Italian composers and instrumentalists born in the second half of nineteenth-century Italy can be seen as the children of a true cultural revolution of the Risorgimento. This revolution was induced by the need to create a new national musical identity, disengaged from the iconic and dominant role of opera. In fact, for much of the nineteenth century, the operatic tradition had overshadowed the instrumental one, which began to regain particular momentum and diffusion only after 1860. Unified Italy was now compared to the great European powers and needed to be more cultured, progressive, and sophisticated. Instrumental music (symphonic and chamber) had always been associated with literature, philosophy, and the more intellectual world, and was perfectly suited to embody a new musical identity of the country that could match and compete with the great German model.

It is the case of the three composers here represented (Sinigaglia, Fano, Massarani), who fully embraced the legacy of their predecessors but, like them, paid the price of living in a transitional historical moment. Like in a limbo between the “old” and the “new,” between Romanticism – at the time entirely exhausted in the rest of Europe – and the first glimmers of a new musical language that would soon move towards deconstruction with the avant-gardes of the 20th century. Yet, the outcome of their work is worthy of historical and performance interest, and shows the necessity of rediscovering a significant portion of Italian music history. Certainly, their shared Jewish background and the consequent censorship of the racial laws from the early 1930s may have contributed to some extent to the oblivion that befell these names. Riccardo Pes and Pierluigi Piran focus this recording on the interesting works for cello and piano by the three authors.