Camillo Togni

The second volume of Aldo Orvieto’s survey of the piano music of Camillo Togni for Naxos spans half a century, from the Serenata No. 1 of 1940 to the minute-long Sesto Capriccio of 1991, Togni’s last work for solo piano. It moves from the eighteen-year-old’s first full turn towards Schoenberg, which Casella, as Togni recalled, called ‘a swing towards Vienna’, through Bach transcriptions in Busoni’s line to three late Capriccios.

Orvieto, a pupil of Aldo Ciccolini and a founder of the Ex Novo Ensemble, recorded the disc on 11-13 March 2013. He played a Fazioli F278 in the Sala degli Arazzi of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, which holds Togni’s archive, with Matteo Costa engineering. The Serenata No. 1, Op. 10 is a single movement of nearly twenty-seven minutes. Daniela Cima, quoted in Carlo Ciceri’s notes, describes it as an extended nocturne whose opening motif generates all the material and which ends on a rising twelve-note row. The Sei Preludi, Op. 21 of 1944, which Togni often played in recital, use the newly adopted twelve-tone system with echoes of Chopin. The Prima Partita Corale, Op. 29 (1949) transcribes five Bach organ chorales, among them Meine Seele erhebt den Herren and In dulci jubilo, as a free homage rather than an adaptation. The Quarto Capriccio (Ottave) of 1969, written for Antonio Ballista, readmits the octave Togni had avoided for twenty years and shares its material with his opera Blaubart. The Quinto Capriccio (Omaggio a Bellini) of 1987 builds on the first three notes of the duet Suoni la tromba from I Puritani. The Sesto Capriccio, written in three days in September 1991 for Sylvano Bussotti’s sixtieth birthday, rests on the notes A and B flat drawn from his name.

Naxos CD 8.572991, released in 2014 in the series 19th/20th Century Italian Classics, with booklet notes in English and Italian; the back cover presents the programme as world premiere recordings.