Casella: Concerto for Orchestra, Pagine di guerra & Suite

Alfredo Casella identified three different periods in his composing career, and this disc features one work from each. The Suite in C major is early Casella, a fascinating combination of influences from the French Baroque through Domenico Scarlatti to Mahler. War Pages are images of the horrific mechanised warfare of 1914-18, as seen on silent cinema newsreels: among the music’s admirers was Puccini. Casella himself felt that the Concerto, Op. 61 – a commission for the fiftieth birthday of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra – was his ‘most complete achievement in the field of orchestral music’.