This fine collection includes many exceptional Cantelli recordings, remastered to perfection. Including 8 CDs of music and a new 60 minute audio documentary about Cantelli’s life, this is the ultimate tribute to the great Italian conductor. Among these recordings, his Schumann’s Symphony No.4 (1953) and Brahms’s Symphony No.3 (1955) testify to the vitality of spirit and clarity of orchestral texture that were hallmarks of his performances.

Cantelli was considered a conductor of characteristic Italianate verve, tempered by a sensibility to expressive nuance and balance of timbre. He was an advocate of rehearsing as well as performing without a score. He also liked to record in long takes, with the minimum of later correction.

Widely regarded as Toscanini’s successor, he came to a tragic end only a few days after being appointed principal conductor at La Scala when he died in a plane crash aged only 36.

Guido Cantelli was born in Novara, Italy, on 27th April 1920 and showed his musical gifts by being given a place in his father’s military band whilst still a small boy. At 10 he was playing the organ at the local church and made his debut as a pianist at the age of 14.

He entered the nearby Milan Conservatory where he studied conducting and composition. He returned to his home town in 1941 as director of the Teatro Coccia which had been opened 53 years previously by Arturo Toscanini.

Although outspoken in his loathing for Nazism, he was forced to join the Italian army in 1943 and was interned in a labour camp near Stettin until 1944 when illness required him to be sent to hospital in Bolzano. After the liberation of Europe he was free to launch his musical career, La Scala was followed by operatic and concert dates in Italy and then elsewhere in Europe, including Budapest and Vienna.

Arturo Toscanini was so impressed that he immediately arranged for Cantelli to make his debut with his NBC Symphony Orchestra in January 1949, the same year he started recording for EMI. Over the next six years he established a reputation as one of the six great conductors born in that remarkable dozen years from 1908 – Herbert von Karajan, Georg Solti, Erich Leinsdorf, Carlo Maria Giulini and Leonard Bernstein.

On November 16th 1956, La Scala announced that he would succeed Giulini as music director. A week later all dreams were ended when a Lineo Aereo Italiana plane from Milan to New York crashed following a stopover at Paris’s Orly Airport and he was killed, aged 36.

Walter Legge wrote a memorial tribute: “no other conductor in the history of the art has established, so early in life, so wide a fame.”

Contents:
GUIDO CANTELLI – PORTRAIT OF A PERFECTIONIST
(60 minute audio documentary)

Guido Cantelli’s meteoric impact in his tragically cut-short life is recalled here from the perspectives of musicians, the audience and also a never before heard recording of a rehearsal. Former Philharmonia Orchestra members reincarnate their experiences with Cantelli, whose fanaticism can be heard as he repeats passages in the EMI recording session of Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe (Second Suite), which is preserved in stereo.

The effect Cantelli had on his public is also brought to life in audience memories of his performances in the concert hall. As well as the music of Ravel, there are extracts from EMI recordings of Cantelli conducting works of Beethoven, Rossini, Tchaikovsky, Franck, Debussy and Casella.

CD 1
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
[1]-[4] Ein musikalischer Spaß, K522
[5]-[8] Symphony No.29 in A, K201

Ludwig van Beethoven
[9]-[11] Symphony No.5 in C minor, Op.67 [Movements II, III & IV)
Philharmonia Orchestra

CD 2
Ludwig van Beethoven
[1]-[4] Symphony No.7 in A, Op.92

Franz Schubert
[5]-[6] Symphony No.8 in B minor, D759 “Unfinished”

Gioacchino Rossini
[7] Overture: La gazza ladra
Philharmonia Orchestra

[8] Overture: L’assedio di Corinto
Orchestra Stabile Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome

CD 3
Felix Mendelssohn
[1]-[4] Symphony No.4 in A, Op.90 “Italian”

Robert Schumann
[5]-[8] Symphony No.4 in D minor, Op.120
Philharmonia Orchestra

Alfredo Casella
[9]-[12] Paganiniana, Op.65 (1942)
Orchestra Stabile Accademia di Santa Cecilia, Rome

CD 4
Johannes Brahms
[1]-[4] Symphony No.1 in C minor, Op.68
[5]-[8] Symphony No.3 in F, Op.90
Philharmonia Orchestra

CD 5
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
[1] Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture
Philharmonia Orchestra

[2]-[5] Symphony No.5 in E minor, Op.64
Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala, Milano

CD 6
Richard Wagner
[1] Siegfried Idyll
Dennis Brain (horn)
Philharmonia Orchestra

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
[2]-[5] Symphony No.6 in B minor, Op.74 “Pathétique”
Philharmonia Orchestra

CD 7
Claude Debussy
[1] Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune

Trois Nocturnes
[2] I. Nuages
[3] II. Fêtes

La Mer
Trois esquisses symphoniques
[4] I. De l’aube à midi sur la mer
[5] II. Jeux de vagues
[6] III. Dialogue du vent et de la mer

Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien
Fragments symphoniques
[7] I. La Cour des Lys (Prélude)
[8] II. Danse extatique et Final du Premier Acte
[9] III. La Passion
[10] IV. Le Bon Pasteur

Maurice Ravel
[11] Pavane pour une infante défunte

Philharmonia Orchestra

CD 8
Paul Dukas
[1] L’Apprenti sorcier

Manuel de Falla
El sombrero de tres picos
[2] Danza de los vecinos
[3] Danza del molinero
[4] Danza final

Maurice Ravel
Daphnis et Chloé – Suite No.2
[5] I. Lever du jour
[6] II. Pantomime
[7] III. Danse générale
Philharmonia Orchestra

César Franck
Symphony in D minor
[8] I. Lento – Allegro non troppo
[9] II. Allegretto
[10] III. Allegro non troppo
NBC Symphony Orchestra