It’s hard to think of another city as magical as Venice. Seen across the lagoon it appears to float on the water, its solidity defying nature. It has attracted visitors for centuries and among those visitors have been numerous artists who drew inspiration from Venice. Tchaikovsky loved the place, Wagner died there and Stravinsky was buried, near his friend, Serge Diaghilev on the cemetery island of San Michele. As a setting it leaves its magic on everyone who visits…
Vivaldi The Four Seasons – Venice Baroque Orchestra / Giuliano Carmignola (Sony Classical)
Vivaldi spent much of his adult life working in Venice and in the orchestra made up of orphan girls at the Pieta school, he had an ensemble fully up to the demands of his remarkable music. Including the ever-popular Four Seasons. And here’s an appropriately Venetian recording…
| | Vivaldi: The Four Seasons (Sony Music) |
Monteverdi Vespers – L'Arpeggiata/ Christina Pluhar (Virgin Classics)
Monteverdi didn’t write his Vespers for Venice though he later worked at the great Basilica of St Mark’s, but with its great choruses that seem to cry out for the wide-open spaces of his magnificent church, the work has come to be linked to Venice.
| | Monteverdi: Vespro Della Beata Vergine (Virgin Classics) |
Mahler Symphony No. 5 – New York Philharmonic Orchestra/ Leonard Bernstein (Sony Classical)
It was the Lucchino Visconti movie Death in Venice after the novella by Thomas Mann that opened many people's ears to the music of Gustav Mahler (in the film Gustav von Aschenbach’s profession changed from writer to composer), and the Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony was used to unforgettable effect.
| | Mahler: Mahler: Symphony No. 5 (Sony Music) |
Liszt La lugubre gondola Nos 1 & 2 – Arnaldo Cohen (Naxos)
Liszt was in Venice with his son-in-law Richard Wagner (who was only a few years younger). Wagner was ill and Liszt had a premonition of Wagner’s death. His two ‘lugubre gondola’ pieces imagine a black shrouded funeral gondola weaving its way through the canals.
| | Liszt: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 1 (Naxos) |
Wagner Siegfried Idyll – Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/ Vernon Handley (Royal Philharmonic Masterpieces)
Wagner died in Venice, but let’s celebrate him in a rather cheerier light! For his wife Cosima’s birthday one year he composed a little serenade, the Siegfried Idyll. It’s an enchanting piece for a small ensemble and must have sounded magical as it wafted upstairs to Cosima’s boudoir.
| | The Ride of the Valkyries: Orchestral Music by Wagner (RPO) |
Stravinsky The Rake’s Progress – Robert Craft (Naxos)
Stravinsky’s neo-classical opera The Rake’s Progress was given its premiere at Venice's opera house, La Fenice. It’s a wonderful creation that charts Tom Rakewell’s rise and fall in 18th century London, and Stravinsky’s vivid and often breathtakingly beautiful score perfectly lifts this story into life.
| | Stravinsky: The Rake's Progress (Naxos) |
Tchaikovsky Symphony No 4 – Philadelphia Orchestra/ Riccardo Muti (Angel)
Tchaikovsky was staying in Room 106 of the Hotel Londra Palace (you can still stay in it!) when he wrote his Fourth Symphony. He wrote it in 1877 and in the 130-odd years since has become one of the most popular of all romantic symphonies. It throws down the gauntlet to fate in great style and powers on to hugely dramatic effect.
| | Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 4, Op36; Skryabin: Symphony No 5 (Angel) |
Verdi Simon Boccanegra – Gianandrea Gavazzeni (Opera d' Oro)
You might be forgiven for thinking that Simon Boccanegra is set in Venice (a doge at the work’s heart tends to throw you!), but actually it’s set in Genoa – but Simon Boccanegra was premiered at La Fenice. It contains some of Verdi’s most beautiful music, music of an almost luminous quality.
| | Verdi: Simon Boccanegra (Opera D'Oro) |
by James Jolly
Featured Albums
