Thanks, DHIBBARD for this. The link didn't work until I searched "Hannikainen", then the program  came up. I was startled to see it was broadcast in 2013 and I wonder if there is a secret to finding past programs on BBC. Seems they are usually limited to about a month on demand. I have always checked "Through the Night" for interesting stuff like you mentioned. Anyway, thanks for bringing this beautiful and impressive concerto to my (our?) attention. Greatly enjoyed listening to it just now. Take care.

How did you guess I have all those? Is my love of 20th Century British composers so blatant? But, dutiful boy that I am, it's back to the shelves for me, think I will start with Bowen.

RETE Duo Saturday Dec 3
Prima Fila all'opera
Carlo Evasio Soliva: Elena e Malvina.
De Donato, Scano, Mazzola, Trucco, Allemano, Rocca
Coro RSI, OSI, Fasolis

Carlo Evasio Soliva
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigationJump to search
Carlo Evasio Soliva (27 November 1791 – 20 December 1853) was a Swiss-Italian composer of opera, chamber music, and sacred choral works. Soliva was born in Casale Monferrato, Piedmont to a family of Swiss chocolatiers who had emigrated from the canton of Ticino. He studied pianoforte and composition at the Milan Conservatory.

A contemporary of Gioacchino Rossini, he is best known for his 1816 opera La testa di bronzo ("The head of bronze"), which prompted Stendhal’s immediate enthusiasm: “Ce petit Soliva a la figure chétive d'un homme de génie.” (“That little Soliva has the scanty figure of a man of genius.”)[1] After a life spent composing, teaching, and conducting in Italy, Poland, Russia, Switzerland, and France, he died in Paris at the age of 62.

The "Carlo Evasio Soliva Competition for Piano and Chamber Music," organized by the Istituto Musicale Soliva, is held annually in the town of his birth.


Contents
1   Professional life
2   Operas
3   References
4   External links
Professional life
At the Milan Conservatory, he was at the top of his class. He soon became a conductor at La Scala and "drew inspiration for his music from Mozart, whose music was then fashionable in Milan,"[2] his operas being performed frequently from 1807 onwards. When La Scala organized a competition for new librettists in April 1816, the jury gave the top prize to Felice Romani but chose the novice Carlo Soliva to compose the music. His work was in Mozart's style and was well received by local audiences. The following year his first opera, La testa di bronzo o sia La capanna solitaria, was an immediate and resounding success, but it marked the apex of his popularity. The opera received a record 47 performances in the 1816-1817 season. In 1817 his second opera, Berenice d'Armenia, received its premiere in Turin, and his third, La zingara delle Asturie, played at La Scala. Neither was received with great warmth, but in 1818 Giulia e Sesto Pompeo was a fiasco at La Scala.

But as has been noted:

The very reason for Soliva's initial success eventually doomed his career as an operatic composer. Rossini's new style of music was taking all the European stages by storm, and it ended the Milanese Mozart renaissance. After performances of La clemenza di Tito in 1819, Mozart disappeared from the programs of the La Scala Theater for more than 50 years. Soliva saw no future for his musical style and focused instead on a career as a conductor and teacher. He continued composing sacred vocal works, however, as well as orchestral, chamber, and piano music.[2]

In 1821 he moved to Poland and became director of singing at the conservatory in Warsaw. There he married one of his students, Maria Kralewska, and became friendly with Frédéric Chopin. He was the conductor in November 1830 for the first performance of Chopin’s piano concerto in E minor. In the turmoil that followed the defeat of the November Uprising, Soliva moved to St. Petersburg where he took up posts as conductor of the Royal Chapel and director of the Imperial Singing School. There he had contact with Mikhail Glinka.

From 1841 he lived in the Ticinese village of Semione in the Val di Blenio, where his father had been born.

Subsequently he moved to Paris where he again met Chopin along with George Sand and probably moved in the circle of Cristina Trivulzio Belgiojoso. He dedicated a Salve Regina to her husband.

Operas
La testa di bronzo o sia La capanna solitaria, libretto by Felice Romani. 3 March 1816, Teatro alla Scala, Milan
Berenice d'Armenia, libretto by Jacopo Ferretti. March 1817, Teatro Regio, Turin
La zingara delle Asturie, libretto by Felice Romani. 5 August 1817, Teatro alla Scala, Milan
Giulia e Sesto Pompeo, libretto by B. Perotti. 24 February 1818, Teatro alla Scala, Milan
Elena e Malvina, libretto by Felice Romani. 22 May 1824, Teatro alla Scala, Milan
Китайские девицы, или Три рода драматического искусства, Russian libretto based on Le cinesi by Metastasio. 1833[?], Большой театр, St Petersburg
References
Notes

 Stendhal, Rome, Naples et Florence, entry for 12 November 1816.
 " La testa di bronzo - Background" on opera.stanford.edu Retrieved 6 June 2010
Sources

Ferrante, Isidoro. "Soliva, Carlo Evasio, una piccola scoperta" (in Italian). RAI. Archived from the original on 2013-02-18. Retrieved 2007-01-29.
"Soliva, Carlo Antonio Evasio Mario". Dizionario dei musicisti della svizzera italiana (in Italian). Retrieved 2007-01-29.
Further reading

Luque, Antonio Domínguez (October 2006). "Carlo Evasio Soliva, un acercamiento a su vida y obra operística" (in Spanish). Sinfonía Virtual. Retrieved 2007-03-09.
Luque, Antonio Domínguez (2007-01-23). "Están locos estos romanos" (in Spanish). La Gazzetta Belcantista. Retrieved 2007-03-09.
External links
Free scores by Carlo Evasio Soliva at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
Official website of the Carlo Evasio Soliva Competition for Piano and Chamber Music organized by the Istituto Musicale Soliva
Authority control Edit this at Wikidata
General   
ISNI 1VIAF 1WorldCat
National libraries   
SpainFrance (data)GermanyUnited StatesPolandVatican
Biographical dictionaries   
Italian People
Scientific databases   
CiNii (Japan)
Other   
Historical Dictionary of SwitzerlandMusicBrainz (artist)RISM (France) 1Social Networks and Archival ContextSUDOC (France) 1Theaterlexikon (Switzerland)

 I wonder the same, the 3rd and 4th have been around, on Koch the 3rd and 4th i can't remember where, always was interested in 1 and 2, so maybe there's hope. Wonder if this series will include all the violin concertos? Excellent and powerful composer.

Recently BBC played one of Julia Perry's Piano Concertos on Radio 3 in Concert. I would assume it is available to anyone from there, but I have taken the liberty of posting it along with several other orchestral works found on YouTube. I have been interested in her for years, "Short Piece" was available on an old CRI but not much else was recorded then. I have uploaded the Mediafire file if that makes access easier. Perry wrote 12 symphonies, 2 piano concertos, a violin concerto and percussion music along with songs and chamber works, and operas, but found few chances to be performed or appreciated. I don't know what "school" her music is in, but I find it very interesting. The MediaFire download has, as well, some very imperfect scans of her entries in a couple of reference books I have. I hope this is something new and of interest to some of you. The "renaissance" of neglected composers makes me very happy, but in the case of the piano concertos of black American composers Price, Hagan, et al, I honestly have to say that neither was very memorable for me, I liked Perry's much more. Now, if black composers' music continues to be given
 more exposure and since we only have Coleridge-Taylor's Nonet with piano, we need for there to have been a big fat piano concerto by him, the mention of which has never been made,  but is hidden away deep in a drawer somewhere.


[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Perry[url]

Did anyone happen to record the concert on 30 Sept on RTE Lyric which included the world premiere of Ina Boyle's Symphony No. 2? If so, I would greatly appreciate it if you could upload that concert. Thank you.

Mathias and Rubbra