer hall in Vienna by the trio Soldat, Roeger and Bruno Walter on the piano. The first Symphony that we hear here is not touched by the shudders of the avant-gardes that were already glimpsed in the years preceding the First World War and not even affected by the decadent spirit that Krauss and Musil already identified in the sleepy and inept politics of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His music is refined, it does not express doubts or worries, it does not foreshadow the drama that Europe will fall into in a few years’ time.
The composer looks to the past, a happy era that music with its transparency and technical perfection can and must revive; the shape of this symphony also helps to reassure the listener with its three classical symphony tempos. Gustav Mahler, a pupil of Robert Fuchs a few years before Morpurgo, wrote in his diary: “If the world is to disappear, I will go to Vienna, because everything happens fifty years later”.
Bruno Freiher von Morpurgo fought in the First World War as an officer of the Austro-Hungarian army in the Gorizia area, where even musicians such as Viktor Ullmann and Guido Nacamuli clash on opposite fronts. It is touching to hear his music revived and resonate in the New Municipal Theater of Gradisca, where the recording was made, because – like a game of fate – his ancestors had settled in Gradisca two centuries earlier and here he will conclude his parable. earthly on 7 October 1917. We must be very grateful to Davide Casali who, with his invaluable work as a researcher and interpreter, gives us this performance which adds a piece, otherwise precluded, to the knowledge of such a fruitful period in our cultural and artistic history.
Pierpaolo Levi
Quartet in A minor (1897)
Bruno Morpurgo’s quartet composed in 1897 is divided into four tempos: Allegro, Andante, Nicht zu rash (not too reckless), Allegro. It is a music characterized by a well-calibrated structure of a late romantic system, written with great skill and emotional transport. Morpurgo’s music is influenced by the Viennese atmosphere of the early twentieth century, where a rigorous writing was contrasted by a melodic research conforming to the trends of the time.
The desire to include the quartet in this record production stems from the importance of this composition from a stylistic and musical point of view.
The memory of Bruno Morpurgo and the recovery of his compositions are one of the objectives that the Musica Libera association has been trying to pursue for almost ten years by organizing the Viktor Ullmann Festival, as a tool for the rediscovery, promotion and dissemination of the “forgotten” music of the twentieth century. .