Serenade for 9 Instruments

In the interwar period, Giovanni Salviucci was recognized as one of Italy's most talented composers alongside Luigi Dallapiccola and Goffredo Petrassi but his early successes and all future hopes were quashed by his untimely death in 1937. The Serenade for 9 Instruments, at times rhythmically restless, at others tender and cantabile, and the angular, harmonically daring, neo-Classical Chamber Symphony for 17 Instruments, are two of his most forward-looking compositions. The unpublished String Quartet, at the heart of which lies an Adagio molto of extraordinary emotional impact, is a true gem. This release of the complete published chamber music stands as a vibrant testament to a future curtailed of a composer described by Petrassi in a letter to Casella, Salviucci's teacher and mentor, as 'il migliore di noi tutti' ('the best of us all').