Giuseppe Martucci

Giuseppe Martucci (1856–1909) was an Italian composer, conductor, pianist and teacher. Sometimes called "the Italian Brahms", Martucci was notable among Italian composers of the era in that he dedicated his entire career to absolute music, and wrote no operas. He was born at Capua, in Campania. He learned the basics of music from his father, who played the trumpet. A child prodigy, he played in public on the piano when only eight years old. From the age of 11, he was a student at the Naples Conservatory. From Paolo Serrao, Martucci acquired his initial training in composition; his own composition students later on, when he worked and taught at Bologna, included Ottorino Respighi. He died in Naples in 1909. Martucci's career as an international pianist commenced with a tour through Germany, France and England in 1875, at the age of 19. He was appointed piano professor at the Naples Conservatory in 1880, and moved to Bologna in 1886, replacing Luigi Mancinelli at the Bologna Conservatory. In 1902 he returned for the last time to Naples, as director of the Royal Conservatory of Music. It was in 1881 that Martucci made his first conducting appearance. One of the earliest Italian musicians to admire Wagner, Martucci introduced some of Wagner's output to Italy. He led, for example, the first Italian performance of Tristan und Isolde in 1888 in Bologna. Nor did his enthusiasm for foreign composers end with Wagner's work. As well as performing Charles Villiers Stanford's 3rd ("Irish") Symphony in Bologna in 1898, he conducted one of the rare concerts of all-British orchestral music on the European continent in the later nineteenth century. What is more, he included music by Brahms, Lalo, Goldmark and others in his programmes. Martucci began as a composer at the age of 16, with short piano works. He wrote no operas, which was unusual among Italian composers of his generation, but instead concentrated on instrumental music and songs, producing also an oratorio, Samuel. Gian Francesco Malipiero said of Martucci's second symphony (1904) that it was "the beginning of the renaissance of non-operatic Italian music."Martucci was an instrumentalist pur sang, taking absolute music as his highest goal. In 2009, to mark the centenary of Martucci's death, Naxos Records released a series of CDs devoted to his orchestral music.