When Verdi, towards the end of the nineteenth century, was asked to become president of a new society to promote Italian symphonic music he turned down the appointment saying that Italy was all about opera and vocal music.

Of course, in his time this was the case, although in a previous century Italians had created new instrumental forms like the concerto grosso and the sonata. However, Corelli and Vivaldi had to wait well into the twentieth century to be rediscovered.

Yet in the overwhelmingly operatic milieu of eighteen hundred Italy there were composers who were fully in touch with instrumental works written in other European countries.

Three of these, Sgambati, Bossi and Respighi, were represented in an exhilaratingly original chamber music concert at the Italian Institute of London on 30th May.

Ottorino Respighi’s early six pieces show his assimilation of colourful tonal textures learnt from his time in Saint Petersburgh under mentor Rimsky-Korsakov. It made for enchanted listening.

Giovanni Sgambati’s Venice (la gondoliera) and Naples (serenata napoletana) inspired pieces are little more than delightful morceaux de salon but they are beautifully crafted with the right amount of virtuosity in the violin part. Admirably performed they led me to take further interest in the composer. Listening at home, I was taken back by the gorgeous lyricism and confident structure of Sgambati’s two symphonies dating from the 1880’s – unjustly neglected masterpieces fully revealing Italy’s symphonic fluency.

Marco Enrico Bossi’s first violin sonata of 1892 was a revelation. Primarily known for his organ works (Bossi was a friend of Cesar Frank) the sonata is a powerful work with a melodic turn of phrase in the slow movement that looks towards Puccini. Indeed, the work stands comparison with Frank’s rather more famous work for the same medium, especially in its cyclical use of themes. Bossi truly bridges a gap between two italian musical eras; his teacher was Ponchielli and one of his students was Malipiero!

My thoughts returned to Puccini whose graduation exercise, Capriccio Sinfonico, almost persuaded people that the Luccan would become Italy’s major instrumental composer. Puccini’s first great work, ‘Manon Lescaut’, was, indeed, remarked on for its symphonic structure and its orchestration remains second to none.

All three composers represented in this highly revealing Italian Institute concert demonstrate that in the second half of the nineteenth century Italy was increasingly open to north European developments, especially Wagner, whose ‘Tristan and Isolde’ received its italian premiere under the baton of another great italian instrumental composer, Giuseppe Martucci, also a member of the ‘risorgimento instrumentale’, friend of Toscanini and performed in a previous concert.

I have only praise for the performers, Mariarosaria D’Aprile, violin, and Tommaso Cogato, piano, who entered fully into the heart of this unfairly neglected repertoire with impeccable technique and an exhilarating virtuosity.