Announcement on Required Concerto for Stage IV of the 13th Competition

August 21, 2024

Author: Moya Wright

The 13th Competition will take place May 14 - 24, 2025, in Bloomington, Indiana, and the required concerto for Stage IV is Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Concertino, Op. 93a. The USAIHC is pleased to announce that a new edition of the harp part, edited by Elizabeth Hainen, plus newly engraved orchestra rental parts are now available. Although several editions of the harp part were previously available, as were the orchestra rental parts, it became apparent that both contained some errors and discrepancies as they were based on manuscripts by copyists, and not on the composer’s original manuscript. Elizabeth Hainen, USAIHC Artistic Director, undertook an ambitious project to research the original manuscript and her new edition of the harp part is available here as a digital download through Sheetmusicplus.com.

Note: 13th Competition contestants are allowed to perform any edition of the harp part. The new edition is a welcome addition to the repertoire but is not required.

Orchestra rental parts

The Concertino has a fascinating history. The version selected for the 13th Competition is the second version Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote. The first (Op.93) was for harp, three clarinets, and strings, and later revised as Op. 93a for harp and chamber orchestra (strings, flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon). The newly engraved orchestra rental parts from G. Schirmer are now available worldwide through zinfonia.com and through G. Schirmer’s webpage
(Concertino for Harp and Orchestra | Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco - Wise Music Classical).

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco

Born in 1895 in Florence, Italy, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco achieved early success as a composer as well as a pianist and music critic. His collaboration with three specific performers helped him gain international recognition as a composer and continued to have a major impact on his entire life and career – Andrés Segovia (guitar), Jascha Heifetz (violin), and Gregor Piatigorsky (violoncello).  

In 1938, Fascist policies in Italy changed the path of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s life and career.  The arrival of Mussolini’s Antisemitic laws in 1938 led him to emigrate to America at age 44, first to New York and eventually to Hollywood, where he wrote scores for hundreds of films. He later became a private composition teacher, fostering the next generation of film composers including André Previn, John Williams, Henry Mancini, and Jerry Goldsmith. His vast output covered many musical genres, from pieces for solo piano to operas, from concertos to cantatas, from sonatas for solo instrumentalists to symphonic overtures. An avid reader, Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s favorite authors included Aeschylus, Virgil, Keats, Wordsworth, Whitman, Cervantes, García Lorca and Shakespeare, and he entitled eleven of his symphonic overtures after plays by Shakespeare.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed the Concertino for Harp, Three Clarinets and String Quartet in 1937. The work was premiered that same year at the Festival Internazionale di Venezia, where it was performed by harpist Clelia Gatti-Aldrovandi, the wife of the composer’s close friend and mentor, the Italian journalist, critic and musicologist Guido M. Gatti. The work is dedicated to Guido and Clelia Gatti. In 1938, Castelnuovo-Tedesco arranged the work for harp and chamber orchestra.

According to the composer, the premiere was well-received, and Ms. Gatti-Aldrovandi took the Concertino on tour the following year. However, due to the so-called “Racial Laws,” which included provisions forbidding performances of music by Jewish composers, the work largely fell into obscurity. After a long hiatus, both versions of the Concertino were performed and eventually published in America, but only after the composer’s death in 1968.

Thanks

The USA International Harp Competition would like to thank everyone who played a major part in making the new edition possible:  Elizabeth Hainen (Artistic Director), David Flachs (Director of Publication Administration, G. Schirmer, Inc. & Associated Music Publishers, Inc.), Sony Music Publishing, Diana Castelnuovo-Tedesco (Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s granddaughter and archivist) for securing the original manuscript and copies from the Library of Congress, Peter Cressy (Editor & Engraver, G. Schirmer), Prof. Stephen Fitzpatrick for securing an additional manuscript from the Royal College of Music Archives, and Moya Wright (project coordinator).