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Listen to Souvenir d’Amerique.
The Italian composer and cellist Gaetano Braga (1829-1907), wrote his earliest musical works in his early teens, while a student of Mercadante at the Conservatory of S. Pietro a Majella in Naples. His main cello teacher was Ciaudelli. In the two decades prior to his tour of the United States, Braga’s musical career developed along two parallel paths: as an opera composer, with productions in Naples, Vienna, Paris, and Milan, and as a leading cellist, with solo, chamber music, and orchestral performances across Europe. In London he acquired the 1731 Stradivarius cello known today as the “Braga” Strad, and in Paris he struck up a friendship with Rossini, performed with Liszt, Rubinstein, Bizet, Gounod, Saint-Saens, and Bottesini, and was also sought after as a voice teacher at the Theater Italien. Braga successfully applied the bel canto singing style to the cello, and considered “broad, impassioned, vibrant singing” an essential characteristic of truly beautiful cello playing, even in more technically demanding pieces. With cello compositions ranging from variations on opera themes to concertos, Braga is best remembered for his Angel’s Serenade, a song with cello or violin obbligato that is beautifully suited to solo performance on the cello.
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