The piano duet was an opportunity to have fun and make music with friends for Mendelssohn as it was for many other 19th-century composers, who wrote pieces that far transcended their domestic origins and often arranged their larger-scale works for the medium so that it could be appreciated by listeners where full orchestral performances were much harder to come by. In 1844 Mendelssohn made his own piano-duet arrangement of the Incidental music he had composed to accompany a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Potsdam two years earlier, a suite which itself drew on the precociously immortal Overture he had composed as a 16-year-old. The magical purity of the orchestral score is here translated into a limpid graininess which renders each phrase even more crystalline than in the symphonic version, especially in its most rapid passages. The relationship between the two versions might be likened to that between a sketch and a painting, though with no certainty as to which had been composed first. A comparison of the full-colour orchestral score with the ‘black and white’ of the piano-duet arrangement reveals how the timbres of Mendelssohn’s orchestral imagination stem from the conceptual outlines and regular forms first devised on a keyboard. Thus the arrangement has plenty to reveal about the score to even to listeners intimately familiar with the fully scored original. Having given the triumphant premiere of the overture to The Fair Melusine in Leipzig in 1836, Mendelssohn then arranged it for piano duet the same year. Again, every phrase of the symphonic original resounds with greater emphasis: the yielding swell of the waves is evoked by a delicacy of touch rendered almost liquid by brushing of the damper pedal.

The organ of the Badia Fiorentina monastery in the centre of Florence is one of the finest surviving examples of an Italian renaissance organ, completed in 1558 by the Tuscan organ builder Onofrio Zeffirini. The characteristically Italian timbre of the organ and its historical temperament make it the perfect instrument for performing repertoire from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. In her own booklet-note introduction to the repertoire on this album, Giovanna Riboli explains that she has chosen a sequence of repertoire to display the organ at its most characteristic, but also to give a guided tour to high-points of European organ music of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. She opens her recital with a pair of toccatas, by the Venetian Gabrieli and the Florentine Frescobaldi, that give voice to the instrument’s most brilliant registers. A variation set by Pasquini enables her to range over the impressive stop-list including rarities such as a Nightingale stop. There are two representatives of the English keyboard school, Byrd and Farnaby, at their most extrovert and virtuosic, and then two substantial pieces by the founder of the North German organ school, Sweelinck, followed by an ‘English masquerade’ by his pupil Scheidemann. Giovanna Riboli rounds off this imaginatively programmed album in reflective mode with the Tiento y discurso de segundo tono by the Spanish composer and organist Francisco Correa de Arauxo. The album’s expressive journey is astutely planned, and her playing of this historic instrument brings out all its antique tone- colors.

REVIEW:

This disc, another in the series that Brilliant Classics is devoting to Italian organs and organ music, upholds the high standards of preceding entries for Renaissance and Baroque music. Giovanni Riboli is the skilled executant on this Cook’s tour of 16th- and early 17th-century Western European organ repertoire. The instrument is rather closely recorded, but sounds well. The English-Italian booklet provides detailed notes by Riboli on the organ and the composers, including specifications, along with an artist bio and photos. This is an attractive recital disc, and recommended accordingly.

– Fanfare

The history, legends, culture, art and music of Naples were constant companions to composer Angelo Gilardino in his formative years. Never attracted as a composer to pictorial music, he does feel that the impressions derived from the experience of places and literary works leave profound imprints on the emotions and the intellect, which can provide the impulse to write music associated with a particular place. A project to create music based on the mythical Parthenope (precursor of modern Naples) began with a conversation between Gilardino and two Neapolitan masters of the guitar: Aniello Desiderio, virtuoso guitarist acclaimed throughout the world; and Lucio Matarazzo, who embodies the forthright Neapolitan style so typical of the school of Eduardo Caliendo (the guitarist who collaborated in the performances and recordings of Roberto Murolo). Having joined forces in a new duo, the two guitarists asked Gilardino to compose a concerto for guitar and orchestra, and he replied with the Concerto del Sepeithos for two guitars and orchestra in 2013. The river Sepeithos (Sebeto) flowed through ancient Neapolis, and Gilardino was drawn to accounts of the raging current making its way through the city and into the sea at today’s Piazza del Municipio. The duo’s response to the Concerto del Sepeithos was another request: for Gilardino to write a Sonata for two guitars for them, as well. In 2014 they were rewarded with Riviera di Chiaia – Passeggio reale, a piece evoking an imagined Naples informed by impressions ranging from Cimarosa to Anna Maria Ortese, Leonardo Leo to Nicola Pugliese. In particular, the composer was reading Pugliese’s novel Malacqua (Four Days of Rain in the City of Naples) while writing the second movement, ‘Pioggia’ (Rain).

During the first decades of the last century, Paris took over from Vienna as the center of the art-music’s universe. Ideas and styles exploded like fireworks from the French capital, and among the first figures sending them into the wider world was Claude Debussy. His Première Rhapsodie began life as a competition piece for clarinet, first performed in 1911, and while the later orchestral version is now more commonly heard, it is instructive to revisit the composer’s original, more subtly allusive first thoughts. Seven years later, by now dying of cancer, Debussy completed the last of three works in which he returned to the traditional form of sonata which he had avoided through much of his career in favor of tone-pictures such as the Préludes and suites for piano. The Violin Sonata counts among his most concise and refined works in an output touched throughout by those qualities, demanding the greatest subtlety and passion from its interpreters. In the same year as the Première Rhapsodie, Stravinsky had scored his career-defining succès de scandale with the premiere of Le sacre du printemps, and by 1918 he was established as a darling of the Parisian avant-garde when he composed L’histoire du soldat for a septet of instruments and narrator. The following year he arranged five self-contained numbers from the score into a suite, further reduced for a spiky instrumental trio and featuring the marvelously sly tango as well as the Rite-like final Danse du soldat. Milhaud’s Suite and Bartók’s Contrasts date from two decades later, but they are still infused with the absinthe and lemon of 20s Parisian culture. Heard together, the five works paint a portrait of a world of dazzling colours and restless momentum, sometimes bewildered by its own precosity, taking what it wanted from old cultures and always breaking new paths.

Born in 1971, Marco lo Muscio is an organist, pianist and composer who has performed on the great organs of Europe and the US. His own music been performed by the likes of Christopher Herrick, Thomas Trotter and David Briggs. This album focuses on another, more intimate side of his output. There are pieces dedicated to his mother and to the memory of his late father; tributes to both Debussy and Satie; meditations on literary themes from the work of J.R.R. Tolkien in a neo-medieval style; a pair of ricercari originally composed for organ, paying homage to Renaissance-era counterpoint; and to begin with Three American Preludes. Composed in 2001, the first two of the preludes were also Lo Muscio’s first works intended for the piano. Their bluesy harmonies and ostinato bass lines are inspired by the playing of Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett. The third of them (from 2009) is a homage to Jarrett, but composed in the style of prog rock – an idiom that the organist adopted with such success that he began to work with the guitarist Steve Hackett, founder member of Genesis. Since first meeting Hackett in 2008, Lo Muscio has made many transcriptions of prog rock classics (by Genesis and others) in a parallel career to his own compositions. The two careers intersect here with Horizons, written by Hackett in 1972 for the Genesis album Foxtrot, and itself derived from the Prelude to Bach’s G major Cello Suite. In 2009 Lo Muscio composed his own Meditations on Horizons, which transforms elements of Hackett’s piece with a habanera rhythm Having established a career as a pianist with a speciality in the music of Bach (as winner of the 1995 J.S.Bach International Piano Competition), Andrea Padova has attracted international praise for his performances and recordings. His performance of the Goldberg Variation has won glowing encomia: The Washington Post wrote that he ‘conveys the sense of successfully exceeding the limits of human possibility.’ This is his debut recording on Brilliant Classics.

Joaquin Rodrigo (1901 - 99) composed music for solo and piano duet throughout his long creative life. The earliest works on this collection of his complete music for piano dates from 1923 and the last from 1987.

Blind from birth, Rodrigo studied composition in Paris with Paul Dukas and became a pianist of considerable ability. Whilst his main contemporary Manuel de Falla delved deeply in to Spanish traditional music, Rodrigo created a kind of neo classical style imbued with a Spanish flavour, drawing heavily on 18th century musical styles and mannerisms. The more conservative style of his music compared with de Falla’s appealed greatly to the post civil war authorities of Franco’s Spain.

Many of the works for piano are short, and look back to the single movement sonatas of Scarlatti, and the keyboard music of Rameau, Couperin and Soler. However some of the works display considerable virtuosity such as Preludio al galo manañero which is a brilliant and highly effective composition.

The third of the CDs in this set features the composer and his wife, pianist Victoria Kamhi performing his music for four hands – it is a fascinating document and the listener can hear the composer adding personal touches to his music.

Other information:

- The first volume in an edition of Rodrigo’s music approved by the Rodrigo Foundation.

- Unusual repertoire that adds another dimension to the composer of one of the most famous concertos in the repertoire, the Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra.

- Detailed booklet notes included.

- Fascinating historical recordings of the composer as pianist.

Track list:

Disk 1

·         1 Tres evocaciones: I. Tarde en el parque

·         2 Tres evocaciones: II. Noche junto al Guadalquivir

·         3 Tres evocaciones: III. Mañana en Triana

·         4 Danza de la amapola

·         5 Sonada de adiós

·         6 A l’ombre de Torre Bermeja

·         7 Preludio de añoranza

·         8 Suite para piano: I. Preludio

·         9 Suite para piano: II. Siciliana

·         10 Suite para piano: III. Bourrée

·         11 Suite para piano: IV. Minué

·         12 Suite para piano: V. Rigodón

·         13 Cancion y danza

·         14 Sonatas de Castilla con Toccata a modo de Pregón: I. Toccata a modo de pregón

·         15 Sonatas de Castilla con Toccata a modo de Pregón: II. Sonata

·         16 Sonatas de Castilla con Toccata a modo de Pregón: III. Sonata en fa sostenido menor

·         17 Sonatas de Castilla con Toccata a modo de Pregón: IV. Sonata en Re

·         18 Sonatas de Castilla con Toccata a modo de Pregón: V. Sonata como un tiento

·         19 Sonatas de Castilla con Toccata a modo de Pregón: VI. Sonata en La

·         20 El álbum de Cecilia: I. María de los Reyes (sevillanas)

·         21 El álbum de Cecilia: II. A la jota (jota de las palomas)

·         22 El álbum de Cecilia: III Canción del hada rubia

·         23 El álbum de Cecilia: IV. Canción del hada morena

·         24 El álbum de Cecilia: V. El negrito Pepo

·         25 El álbum de Cecilia: VI. Borriquillos a Belén

Disk 2

·         1 Serenata española

·         2 Cuatro estampas andaluzas: I. El vendedor de chanquetes

·         3 Cuatro estampas andaluzas: II. Crepúsculo sobre el Guadalquivir

·         4 Cuatro estampas andaluzas: III Seguidillas del diablo

·         5 Cuatro estampas andaluzas: IV. Barquitos de Cádiz

·         6 Cinco piezas del Siglo XVI: I. Diferencias sobre el Canto del Caballero (Antonio de Cabezón)

·         7 Cinco piezas del Siglo XVI: II. Pavana (Luys de Milán)

·         8 Cinco piezas del Siglo XVI: III. Pavana (Luys de Milán)

·         9 Cinco piezas del Siglo XVI: IV. Pavana (Enriquez de Valderrábano)

·         10 Cinco piezas del Siglo XVI: V. Fantasia que contrahaze la harpa a la manera de Ludovico (Alonso Mudarra)

·         11 Cuatro piezas para piano: I. Caleseras (Homenaje a Chueca)

·         12 Cuatro piezas para piano: II. Fandango del ventorrillo

·         13 Cuatro piezas para piano: III. Plegaria de la Infanta de Castilla

·         14 Cuatro piezas para piano: IV. Danza valenciana

·         15 Preludio al gallo mañanero

·         16 Zarabanda lejana

·         17 Bagatela

·         18 Air de ballet sur le nom d’une jeune fille

·         19 Deux berceuses: I. Berceuse de printemps

·         20 Deux berceuses: II. Berceuse d’automne

·         21 Tres danzas de España: I. Rústica

·         22 Tres danzas de España: II. Danza de las tres doncellas

·         23 Tres danzas de España: III. Serrana

·         24 Pastoral

Disk 3

·         1 Cinco piezas infantiles: I. Son chicos que pasan

·         2 Cinco piezas infantiles: II. Después de un cuento

·         3 Cinco piezas infantiles: III Mazurka

·         4 Cinco piezas infantiles: IV. Plegaria

·         5 Cinco piezas infantiles: V. Gritería final

·         6 Gran marcha de los subsecretarios for piano with 4 hands

·         7 Atardecer for piano with 4 hands

·         8 Juglares for piano with 4 hands

·         9 Sonatina para dos muñecas, for piano with 4 hands: I. Empieza el día

·         10 Sonatina para dos muñecas, for piano with 4 hands: II. Alegres peripecias

·         11 Sonatina para dos muñecas, for piano with 4 hands: III. Recogimiento

·         12 Sonatina para dos muñecas, for piano with 4 hands: IV. Vuelta del cole