Some might balk at the notion of a cycle of six piano concertos by Gian Francesco Malipiero, particularly as all but two of them belong to the last 25 years of his career, a period where the number of his symphonies ballooned from four to 12, with each allegedly becoming more willful and eccentric than the previous one. Such notions, constituting the conventional wisdom about Malipiero, were advanced by certain, mostly non-Italian, scholars admittedly in a better position to know more than most others, having studied his ...
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Some might balk at the notion of a cycle of six piano concertos by Gian Francesco Malipiero, particularly as all but two of them belong to the last 25 years of his career, a period where the number of his symphonies ballooned from four to 12, with each allegedly becoming more willful and eccentric than the previous one. Such notions, constituting the conventional wisdom about Malipiero, were advanced by certain, mostly non-Italian, scholars admittedly in a better position to know more than most others, having studied his music at some length. Nevertheless, many of these investigations were conducted in the years following Malipiero's death in 1973, an era not conducive to passing its blessing on predominantly tonal, seemingly "conservative in outlook" twentieth century music.While this conventional wisdom about Malipiero may have reigned outside Italy and his continued neglect held in accord, within Italy musicians were taking a different view of the composer. Pianist Sandro Ivo Bartoli, the featured...
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