Notes for: August 5, 2008
During his lifetime Menotti was generally esteemed as a writer for the theater, having composed 28 operas including such successes as Amelia Goes to the Ball, The Old Maid and the Thief (initially for radio), The Medium, The Telephone, The Consul, Amahl and the Night Visitors (initially for television) and The Saint of Bleecker Street. The truth of the matter, however, is that, while Amahl is still a perennial Christmas favorite, Menotti’s operas in recent years have lost much of their initial impact, and the 20 operas he wrote after 1956 are now largely forgotten.
Menotti partially made up for this fall-off by producing music in other forms – several ballets and choral works, six concertos for various instruments, a symphony, a stage play with music, and a raft of chamber music. As an outlet for his music in all forms, moreover, he founded two festivals – the Festival of the Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, and its American counterpart, the Spoleto Festival US in Charleston, South Carolina. The two festivals have given American musicians, composers and choreographers an important venue for performance of new works, and the events still draw large and enthusiastic audiences every spring and summer.
Menotti was an Italian-born composer who spent most of his life in the United States. He began his formal musical training at Milan’s Verdi Conservatory, but after the death of his father, he and his mother emigrated to the United States, where he enrolled in Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute. Fellow students included Leonard Bernstein and Samuel Barber, and Barber became Menotti’s partner in life and work, sharing a house in Mount Kisco, New York, for over 40 years.
In 1950 Menotti won the Pulitzer Prize for The Consul, and in 1955 a second Pulitzer for The Saint of Bleecker Street. In 1984 he was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors for achievement in the arts, and in 1991 he was chosen Musical America’s “Musician of the Year.”
In 1973, Menotti wrote this Suite for Two Cellos and Piano for performance at the Spoleto festival in Italy by the great cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and his young Canadian student and assistant, Denis Brott. According to critic Will Crutchfield in The New York Times: “The suite testified that his chamber music, though not questing or gripping, has been sensitively conceived, and skillfully and affectionately carried out, to a degree that has been elusive in the operas.”
There are four movements. The “Introduction” is a declamatory piece for the two cellos in a dotted rhythm over heavy chords in the piano. The “Scherzo” is more playful with technical demands on all three instruments. The “Arioso” is an eloquent duet for the two cellos with the piano again largely in an accompaniment role. The “Finale” is a fast, lively summing up for all three instruments.