Ferdinando Paer
Concertone in Mi bemolle maggiore per clarinetto, oboe, viola, violoncello e orchestra
edited by Luca Aversano

(Instrumental Music, 12)

XXVI, 90 pp.; 29,7 x 21 cm
Introduction and Apparatus in Italian and English

The Concertone in E fl at major for clarinet, oboe, viola, cello, and orchestra is an unpublished early work by Ferdinando Paer. Written between 1807 and 1814, it belongs to a typical Italian genre, so far little known and little studied—the concertone. Equivalent, and probably forerunner, of the better- known French symphonie concertante, it took a foothold in Italy by the 1760’s. Although such term ended up indicating diff erent soloists (strings only, strings and winds, winds only) and formal structures in diff erent periods, the concertone genre retained its identity as a piece intended for the accademie, in the broadest sense of the term. Paer’s Concertone, in three movements (“Allegro moderato”, “Larghetto”, “Allegretto giusto”), is pleasant and brilliantly written. Its unusual group of soloists is the most original aspect of a song beautifully packaged formally worthy example of Italian instrumental style of the early nineteenth century.

Luca Aversano received his Ph.D. in Musicology at the University of Cologne, with a thesis on the spread of Austro-German instrumental music in Italy in the early nineteenth century (published in Analecta musicologica n. 34). He has taught history and criticism of the musical text at the University of Parma and worked at the University of Florence, Department of History of Art and the Performing Arts, the project Lexicon of Italian music literature from 1490 to 1950. Since 2005 he teaches at the University Roma Tre. Since October 2000 he has been music director of the Orchestra of the University of Parma. Since 2010 he is deputy director of the Master's degree in Education and dimensions of contemporary music (Roma Tre University and Conservatory of Santa Cecilia, Rome). In 2012 he was awarded the Prize "Ladislao Mittner" for musicology.