Quartetto di Cremona celebrates Italian music.
Within a country of fine wine, there is a city of violins, and just as the world-class vino from the regions of Piedmont, Veneto and Tuscany are an intrinsic part of Italian culture, so too is the craftsmanship of Amati, Stradivari and Guarneri in the history of Cremona.
The small city in northern Italy was home to the stringed-instrument makers from the mid-16th century to the mid-18th century. Yet, their influence is still felt today, particularly in the work of the preeminent Quartetto di Cremona, which was named for the distinguished city in which the string quartet was founded in 2000.
Now based in Genoa, the ensemble’s four musicians — violinist Cristiano Gualco, violinist Paolo Andreoli, violist Simone Gramaglia and cellist Giovanni Scaglione — play antique instruments made by the famous European ateliers, sharing the passionate tradition of their musical forefathers and garnering international recognition along the way.
On Monday, the award-winning quartet will make its Houston debut, performing rarely heard gems by Italian composers Boccherini, Puccini, Verdi and Respighi in a program at the Menil Collection, presented by Da Camera. In a second concert the following evening, the pieces written by the latter two men will be joined instead by the works of Austrian composers Mozart and Wolf.
“For us, it’s very nice to play composers who are not from Italy but who tried to write with an Italian style,” said Gualco, who established the small ensemble while studying at Cremona’s Accademia Walter Stauffer.
Unlike Boccherini, a classical composer who influenced the development of the string quartet, Verdi was known for his operatic compositions. In fact, “String Quartet in E Minor,” which he premiered in a private concert for friends in his Naples hotel room in 1873, was his first and only venture into chamber music and was not originally intended for publication.
Born 45 years after Verdi, Puccini was also a famous opera composer, but he wrote “Crisantemi,” which translates to Chrysanthemums, in memory of his friend Amadeo di Savoia, a former King of Spain who died in 1890. Interestingly, the beautifully poetic, yet sorrowful melodies in the piece were later reused in his opera “Manon Lescaut,” Gualco explained.
In comparison to the others, Respighi was somewhat of a “one-hit wonder,” and while primarily known for his trilogy of orchestral tone poems, Gualco is fond of his “String Quartet in D Major” for its sophisticated simplicity.
“If you discuss the character of the piece, it really does sound Italian and the music is very natural,” he said. “I must say that, in some respect, this quartet is even stronger than the Verdi quartet because it has more symphonic quality to it that makes it really big and important.”
Until recently, the Quartetto di Cremona had the opportunity to play four Stradivari instruments that belonged to the celebrated violinist Niccolò Paganini, who was also from Genoa, as a recipient of the Nippon Music Foundation’s Instrument Loan Project.
“For me, it was really a dream,” Gualco said. “It was something really exceptional to have in my hands, the same violin that Paganini played for so many years in concert. It’s like the background of the instrument came to life every day.”