Dallapiccola: Canti di prigionia

Luigi Dallapiccola absorbed a diversity of influences, he is especially identified with the musical techniques and aesthetic pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg. Perhaps his best-known work is the harrowing opera Il prigioniero, but he had already taken up the theme of imprisonment in his Canti di prigionia, dating from the years around 1940.

Dallapiccola (who had been interned in Austria in World War One) conceived the three choral songs, inspired by the figures of captives Mary Stuart, Boethius and Savonarola, as a musical protest against Mussolini’s introduction of racial laws. Written somewhat in the vein of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, they also make use of 12-tone techniques while incorporating the plainchant theme of the Dies irae. This version conducted by Igor Markevitch was the recording premiere.