Shakespeare Sonnets Op.125 And Duets Op.97 (CDs)

No modern record company has done more than Brilliant Classics to revive the music and reputation of the Italian-American composer Mario Castelvuovo-Tedesco. Not only in the field of guitar music for which he is most famous, but in piano music (BC94811) and most recently an extensive and powerful song-cycle for soprano and guitar, The Divan of Moses Ibn Ebra (BC95282). Here's another new album of the composer's vocal music, of still greater importance: the first complete recording of his cycle of Shakespeare Sonnets, coupled with the world premiere recording of the three Shakespeare Duets.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco set texts by many great poets, among them Dante, Heine and Lorca. It was for Shakespeare, however, that he nurtured his foremost passion. Having composed settings of all the standalone songs in the plays while still resident in Italy, he then turned to the sonnets while 'isolated and proud' in the bitter-sweet exile of Beverly Hills where he made his home for the last 30 years of his life. They were set down with astonishing fluency, more than half within less than two months in the autumn of 1945. Ultimately he put music to 32 of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, all in the original English, including three settings for vocal ensemble. All of them are now gathered together for the first time, together with the three Duets from 1937.

For Castelnuovo-Tedesco as for many of his colleagues past and present, Shakespeare's language is 'perfectly musical: it unites the spiritual subtlety of English with the sonorous splendour of Italian.' In particular, 'the Sonnets are one of the most miraculous products of the poetry of all times! Shakespeare acts like a mirror of humanity, expressing sentiments that are both his and universal: they are absolute and eternal, expressed by means of an extraordinary, perfect wealth of images.'

Thus these settings reflect the beauty and complexity which Castelnuovo-Tedesco 'heard' in the poetry. There is no repetition of words or