It is tempting to begin with the bald assertion that a Dallapiccola disc containing none of his vocal music is its own worst enemy. Nevertheless, while none of these relatively small-scale instrumental pieces has quite the personality or the substance of the composer’s various sets of vocal miniatures, not to mention the larger-scale operas or choral works, they provide enough evidence of Dallapiccola’s compositional strengths to make for a worthwhile CD.
Dallapiccola’s use of formal models and textural characteristics from baroque and earlier times – as in the B-A-C-H motif and canonic routines of the Quaderno musicale – does not achieve that advance on the Webernian vision of a synthesis between old forms and non-tonal language that has sometimes been claimed for them. There is a studied air to some of these exercises that brings the result perilously close to mere eye music. Yet this is more than offset by a special quality of grave lyricism – Quaderno’s “Fregi”, for example, and a concentrated dramatic quality, best heard here in Quaderno’s “Ombre”, and in the two Studies for violin and piano, music which has stood the test of time. Best of all is the Adagio that concludes the three-movement work for solo cello, imaginative yet direct in expression, and beautifully conceived for the instrument. With the beguiling take on baroque conventions found in Tartiniana seconda, there is much to enjoy here, though the disc cannot be described as well filled. The recordings are nothing special, either, with rather gritty piano sound, but the performances are never less than engaging.'