Recife: Art Songs, For Soprano And Piano – Marta Mari

Probably, Licinio Refice is to be numbered among the Italian composers who are recently enjoying a gradual rediscovery, also thanks to this recording. Similar to Lorenzo Perosi, who was likewise both a composer and a clergyman, most of Refice’s works belong in the sacred repertoire, even though he frequently ventured in the operatic world and, more briefly, in that of vocal chamber music. The works included in this recording belong in this last kind: they are twenty-two vocal miniatures ranging from the sacred to the secular, and shedding light onto an extraordinarily sensitive composer, who was able, with a few strokes, to give depth and structure to each one of the short stories he had set into music. Both Marta Mari and Edmondo Savio demonstrate not only that they have fully understood this sensitivity, but also that they are able to point it out in each phrase, in each bar, giving life and strength to extraordinarily beautiful works with corresponding skill and interpretive intelligence.