ALFREDO CASELLA (1883-1947)
Italian pianist and composer

Alfredo Casella was to a musical world born.  His grandfather and Paganini had been friends.  He studied piano with Louis Diémer and composition with Gabriel Fauré.  Enescu and Ravel were fellow students at the Paris Conservatory, his circle included Debussy, Stravinsky, and de Falla were acquaintances, and he was in communication with the likes of Busoni, Mahler, and Strauss.

He was the most famous Italian pianist of his timne, and a fine chamber musician, performing widely as the pianist of the Trio Italiano.  And he was an important composer instrumental in the development of the Italian school of instrumental, rather than operatic, music in the 20th century.

The below examples of Alfredos Casella's pianism are limited to a few pieces of his own and the two Debussy preludes.  There are also several performances of his own music for piano trio, and a Bach trio sonata.  I will continue to search for more.  This one of Italy's leading virtuoso pianists of the first half of the 20th century deserves to be heard.

Casella  "Berceuse triste", Op 14 (1909)

1926 Duo-Art piano roll