ABSTRACT

The idea of holding concerts in Rapallo came to Pound from his experience in Cesena years earlier when he had attended a concert organized by Manlio Dazzi, in which local and visiting musicians had taken part. The two who formed the nucleus in Rapallo were Olga Rudge and the German pianist Gerhart Münch. They began in the summer of 1935 with performances in the Theatre Reale of all the Mozart sonatas for violin and piano. In a programme note in Italian Pound described the sonatas as comparable in music to Dante's Paradiso in literature. Basil Bunting reviewed the concerts in a frontpage article in Il Mare for 1 July. On 12 July Münch performed music by Scriabin in a private home, placed at the disposal of Rapallo music lovers by Father Desmond Chute who had come to live in Rapallo during the 1920s.