FORELLEN QUINTET

Giovanni Battista Fasolo (1598-1664) took Franciscan orders as a young man and worked in Naples and Rome as a master of music at various chapels before moving Sicily, where he held the post of maestro di cappella to the Archbishop of Monreale, near Palermo, from 1659 until his retirement or death in 1664, when his name disappears from the historical record. Interspersed here with solo organ works are eight alternatim settings of the Magnificat, in which a choir intones a line of the hymn, followed by an instrumental fantasia based on the line of chant. Two organs are represented on the album, both of historical significance. The Magnificats, the Salve Regina, the Ricercate, and the Fughe sopra Girometta and Ut re mi fa sol la were recorded on the Antegnati organ (c. 1589) in Verona Cathedral; whereas the Canzoni are played on the organ at Trevi in Umbria, built in 1509 by Paolo Pietro da Montefalco. Despite subsequent alterations, the original nucleus of the pipes remains intact, such that when the instrument was restored during the 20th century the sound equipment was found to be pretty much as it was when it was first installed. Today it is recognized as one of the earliest organs in the world. This album is the latest in a series of successful partnerships on record between the organist and harpsichordist Federico del Sordo and the priest and conductor Alberto Turco. Together they have also recorded alternatim mass settings by Claudio Merulo (BC95145) and Giovanni Salvatore (BC95146). del Sordo has also accompanied the violinist Valerio Losito in Baroque sonata albums by Telemann (BC95131), Tessarini (BC94787) and Veracini (BC94822). The Merulo album was welcomed by MusicWeb International for its ‘stark beauty’ as ‘a fine experience… well worth exploring.’ There is much rewarding listening here for fovers of Renaissance and Baroque choral music as they explore another overlooked figure.

Guido Alberto Fano (1875-1961) lived and worked in Germany and Austria, where he developed as a composer and as a pianist. After his time there, he held important posts at the conservatories of Milan and Naples, and had the respect and admiration of several popular composers, namely Richard Strauss. The Piano Sonata in E is a highly technical work, composed in the late romantic style. It remains one of the most influential Italian piano sonatas. Pietro de Maria performs these works, and is one of Italy’s most notable pianists. He has also recorded the complete piano works of Chopin.

Classical Music

Composer and performer Roberto Fabbriziani first release on Brilliant Classics combines acoustic with electronic music, playing several flutes of different sizes, from coloratura to hyperbass. Fabrizziani is one of the most famous flute artists in the world, having collaborated with Elliot Carter, Luciano Berio, Brian Ferneyhough and John Cage, icons of the 20th century avant-garde.

Classical Music

Michele Esposito (1855-1929) was born in the poor south of Italy. Bad luck prompted him to go abroad and he finally settled in Ireland, where he spent the last 46 years of his life, founding the Dublin Orchestral Society. He conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, with whom he also performed his own piano concerto conducted by Hamilton Harty. Esposito's works have a particular Irish flavor, freely making use of folk melodies and generally expressing the atmosphere of the Irish landscape and folklore. This release presents his complete output for violin and piano, real discoveries in this genre, works of deep emotional content and a high level of virtuosity. Played by two Italians with the right romantic feel for this music: violinist Carmelo Andriani and young Vincenzo Maltempo (who received great critical acclaim for his stunning recordings of piano music by Alkan and Schumann on Piano Classics).

The Villanella is closely related to the city of Naples, as Thomas Wythorne already wrote in 1572: ''groups of musicians vied with another sing rustic songs...they wandered the streets, improvising verses and songs in honor of the beautiful women they saw at their windows, and created a sweet harmony that delighted all who heard it''. The Villanellas are far removed from the courtly poetry of the time, which sings of yearnings for the unattainable female beloved, speaking of sighs and tears. The villanella however speak of water as the metaphor of love: dishes break, jugs crack and overflow with eroticism. This new recording features a generous selection of Villanellas by lesser-known composers as Giovanni Dell'Arpa and Filippo Azaiolo, but also by renaissance master Orlando di Lasso, who apparently had a soft spot for this genre.

The ancient, pastoral origins of the oboe as a shepherd’s pipe struck a chord with many British composers of the mid-20th century. Landscape and the evocation of a place, a sense of home, has been a central element to English music for more than a century, and these four composers reflect those concerns through the prism of an instrument connecting them, and us, back to nature and to an idealised rustic past. A gentle, almost Minimalist opening to Edmund Rubbra’s Sonata opens out to a characteristically long-limbed and reflective melody. At its heart lies a brief but affecting elegy. York Bowen is another composer overshadowed until recently by the likes of Vaughan Williams and Britten, but he was praised by Saint-Saens in 1903 as ‘the most remarkable of the young British composers’ and compared to Rachmaninov as both a pianist of formidable gifts and in his virtuosic writing for the instrument. Meanwhile, the sonata by Herbert Howells is a wartime work, unperformed at the time by its dedicatee, Leon Goossens, and only receiving its premiere in 1984. The most substantial work on the album, the sonata’s moods reflect their troubled times, not least in refuge from them. Marika Lombardi formed her duo with the French pianist Natalie Dang in 2003. They have since toured Europe together, while also pursuing successful careers as both soloists and teachers.

Master guitarist Cristiano Porqueddu embarks on a praiseworthy and ambitious recording project: Easy Studies for Guitar, works written by famous or less well known composers with the special aim to educate, challenge, develop and entertain the aspiring guitar student. The works focus on certain technical issues disguised as it were in the musical content and its emotions. The first album contains works by Eduardo Garrido, Nikita Koshkin, Alexandre Transman and Reginald Smith-Brindle. Christiano Porqueddu, who has already recorded more than forty albums which have been received with great critical acclaim, takes his task seriously, always finding the right atmosphere and character of these delightful musical gems, aided by his immaculate technique.

This release presents works of Chopin written in his Vienna period, and here they are played on exactly such an instrument, as is still preserved in the Italian Palazzo Contucci in Montepulciano. The young Chopin, a child prodigy if ever there was one, soon found his surroundings in his native Warsaw too narrow, and visited the cultural capital Vienna during the years 1829-1831. Here he met the local piano manufacturer Conrad Graf and was seduced by his instruments, with their light action and delicate, pliant sound. His triumphal concerts in Vienna were played on Graf's pianos, and the young Fryderick was presented one as a gift by Graf himself.

EARLY RECORDINGS

Brilliant's critically acclaimed Dussek sonata cycle continues with a pairing of early and late works. Viviana Sofronitsky, daughter of the great Russian pianist Vladimir Sofronitsky, followed in her father's footsteps by becoming a 'formidable pianist' (Fanfare). Early years in Russia were followed by a move to the United States to study early music at Oberlin Conservatory and further studies in fortepiano and harpsichord at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. An active performing career across Europe - from Leipzig and Utrecht to Oslo and London - included competition prizes at the Bach Tage Berlin and the Musica Antiqua competition in Bruges. Her discography includes solo music by Schubert and the complete piano concertos of Mozart, which drew praise for her 'superb articulation' in Fanfare. As on those earlier albums she plays a modern fortepiano by Paul McNulty, based on a Viennese model by Anton Walter, for these new recordings of sonatas by the Czech-born contemporary of Beethoven, Johann Ladislaus Dussek. The three sonatas gathered under Opus 9 are arrangements of works originally conceived for piano and violin: most of the violin's melody line was originally doubled by the right-hand part of the piano, making the transformation from chamber to solo work seamless and straightforward, and the character of these late-18th-century works corresponds to similarly conceived violin sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven, where the spotlight falls on the keyboard. So it does in a quite different fashion in the penultimate piano sonata by Dussek, Op.75, which is cast in an early-Romantic vein. An expansive first movement is led by a gentle, exploratory opening melody which fractures and multiplies into passionate figuration across the entire range of the keyboard, and back again: the journey from Beethoven to Schubert in a nutshell. This is followed by a stately, minuet-like Andante moderato and a gracefully turned Rondo finale, both again bearing apparently Schubertian characteristics though written at a time (1811) when the master of song was but a teenager.

Wolfgang Brunner presents two opus numbers composed by Dussek in 1792 and 1800, around the time of the beginning and then the painful end of his marriage to the singer and harpist Sophia Corri. The comparatively early Op.18 No.2 shares the modest dimensions of Haydn's early keyboard sonatas, though by then Dussek was 32 years old and Haydn had already paid fulsome tribute to the younger man's 'remarkable talents'. Upon his marriage to Sophia he ran a moderately successful music publishing firm with his new father-in-law, Domenico Corri, but when the firm went bust late in 1799 Dussek abandoned Sophia and their daughter and fled to Hamburg; during the following year he wrote a trio of sonatas published in 1802 as Op.45. These are all more ambitious in scale and expressive reach. The slow movement of Op.45 No.1 bears the significant marking of Adagio patetico, and it explores reaches of grave feeling through harmonies in advance of their time. The two-movement Op.45 No.2 opens with a Larghetto sostenuto of grave concentration, though the mood is lifted by a gently circular, almost Schubertian Andantino. A lighter, more cheerful character pervades the D major Sonata Op.45 No.3, which concludes with one of the effervescent Rondos for which Dussek was celebrated in his own lifetime. On this recording Wolfgang Brunner plays a pair of instruments from Dussek's time: an 1804 Broadwood, and a modern copy of a Viennese fortepiano originally made around 1810 by Michael Rosenberger. Once complete, the cycle will form the first-ever recording of Dussek's sonatas on historically appropriate instruments.

Born near Naples, Egidio Romualdo Duni (1708-1775) enjoyed success with operas presented in Rome and Milan in the 1730s before moving to London in 1736 and then to the Netherlands for a decade. The six trio sonatas were published in Rotterdam around 1739, while the attractive collection of minuets and contredanses appeared in London the previous year. Together they form Duni's only published collections of chamber music; the greater part of his output remained opera, both serious and comic, and the melodic flair of these works displays the artistic signature of a composer for the stage. The trio sonatas follow the template for the form laid down by the likes of Corelli and Geminiani. Scored originally for two violins and continuo, they proceed in fast-slow-fast fashion with a melodic flair offset by an unusually elaborate bass line: unlike many comparable collections of domestically scaled music, Duni's trio sonatas are written not for amateurs but for court musicians both to enjoy for themselves and to give pleasure to others. The minuets and contredanses bear an obsequious dedication to an English noblewoman, indicating that they too were composed to tickle aristocratic palates. The DuniEnsemble presents the first complete recording of both collections, on period instruments and according to historically informed performance principles - which in this case include a liberal attitude to the instrumentation. The chosen pair of melody instruments is not confined to violins but extended to include flutes and recorders, while the basso continuo part is brought to life by a richly colored ensemble of bassoon, guitar, mandolin, theorbo, cello and harpsichord, varied work by work. The musicians of the DuniEnsemble presented this music in concert in 2018 at Duni's birthplace of Matera, but they have been performing as a group since 2003.