Notes for: July 23, 2013
Nino Rota was an Italian composer best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. He also composed the music for two of Franco Zeffirelli’s Shakespeare films (Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet), and for the first two films of Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy. In 1974, he received the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Godfather Part II.
From the 1930s until his death, Rota wrote more than 150 scores for Italian and international motion pictures – an average of three film scores each year over a 46 year period. In his most productive period, from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, he wrote at least ten scores every year.
In addition to his film work, Rota composed ten operas, five ballets and dozens of other orchestral, choral and chamber works, the best known being his string concerto. He also composed the music for many theater productions by Visconti, Zeffirelli and Eduardo De Filippo as well as maintaining a long teaching career at the Liceo Musicale in Bari, Italy, of which he was the director for almost 30 years.
Born Giovanni Rota Rinaldi into a musical family in Milan, Rota was a renowned child prodigy. He studied at the Milan Conservatory and the Santa Cecilia Academy in Rome, graduating at the age of 19. Encouraged by conductor Arturo Toscanini, he moved to the United States where he lived from 1930 to 1932, studying at the Curtis Institute. Returning to Milan, he began his remarkable film career.
Rota was particularly fond of the flute, writing five chamber works featuring the instrument. This work dates from 1958 and was dedicated to the Klemm-Cervera-Wolfensberger Trio, a German group then touring Italy. Here is a program note by Ettore Napoli for a recording of this evening’s trio on the Italian Stradivarius label:
The opening Allegro non troppo is entrusted largely to an insistent rhythm on the piano, above which the flute and the violin toss back and forth, as if in a game, echoes and fragments of a simple melodic figure.
The central Andante sostenuto in 3/4 time is like a brief dream in which the same figure assumes an entirely different aspect yet losing nothing of its identity.
In the final Allegro vivace con spirito, it is once again the rhythm that predominates, obsessively imposed by the piano, leaving little room for either the violin or the flute to tear at the melodic fabric or indulge in harmonic pretentiousness. It is only in the Finale that the three instruments unite, like puppets that, having performed their various roles for the public’s entertainment, now take their bow.