Uploaded December 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
Performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Antonio de Almeida
Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973) was an Italian composer, musicologist, and teacher. Like that of his contemporaries Ottorino Respighi and Alfredo Casella, among others, Malipiero's music is often marked by influences from Baroque and Classical-era Italian music as well as Gregorian chant. In the last few decades of his life, he began to explore a broader harmonic palette, tending toward chromaticism, while still retaining neoclassical ideas. Malipiero also taught the likes of Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, and the American composer Roger Sessions and produced a complete edition of Claudio Monteverdi's works.
Rejecting the strictness of sonata form and conventional thematic development, Malipiero developed and recycled motifs freely and organically, giving his work an almost improvisatory quality. This stylistic preference is evident from some of his earliest compositions, such as the unnumbered "Sinfonia del mare" ("Symphony of the sea"), completed in 1906 - a year after Debussy's "La Mer". Although it retains a more impressionistic character than his better-known and later orchestral works, Malipiero's depiction of the sea is uniquely his, from the placid, almost pastoral opening to the restless, stormy tutti passages later on - the masterful orchestration engages both the ear and the imagination.
Performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Antonio de Almeida
Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973) was an Italian composer, musicologist, and teacher. Like that of his contemporaries Ottorino Respighi and Alfredo Casella, among others, Malipiero's music is often marked by influences from Baroque and Classical-era Italian music as well as Gregorian chant. In the last few decades of his life, he began to explore a broader harmonic palette, tending toward chromaticism, while still retaining neoclassical ideas. Malipiero also taught the likes of Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna, and the American composer Roger Sessions and produced a complete edition of Claudio Monteverdi's works.
Rejecting the strictness of sonata form and conventional thematic development, Malipiero developed and recycled motifs freely and organically, giving his work an almost improvisatory quality. This stylistic preference is evident from some of his earliest compositions, such as the unnumbered "Sinfonia del mare" ("Symphony of the sea"), completed in 1906 - a year after Debussy's "La Mer". Although it retains a more impressionistic character than his better-known and later orchestral works, Malipiero's depiction of the sea is uniquely his, from the placid, almost pastoral opening to the restless, stormy tutti passages later on - the masterful orchestration engages both the ear and the imagination.
