Casella: Symphony No. 1

This first of four recordings of Alfredo Casella’s orchestral music couples his first and last purely orchestral works. Completed the day before his 23rd birthday, the Symphony No. 1, which here receives its world première recording, exudes a self-confidence few composers could match at such an age. Although it abounds in echoes of other music, at its best – above all in the beautiful central slow movement – the Symphony has a truly distinctive identity: Casella’s fondness for dark, even crepuscular sonorities can be heard in the sometimes stunningly imaginative orchestration. After that, the driving motoric rhythms and astringent harmonies and timbres of the Concerto, Op. 69 erupt like the work of a different man entirely.