Rota: Divertimento Concertante

Divertimento Concertante for Double Bass and Orchestra

Nino Rota
(1911-1979)

Nino Rota is a familiar name to anyone with an interest in music for the cinema, with a remarkable succession of scores for the films of Visconti (The Leopard), Zefferelli (Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet), every single one of Fellini’s films---even the first of Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather movies! But, as in the case of Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Bernard Herrmann, there is also a rich range of concert works by Nino Rota. Indeed, the roster of Rota’s compositions reveals an amazing output of compositions of every description: symphonies, chamber works, choral works, eleven operas, ballets and oratorios! Born into a musical family, Nino Rota was a child prodigy, with an oratorio performed when he was eleven years old! He attended the Milan Conservatory and Accademia Santa Cecilia (Rome), studied with Pizzeti and Casella, and even spent a couple years at the Curtis Institute in the early 1930s, where he was a fellow student of Samuel Barber and Gian-Carlo Menotti. Until the 1950s Rota pursued a successful academic career, then devoting himself to composition, and, increasingly, his film collaborations, which won him an international reputation.

The DIVERTIMENTO CONCERTANTE appeared in 1969, and is notable for its charm and sprightly Neo-Classic character, qualities which are so memorable in his film music, especially the scores for the Fellini films.

Scored for an orchestra of winds, horns and trumpets in pairs, timpani and string, the Divertimento is a delectable feast for a virtuoso bassist. The spotlight is usually upon the soloist, but the orchestra is treated with elegance and wit as well. The Allegro opens with grand RITORNELLO, full of Rossinian gestures, with sweeping melodic figures over bustling tremolo, and a lilting secondary melody first heard in the clarinets over a PIZZICATO background. The mood is cheerful and festive in an Italianate manner quite suggestive of the music Rota would supply for scenes taking place in crowded streets and markets in many a Fellini film. The solo instrument is treated with great flexibility and dexterity, moving from the characteristic husky bass of the lower strings to an expressive mezzo-soprano CANTABILE in the upper register. Especially gratifying is the delicacy of the solo line, often in fluid chains of triplets and figuration requiring the utmost agility on the part of the performer, as is particularly the case in a finely-wrought cadenza.

The MARCIA is a bright and jaunty movement, with the solo bass heard against the vivid and sharply-etched colours of the winds and brass. The crisp orchestral textures and nimble passagework in the solo bass are rather suggestive of Prokofiev, although the mischievous swagger of the music is unmistakably Italian in its breezy good humour.

The ARIA allows the double bass to reveal its full expressive powers in a sustained, spacious CANTILENA, heard over a measured PIZZICATO accompaniment. The soloist provides a lute-like PIZZICATO background when the melody is take up by the winds, which is then extended and enriched. After the melody is heard in a full orchestral tutti, it is heard in a nostalgic final statement in the bass, fading away with the haunting sound of harmonics.

The FINALE is a restless and athletic piece, full of busy sixteenth-note passagework, dotted rhythms and figuration darting around the winds of the orchestra. There is a brief contrasting episode, with a smooth lyrical theme in the strings first heard again arpeggiated triplets in the solo bass. The irrepressible energy of the opening returns to swing the music forward in a gallop, pausing for a sustained and expressive cadenza, then buzzing to a close.