Alfredo Casella: La donna serpente

This latest disc in the Naxos series of Casella’s orchestral music represents what Casella felt was his ‘definitive personality’. The Introduction, Aria and Toccata epitomises his ‘monumental Baroque style’ of the late 1920s and early 1930s. A few years earlier, his neoclassical Partita for piano and small orchestra had been a huge hit, with Casella himself touring right across Europe and the USA playing the solo part. In between, he at last – in his late forties – composed his first opera, La donna serpente: the orchestral fragments recorded here colourfully reflect the story’s tragicomic twists and turns.