Martucci: La Canzone Dei Ricordi / Canteloube: Vers la princesse lointaine, Tryptique – Sonya Yoncheva

Soprano Sonya Yoncheva makes her ONYX debut in a beautiful album of orchestral songs, conducted by her husband Domingo Hindoyan.

Giuseppe Martucci was one of a few Italian composers of the Romantic period to focus on orchestral and chamber music and avoid the world of opera. Sgambati is another example. His two symphonies, two piano concertos and his chamber music output contains much that is very fine, and positions him alongside contemporaries such as Elgar, Brahms, Dvořák and Tchaikovsky. The orchestral songs La canzone dei ricordi (Songs of Memory) date from 1886/87 and a skillful amalgam of Brahmsian and Wagnerian elements with Martucci’s unmistakable Italianate lyricism.

Joseph Canteloube, forever famous for his Songs of the Auvergne studied with D’Indy in the 1890s. His symphonic poem Vers la princesse lointaine was premiered in 1912 (the same year as Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé) and then vanished without trace from the concert hall. This is the premiere recording. The shadows of César Franck and Wagner are never far away, and it may have been the Germanic nature of the music that led to the French critics to express negative views.

Canteloube’s mastery of orchestration is evident in Triptyque from 1914, dedicated to the English soprano Maggie Teyte.