Casella's Cello Sonata is not going to set the world alight, yet these intelligent interpretations from the Juilliard-trained, award-winning duo of Mattia Zappa and Massimiliano Mainolfi present as good a case for it as you might expect.
It is both lyrical and dramatic in the opening Prelude, yet the tension quickly evaporates into a rather meandering musical invention.
Casella is for more effective when in his neo-Clessical clock, particularly in the Rondo, which bears a certain resemblance to the finale from Stravinsky's Pulcinella. Both artists carefully map out the dynamics and musical impetus to provide maximum contrast In this movement. However, they cannot rescue Maliplero's wartime Sonatina from sounding mundane.
For more effective is Busoni's Kultaselle - an early work based on a popular Finnish theme written during his time as a teacher of the Helsinki Conservatory. Busoni's intense love affair with his future wife seems to have injected a certain exotic and intense atmosphere into the variations - aspects fully realised in this imaginative and committed performance.
Luciano Chailly's Sonata tritematica, composed in the early 1950s, is equally striking, framed by glissando harmonics and cast in an austere musical language that has distant hints of Hindemith. Chailly is else a rigorous structuralist - aiming to reconfigure sonata form through the development of three distinctive themes - a feature which is lucidly drawn in this rendition, assisted by a clear yet not over resonant recording.
