"The mandolin today is so utterly abandoned…" – thus lamented Hector Berlioz in his orchestration treatise of 1843 about the forgotten instrument. What irony that his name would later become linked to the Salle Berlioz, one of the Parisian concert halls where mandolinists such as Vittorio Monti and Laurent Fantauzzi performed. And what a delight that the Neapolitan mandolinist Raffaele La Ragione draws us back with his new CD "In the fin-de-siècle salons" to that enchanting world of the Belle Époque, where salons hummed with guitars and mandolins, the verses of Verlaine were sung, and all of Europe – from barber to magistrate – fell under the spell of their strings.
An instrument with a turbulent past
The accompanying texts by musicologists Paul Sparks and Hélène Cao – comprehensive and thoroughly researched – sketch how the Neapolitan mandolin, after a period of obscurity, flourished once more, in part thanks to the Paris World's Fair of 1878. Italian virtuosos such as Giuseppe Silvestri and Ferdinando De Cristofaro traveled to Paris and unleashed a veritable "craze" there. Pioneers like Jules and Alfred Cottin followed in their footsteps, and soon the mandolin found its way into the Parisian salons, though shortly before it had been regarded merely as a folk instrument. It is precisely this rich heritage that Raffaele La Ragione wishes to unlock with his program – and he succeeds brilliantly.
Virtuosity with style and taste
La Ragione plays a mandolin crafted by Lorenzo Lippi (Milan, 2025), modeled on the legendary Vinaccia makers, and a tenor mandola by Raffaele Calace Jr. (Naples, 2017). His tonal ideal is clear: warm, nuanced, without effects-mongering. The tremolo technique – the secret of the mandolin's cantabile character – he employs with admirable restraint and evenness, so that melodic lines breathe rather than tremble. In Silvestri's Lo Sport, a waltz that the composer himself performed at the World's Fair of 1878 and which may have been recorded for the first time, La Ragione proves himself a storyteller who sweeps his audience along without ever forcing the issue.
The arranged pieces – from Bizet's Pastorale (a delightful opener that immediately sets the tone and leaves you wanting more) through Gounod's Le Soir to Chaminade's Havanaise – come, among others, from Jean Pietrapertosa and the Cottin brothers, arrangers who knew the music of their time through and through. La Ragione respects their work, but adds his own distinctly mandolin idiom to it: in Dupont's "Mandoline" and Saint-Saëns' "Guitars and Mandolins," the repeated notes of the instrument ring out as they should – like the tinkling water of a Neapolitan fountain on a summer night. Not every work on the album possesses the same compositional weight, but it is precisely this variety that makes clear how versatile the salon repertoire around the mandolin truly was. The whole makes for a thoroughly entertaining recording.
A love triangle: instrument, piano, voice
The upright François Dumont is heard at a Pleyel grand piano from 1896 – a deliberate choice that makes the story credible. The instrument lends the accompaniment a characteristic muted sheen, a patina that the modern concert grand cannot match. Dumont is an excellent partner: he listens, fills in, and never takes more space than necessary. His Liszt (Danse des sylphes) and Chopin (Variation from the Hexaméron) are little pearls of stylized elegance.
Sandrine Piau, at home in Baroque music from of old but also entirely convincing here, sings three 'mélodies' on "The Givers of Serenades" ("Mandoline") by Paul Verlaine: the settings by Debussy, Dupont, and Fauré, ideally distributed throughout the program. Her voice possesses that special quality of carrying something of inner intensity even in light, seemingly airy music. Her Debussy comes closest to the spirit of the instrument – after all, it begins with the open strings of the mandolin itself, sol-ré-la. Her Fauré is more intimate, her Dupont deeply felt.
A rediscovery that lingers
What makes this album special is the coherence of its concept. La Ragione and his partners do not reconstruct a museum piece, but offer a living musical conversation with the past. The repertoire – a mix of originals and clever arrangements – is carefully chosen, the performance thoughtful, and the recording quality (Chiesa di San Rocco, Miasino, June 2025) warm and transparent.
With this third album for Arcana, following "Beethoven and his Contemporaries" (2020) and "Mandolin on Stage" (2022), La Ragione confirms his position as one of the leading mandolinists of his generation. He rehabilitates the mandolin as Gustav Leonhardt once rehabilitated the harpsichord: by restoring seriousness, color, and historical depth to a forgotten instrument.
This is a CD that one will not soon put away after a first listening.
