When the Catalan cellist Pablo Casals revived the solo suites of Bach in the first decades of the last century, he reminded both audiences and composers of the huge potential of his instrument to hold the stage in its own right, no less than a violin or a piano. Inspired by his charisma, and that of his successors such as Tortelier and Rostropovich, many modern composers have followed Bach’s example. The Italian cellist presents music by ten of them on this exciting debut album for Brilliant Classics. Tortelier and Rostropovich are represented by their own, little-known but highly imaginative works – a Circus Suite and an innocently titled but fearsomely challenging study respectively. Carter Brey, the principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic, has also written for the instrument with inside knowledge, in a tango of big, seductive gestures preceded on Tarantino’s album by Latin-themed showpieces from Albeniz, Piazzolla and Rogerio y Taguell. Each half of the album is brought to a reflective close with a soliloquy by the modern Italian composer Giovanni Sollima. The cello’s melancholy moods are further explored by Ilse de Ziah and Sebastian Diezig, but Tarantino has chosen and ordered his repertoire to display the cello’s expressive range to its fullest. Mixing familiar and little-known composers, it’s a perfect introduction to the ever-expanding universe of solo cello music beyond Bach. Born in 1977, Luciano Tarantino is a performer and teacher with his origins in Puglia, in the far south of Italy. He has played with many of today’s greatest conductors and founded a music festival in the region of his birth. On this recording he plays a fine 1736 cello by Antonio Testore.

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.

When Brooklyn-born, NYC native Kenny Werner came on stage for his concert in Stuttgart in 1992, he had just begun experimenting with the possibilities of solo piano programs. Over time he grew into the role of a high-quality craftsman who drew his strength not from the struggle for innovation, but from the elegance and finesse with which he incorporated the pianistic possibilities of the keyboard tradition into his music. In artistic self-understanding he was one step ahead of his era.

Werner’s advanced position was also evident in the repertoire that he brought with him to the studio room of the SDR (Süddeutscher Rundfunk) in Stuttgart on 10 June 1992. Most of the compositions were standards associated with the “Great American Songbook”, which he took as a starting point for letting his own creativity play on familiar melodies and forms. It didn’t interest Werner to have the material fall apart in the postmodern fashion typical of the time. On the contrary, for him it was about the perfection of an interior design of the songs, which allowed him to savor the freedom within the set frame of classical jazz patterns. The evening in Stuttgart thus becomes a link in the canon of Werner’s style.

Born in Brooklyn, NY on November 19, 1951 and then growing up in Oceanside, Long Island, Kenny Werner began playing and performing at a young age, first recording on television at the age of 11. Although he studied classical piano as a child, he enjoyed playing anything he heard on the radio. In high school and his first years of college he attended the Manhattan School of Music as a classical piano major. His natural instinct for improvisation led Kenny to the Berklee School of Music in 1970. There he sought tutelage of the renowned piano teacher Madame Chaloff. Her gracious wisdom and inspiration became a driving force in Kenny’s conception: A music conscious of its spiritual intent and essence. From Boston, Kenny traveled to Brazil with the saxophonist Victor Assis Brasil. There he met Victor’s twin brother, Brazilian pianist Joao Assis Brasil. He studied with Joao, who provided another piece of the puzzle for Kenny’s conception that would lead to Effortless Mastery, his landmark opus on how to allow the master musician from within to manifest. Kenny Werner has been a world-class pianist and composer for over forty years. His prolific output of compositions, recordings and publications continue to impact audiences around the world.