Biography
During his formative years Martucci received training in piano and composition at the Naples Conservatory, studying piano with Cesi, himself a former pupil of Thalberg, and composition with Serrao. At fifteen his father required him to abandon institutional study and launch a professional concert career. Early recognition arrived from Liszt and Rubinstein, while his programs encompassed works by Bach, Scarlatti, Schumann, Chopin, and Liszt. This phase ended at twenty-four when he was named professor at the Naples Conservatory. The following year he began conducting, leading a memorial concert for Wagner and presenting the premiere of Tristan und Isolde. As director of the Liceo Musicale in Bologna he programmed music of substantial range, encompassing Brahms and Wagner. One year before his death his final concert in Naples introduced Debussy’s Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune to listeners who largely did not yet know the composer’s name. As a composer Martucci stands among the leading Italian creators of instrumental music during the period dominated by opera. His maturity appears most clearly in chamber works, where he expressed lyric and impulsive ideas without restraint from formal conventions. Although parallels have been noted with Elgar and Fauré, his language remained unmistakably Italian. In larger orchestral scores he fused Schumann’s luminous Romanticism with Brahms’s harmonic practice. The Second Symphony, regarded as his principal orchestral achievement, contains melodic lines and reflective passages. Observers have credited him with returning orchestral music to the range of Italian composition.
Singles