February 20, 2013 | Interview with Marcello Di Lisa on "Fanfare"

Marcello Di Lisa
and the Concerto De’ Cavalieri

by Bertil Van Boer - Issue 36:3 (Jan/Feb 2013) of Fanfare Magazine

Concerto de’ Cavalieri, and its director, Marcello Di Lisa, were introduced to Fanfare readers in 2011. Since then, the ensemble has continued down a path that is both unusual and exciting, reviving music by Neapolitan and Roman composers that has long been neglected. The group gives vigorous and lively performances, following historically informed performance practice, which relies on Di Lisa’s scholarship. His unique background in Greek and Latin Philology has allowed the ensemble to move in a variety of interesting directions. It is now one of Italy’s most vibrant and exciting groups dedicated to period-instrument performance of 18th century music.

How has Concerto de’ Cavalieri grown as an ensemble?

In the course of these past years Concerto de’ Cavalieri has considerably grown both in terms of instrumental cohesion and in the number of its components. This is, of course, due to the stable presence of musically gifted performers of long experience. On the other hand, the artistic development of the ensemble has kept up with its progressive awareness of the ways of performance and interpretation that constitute Concerto de’ Cavalieri’s identity. And because our reading of musical texts, although historically informed, is also open to other critical models, mainly linguistic and formalistic, the development itself is a process of continuous evolution, and I would like for it to be able to provide an alternative concept in the field of musical interpretation, perhaps more related to the patterns of contemporary than Baroque music.

This past July the International Musicological Society held its major conference at the Parco della Musica in Rome. I noted that there were a fair number of papers devoted to late-Baroque and early-Classical music. Were you able to attend, and if so, was there anything in the various sessions that was of interest to your future interpretations?

Among the many scientific contributions of that conference, I remember in particular the section devoted to the operatic repertoire in the Baroque and early-Classical periods, in which I was play pokies online really interested. For more than two years, I have devoted myself to a project on Italian opera in the 18th century called “The Baroque Project,” conceived and developed in collaboration with Sony Classical and the musicologist Mario Marcarini, of which the Scarlatti and Pergolesi opera aria recordings have been released as the first two volumes. So, with much interest I seized the occasion to keep up to date with current research, and there were many suggestions that will be helpful both to the Sony project and to my future work These will occupy a great deal of my attention in the field of musicological and philological research.

As you work closely with the Centro Studi e Ricerche sulla Musica delle Età Barocca e Classica, I presume they provide scores and parts for your recordings. Where else do you obtain these? Are you active in searching the archives for new and little heard works of the period from Rome, Naples, and elsewhere in Italy?

As its main research focus, the Concerto de’ Cavalieri devotes itself to study and rediscover the Roman Baroque repertory between the late 17th and the early 18th centuries, with a particular focus on Alessandro Scarlatti’s unpublished masterworks. These have until now represented the heart of our discographic activity. It was not by chance that the Sony project started from just a selection of arias by this composer, and to prepare that volume intense research on the various manuscript sources in several Italian and European libraries has been necessary. Nonetheless, we also want to include in our studies less known or completely unknown Roman Baroque composers, because their works are often fundamental to a better understanding of those of the great Roman school, first and foremost, obviously, Arcangelo Corelli.

Have you considered recording any of the many oratorios written in Rome during the 18th century? Names that come to mind are Bartolomeo Lustrini, Sante Peschi, Giovanni Battista Constanzi, Antonio Aurisicchio, and many others.

At the moment I am concentrating more on operatic works and on secular vocal music in general, but the huge amount of Roman Baroque and early-Classical oratorios is too significant and interesting to be neglected. So I am certainly going to devote myself to this repertoire in the future and have already had the chance to deal with some works by the composers you have just mentioned, even though they lived later than the period I usually study (between the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century). In fact, to those names I would certainly add those of Giovanni Lulier and Carlo Cesarini, two Roman composers who, the latter in particular, in my opinion would be worthy of much more attention.

Does the Concerto de’ Cavalieri ever just sit down and read through new rediscoveries just to see how they sound? How do you and the members of the ensemble react and formulate your judgments of new repertory?

I always try to map out a coherent line in our work by formulating programs that have a thematic, historical, or musicological focus, and this occurs all the more frequently in the case of music never heard before. Of course, new discoveries should be appraised in light of their aesthetic worth and musical depth, because what we rediscover is music to be presented to a live audience and not to be put back into a museum’s casket. In fact I believe that so many scores could remain enduring the dust of centuries; it is not at all necessary to bring back to life the musical heritage of the past indiscriminately only because it is in fashion to perform and to release “world premieres.” In my opinion, the natural selection of history usually does not lie, and in this case, the philologist should be hunting for what is really worthy of being rediscovered on the basis of a criterion that is not only historical but, so to say, linguistic, in order to give new life to those composers who, although having represented a turning point in the history of forms, for some reason have been forgotten by posterity.

I know that many early-music groups consist of musicians who revolve through several ensembles. Does the Concerto de’ Cavalieri have a permanent group, and how many?

Yes, Concerto de’ Cavalieri can count on a stable ensemble. Of course this is due to a long selection process of choosing talented musicians who at the same time are people of good character. In fact, I think it is fundamental to create a peaceful climate at work, and this often does not happen within permanent groups. Counting not only on their musical skills but also on their personal availability makes our work much more constructive. For this I am really grateful to all of them, in particular to those holding principal positions: Francesca Vicari, the leader, Antonio De Secondi, Piero Massa, Giovanna Barbati, Luca Cola, all excellent musicians with whom I have the pleasure of making music, as well as the other instrumentalists of the ensemble: Paolo Perrone, Rossella Croce, and Luca Tarantino, to say nothing of the others. All of whom contribute to the identity of Concerto de’ Cavalieri. But having a permanent ensemble is not a condition due only to the performers. They are part of the team of those who, with their fundamental presence, cooperate to make Concerto de’ Cavalieri what it is today. I am thinking of Fabio Framba who, in his role as music producer, competently supervises all our recordings, and Paola Tiberii, our general manager, who diligently works on our international promotion and activity.

When you need extra musicians, such as the magnificent trumpet player Gabriele Cassone on the Scarlatti disc, where do you find them?

As for the soloists, we have a high quality standard and can choose from some of the best musicians around. Gabriele Cassone is of course a good example, and we often work with skilled and internationally renowned soloists, such as Daniela Barcellona and Sara Mingardo, to name but two. The most recent of these collaborations has been with the outstanding Swedish mezzo-soprano Kristina Hammarström, whom we had occasion to work with on the recording of the third volume of the Sony project on Italian opera, focusing on Antonio Vivaldi’s operatic works, which will be released in the course of the next year.

What size of permanent ensemble do you eventually envision that would allow you to play the range of repertory you anticipate doing over the next few years?

Until now the activity of Concerto de’ Cavalieri has focused on early 18th century music. Nonetheless, in our future projects we will certainly be going beyond the Baroque towards the Classical age. Our intention is to develop an orchestra on period instruments able to perform the Italian and European symphonic repertoire up to the early 19th century. A first step towards this goal has been the recording of the complete Serenades and Divertimenti for strings by Mozart, which has just been released by Sony Classical with musicological input from Professor Cliff Eisen.

How did you achieve such fire and energy with the recording of the Pergolesi arias? Daniela Barcellona and the ensemble worked together to achieve something that is both energizing and riveting in terms of style, performance practice, and, above all else, sheer musicianship.

This way of performing, so lively and energetic, is absolutely intentional and represents another aspect of Concerto de’ Cavalieri’s musical identity, combining the analytical approach of our interpretations. And it is this conjunction of reason and passion, indeed, which in my opinion makes music more expressive, intriguing, and “modern,” in the cultural sense of the word. The, as you say, sheer musicianship of the ensemble’s performers allows me to take very fast tempos, and in this respect let me say that the example of Musica Antiqua Köln has been an indisputable reference for me.

Is there a possibility of doing an entire opera by Pergolesi? And how about other Neapolitan composers, both of opera seria and opera buffa?

In contrast to the Roman school, Neapolitan Baroque music has been performed and recorded at great length, especially in Italy, since the early 1980s. Works by Provenzale, Durante, Leo, Vinci, Traetta, and many other less-known composers—I think for example of names like Fago, Rubino, Matteis—have been studied also beyond the field of opera. Pergolesi himself, disciple of the disciples of the great masters of the Neapolitan school, has been the object of increasing interest in recent years. Of course, a systematic recording project focusing on his operas really would be a worthy enterprise, both culturally and discographically.

I realize that there is an almost infinite amount of music in central and southern Italy to explore, but have you considered repertory from elsewhere in Europe, and if so, where? After all, many Italian composers composed their operas in Italian for centers such as Prague, Mannheim, and Vienna.

There is one name above all others: Zelenka. I am convinced that this composer, so creative but so neglected, would be worthy of being systematically performed and recorded, certainly much more than other composers of that geographic area. A recording of his opera omnia would be in my opinion one of the most important musical endeavors over the next years, in the same manner as it has been done for Johann Sebastian Bach by the pioneers of historically informed performance practice.

What can we expect to hear from the Concerto de’ Cavalieri over the next year or so?

The Sony project on Italian Opera in the 18th century will certainly keep us engaged. We will also be paying close attention to the operatic repertoire in our performances, as well. We will also be playing Italian and European instrumental repertoire from the Baroque Period, starting with Alessandro Scarlatti and perhaps moving into the early-Classical era.