Calace: Music for Mandolin Quartet

Motus Mandolin Quartet

95494

With concertos, duets, preludes, studies, sonatas and miniatures galore to his name, Raffaele Calace is a seminal figure in the history of the Neapolitan mandolin. He was born in Naples in 1863 into a family of luthiers, yet surpassed his father and grandfather in a reasonably long career dedicated to the manufacture and promotion of his instrument. After taking over the family workshop in 1905 he transformed it into a cultural centre that covered all aspects of music-making. Alongside his fertile talent for composition displayed on this disc, Calace continued to innovate in manufacture, designing and producing a concerto mandolin which in range and volume would stand up to a fair-sized orchestra, thus enabling many other composers to write for the instrument. He also created a ten-stringed mandolon-cello and a bass archlute, which could replace the bowed double bass in mandolin orchestras. It was on this instrument that Calace was himself a noted virtuoso, and his own family followed his path; including his daughter Maria, to whom the album’s opening Fantasia Poetica is dedicated, and his son Enzo, dedicatee of a lovely Idyll Op.58. Another son, Vincenzo, even attended the prestigious classes of Ferruccio Busoni in Berlin.

CD x 1

Brilliant Classics

2019-11-13

5028421954943