This set offers a fascinating overview of piano works by Martucci, Cilea, Busoni, Sinigaglia, Caetani, Fano, Respighi, Pizzetti, Casella, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Dallapiccola, Rota, Malipiero, Castiglioni, and Einaudi.

This release is a substantial anthology of piano music written by Italian composers in the twentieth century. In an era dominated by opera, several Italian composers chose a radically different path, concentrating on purely instrumental music, influenced by widely varying sources such as Wagner, Impressionism, Neo-Classicism and Dodecaphony. Only leading Italian pianists perform on this release, including Sandro Ivo Bartoli, Michaelangelo Carbonara, Pietro de Maria, Alessandra Ammara, and more.

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REVIEW:

To sum up, this is a most interesting and highly valuable set, one which presents the whole ambit of twentieth century Italian piano music, from romanticism through neo-classicism and serialism to popular minimalism. Everything is put across to the listener in at least good performances, with most of them excellent. The booklet notes are truncated versions from the original releases and are in many cases essential in getting to know the composers represented. Indeed this set offers the listener a real bargain. At around £2 a disc you can’t go wrong. Grab it whilst you can.

– MusicWeb International

Biographical information on NicoloÌ Corradini is scarce, but we do know he spent most of his life in Cremona, the city where he was most likely born. His works include a Book of Madrigals for 5 to 8 voices with viol consort (published in Venice in 1620), the First Book of French Canzoni (Venice, 1620), Motets for 1 to 4 voices (Bartolomeo Magni, Venice, 1624) and the 4-voice Ricercari recorded here, from 1615. The only surviving copy of this latter collection – held at the International Museum and Library of Music of Bologna – is missing its frontispiece and colophon, but according to Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini it was printed, like his Motets, in Venice by Bartolomeo Magni. This is the only set of Corradini’s music that fully lends itself to performance by a solo keyboard player, as the Canzoni are clearly better suited to a group of multiple instruments. Each of Corradini’s ricercars – which cover the full range of 12 church modes – is based on multiple themes (called fughe). This polythematism keeps hearers of these grandiose musical paintings intrigued with a variety that – while clearly based on the architecture of the 16th-century choral motet – at times goes beyond it in a way more akin to fugues of the early 18th century, decades ahead of his time.

These sonatas were published in 1780 in Venice, where Giovanni Battista Grazioli (1746-1828) had become an organist at St Mark’s Basilica two years earlier; and in 1785 he would be appointed principal organist, on the death of Baldassare Galuppi. He was known in his own time as an especially accomplished performer whose compositions concentrated on work for the church, though these collections of keyboard works were evidently designed for domestic consumption. Nearly all the 12 sonatas are structured in a conventional quick-slow-quick three-movement form, most of them in major keys, and notable for their elegant melodies and wealth of invention. The recording’s coda represents Grazioli’s work at St Mark’s with a Pastorale for organ composed for use over the Christmas season. This is probably the first-ever complete recording of Grazioli’s harpsichord sonatas (not to be confused with the organ sonatas by his son Alessandro). It marks the third appearance on Brilliant by the Veronese early-music specialist Chiara Minali. Her previous albums of Marcello (95277) and Ignaz Spergher (95834) have won glowing reviews for the technical finesse and expressive refinement of her playing. “Chiara Minali is a superb organist and harpsichordist.” La Pagina dell’Organo (Marcello).

Membra Jesu nostri consists of seven cantatas which graphically depict the suffering of Christ and the different parts of his tormented body. The surprising beauty and integrity of the cycle as a whole lies in its combination of the strict Protestant North German style with that of the Italian school, the symbiosis of mystical outbursts and dancing, transparent and almost ethereal textures. The Groningen-based Luthers Bach Ensemble recorded this in spring 2021, at the height of the pandemic, through which they have played as active a part in the city’s cultural scene as possible with socially distanced concerts and music-making. Formed in 2006, the LBE can call upon a pool of highly practiced early-music specialists in both voices and instruments, as well as the longer Dutch history of historically informed performance praxis. The stylistic pedigree of this new recording of Membra Jesu nostri places it alongside the great recordings of the cycle over the course of the last half-century. A fine balance is struck between the solemn piety of the cycle’s text and the assuaging pathos of its expression, with its many striking contrasts of solo and large-scale textures, its passionate outbursts and reflective melismas.

Ferdinand Ries was without doubt one of the most prolific composers and most significant figures in the musical life of the early to mid-19th century. In our time, he is known above all as one of Beethoven’s few students, and though we cannot be sure that Beethoven ever uttered the famous sentence ‘He imitates me too much’, the towering figure of Beethoven certainly does cast its shadow over Ries’s wonderful œuvre. Though it’s true that Ries’s musical language owes much to that of Beethoven, with the gift of hindsight we can now fully appreciate the originality of the Ries’s style. Although Ries did compose several oratorios and operas, today we see his music more as an important stage in the development of German absolute music, a key link in the progression from C.P.E. Bach, Haydn and Beethoven, through to Brahms and Bruckner. This release contains three of Ferdinand Ries’s numerous sonatas of a type ‘with accompaniment’ (more or less obbligato; in some sonatas of this kind, however, it is even possible to omit the melodic instrument part). The idea behind this format was to ‘fill in’ the decay of the keyboard instrument’s tones with the sustained sound of a violin or wind instrument, thereby increasing the dynamic power of the music and highlighting its important moments. The Sonata in F minor Op.19 was composed in 1810 and is in many ways very Beethovenian. The two sonatas Op.59 are numbered by the composer himself among his piano sonatas, so we may consider them essentially piano sonatas with violin accompaniment.

The Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (the original spelling: Clavier-Büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach) is a collection of keyboard music compiled by Johann Sebastian Bach for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann, who went on to become one of Europe's greatest improvising composers. The book has a clear didactic purpose. Most of the pieces included are better known as parts of The Well-Tempered Clavier and the Inventions and Sinfonias. The pieces in the collection are sequenced by complexity, beginning with the simplest works. The works are for “Keyboard” so they may be played on any instrument of the time: organ, harpsichord, spinet, or clavichord. Bach, however, considered the clavichord the best instrument for personal use, because it is able to express most adequately the cantabile way of playing.

Played on the clavichord by Yuan Sheng, “China’s premier interpreter of Bach” (International Piano Magazine) and a pupil of Solomon Mikowsky and Rosalyn Tureck, Yuan Sheng extensively studied the performance practice of Baroque music. Equally at home at the piano as at the harpsichord, he has an instinctive feeling for the possibilities, sonorities, and touch of the instrument at hand, so that “the listener might easily have imagined the composer at the keyboard” (Boston Intelligencer).

This world premiere recording presents four sonatas and four duos by Giovanni Battista Cirri (1724-1808), a cello virtuoso and teacher whose reputation took him across Europe – including to London, where for a time during the 1760s he was employed by members of the Royal Family, and took part in the first concert given in the English capital by the eight-year-old Mozart. By now, however, Cirri’s name has been almost forgotten, save through an edition of dubious scholarship from the 1950s of a viola concerto which is in fact an arrangement of one of his London cello sonatas. His set of six cello concertos Op 14 has been recorded before now, revealing his creative gifts to be not dazzlingly original but always pleasing, and superbly conceived for his own instrument. All cellists of an adventurous disposition will accordingly be drawn to this new collection, which contains work dating from after his return to Italy in 1780, and to his native Emilia-Romagna region. The Breaking Bass ensemble has selected four of the 12 Sonate di camera, and alternated them with four of the Eight Duets for two cellos to make a satisfying contrast of genre and texture within the album. The solo parts of the sonatas bristle with technical challenges as well as attractive melodic writing, and the duos are full of lively exchange between the two instruments, revealing a far more theatrical side to the composer, with the two instruments taking on solo roles and sharing the limelight on equal terms. They were clearly designed for pedagogical use to be performed by teacher and pupil.

This new recording presents two composers who stood at the cradle of the Golden Age of Spanish Renaissance, Bernardino de Ribera (c.1520- c.1580) and Juan Navarro (c.1530-1580). Both were connected to the Cathedral of Avila and in their musical capacity they were the teachers of several masters-to be, among them the great Tomas Luis de Victoria. During his early musical years, Victoria sang the music of Ribera and Navarro on a daily basis, and they taught him everything he needed to know about polyphony, singing, counterpoint and organ playing. This disc presents also works by de Victoria and Sebastian de Vivanco.

These are superb performances by the Spanish vocal ensemble Amystis, specialized in presenting hidden gems from the Spanish Renaissance and Baroque. Their previous recordings for Brilliant Classics with works by Cabanilles and Comes gained excellent critical acclaim in the international press. Early Music Review: ‘Amystis are worthy exponents of this glorious music, negotiating its considerable complexity with aplomb.

Organ works account for only 17 of Vierne’s 62 opus numbers, and yet no one would now question his status as the organ’s greatest symphonist after Franck and Widor. His six symphonies stand at the pinnacle of the 20th-century literature for the instrument: the six-movement First Symphony with its fugue and celebrated Final (‘my Marseillaise’, as he referred to it); the Second, his masterpiece, with its scintillating scherzo; the Third, the shortest and most concise; the Fourth, whose tortured outer movements are in sharp contrast to the buoyant Menuet and sumptuous Romance; the Fifth, the longest, and in many respects the most elevated; his Sixth and last, the most harmonically advanced and psychologically complex, rising from the depths of despair to ebullience in its rampant Final.

In complement to the symphonies, Vierne composed several suites of pieces ‘in a free style’, as well as more impressionistically conceived sets of fantasy pieces. Music specifically designed for the liturgy includes a pair of organ masses – one of them a requiem – and a triptych of meditations. Whether reflective and deeply etched with chromaticism or ebullient and thunderous, all of Vierne’s output for his own instrument is conceived with the sound and tonal variety of Cavaillé-Coll’s organ’s in mind – one of the largest of all being the organ at Notre Dame in Paris, where Vierne occupied the post of titular organist for many decades.

The German-American organist Wolfgang Rübsam has himself been counted among the finest living organists for many decades, internationally known through over a hundred highly acclaimed albums of organ repertoire from the Baroque and Romantic periods including recent Bach recordings on the lute-harpsichord for Brilliant Classics: ‘These lovely performances memorably showcase Rübsam’s sensitive and poetic side.’ -Classics Today

REVIEW:

Louis Vierne composed sixty-two opus-numbered works, most of which were for the organ. His organ oeuvre consists of 6 symphonies, 2 low masses, 24 pieces in the free style and 4 volumes of fantasies. Away from the organ, his other music includes orchestral, chamber, song cycles and church music. His organ works were written with a specific type of instrument in mind, those built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (1811-1899), who revived organ building in France to produce “the symphonic organ”. Rübsam performs on three organs in this collection: Aristide Cavaillé-Coll Organ at Saint-François-de-Sales, Lyon, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll Organ at Saint-Antoine-des-Quinze-Vingts, Paris and the Ernest M. Skinner Organ at Rockerfeller Memorial Chapel, Chicago. Full specifications of each instrument are included in the booklet.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable set, well recorded and well apportioned. For those coming to Vierne for the first time, this comprehensive collection will provide the ideal primer.

-- MusicWeb International

Mauro Giuliani (1781-1828) was a contemporary of Schubert and one of the many Italian guitar virtuosos who had to flee his own country to get noticed. He ended up in Vienna frequently playing in the fashionable salons and contributing to the guitar becoming all the rage there. As a composer he mainly wrote for his own use: around 200 pieces in all. Many of his works are still popular today, and belong to the standard guitar repertoire. 'Composer, or rather translator of beauty'. This is how Giuliani described himself in a letter to Anton Diabelli on 24 January 1824, and it contains all the poetry and aesthetics of his music, which is quintessentially beautiful, charming, melodious and witty. This new recording presents the complete works for flute and guitar, a popular combination. Included are sets of variations on popular themes from operas, serenades and divertimenti, potpourri’s, Grand Duo’s and Marches, a veritable treasure trove of instrumental brilliance and joie de vivre.

Flutist Daniele Ruggieri completed his studies in Venice where he graduated with the highest marks under Guido Novello and subsequently in Geneva where he was awarded the first Prix de Virtuosité in the class of Maxence Larrieu, after which he built an impressive career as a soloist and ensemble player: “...Rarely will you hear the flute flutter around a concert hall in such a beautiful and playful display of virtuosity.” (M. Connolly, The Times, London). Master guitarist Alberto Mesirca is twice winner of the Golden Guitar, for the best recording of the Year. He recorded the complete guitar music by Regondi, Asencio and Sanz, and “Voces de Sefarad”, four centuries of Sephardic Songs.

Attilio Malachia Ariosti (1666-1730) was born in Bologna, Italy and became a well-regarded violinist, organist, composer and librettist. He took vows at the order of the Serviti as Frate Ottavio in 1688 and was appointed organist in the church of S. Maria dei Servi in Bologna in 1693. He travelled to Mantua and Venice, the most enlightened musical and artistic centers of northern Italy and then moved to Berlin and lately to Vienna in 1703. Expelled from the Papal State for moral reasons, in 1716 he lived in London where, together with Bononcini and Handel, he became a permanent composer of the Royal Academy. At the King's Theater he played viola d'amore in the intervals between the acts, "...a new symphony composed by the famous Mr. Attilio Ariosti in which he will play a new instrument called viola d'amore".

The Six Lessons for Viola d'Amore, published in London in 1724 and dedicated to King George, are harmonically and melodically appealing and were composed expressly to teach violinists to play viola d'amore. The viola d’amore has six or seven strings and the same number of resonating "sympathetic" strings placed under the bridge, which produce its warm, ringing timbre. On the final track, soprano Elena Bertuzzi joins violist Mauro Righini and continuo players for the chamber cantata Pur alfin gentil viola.

Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) marked the transition from the Classical to the Romantic period. His works, while adhering to the formal style of the Viennese School, abound in dramatic contrasts and glittering instrumental virtuosity. His instrumental works are hugely enjoyable, full of “Spielfreude” and many a good tune. Weber had a special predilection for the clarinet: for him, it was the ideal instrument for expressing the romantic feelings inspired by a trip through the Swiss Alps - where the landscape had a profound effect on his poetic soul. From his friend Heinrich Baermann, the greatest clarinet virtuoso of his time, he learned the technical characteristics of the instrument and he wrote some exquisite works for it: the famous Quintet for clarinet and string quartet Op.34, the Grand Duo Concertant Op. 48 and a set of variations on a theme from the opera Silvana. Here the works are played by Italian master clarinetist Davide Bandieri, who played solo clarinet in the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Mahler Chamber Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado. For this recording he secured the collaboration of such eminent instrumentalists as pianist Matteo Fossi and the Quartetto Savinio.

The works in this collection emerged from the genre of duo concertant initially conceived as showcases for the virtuosity of Nicolò Paganini and his successors in the Franco-Belgian school of violin playing, notably Henry Vieuxtemps. He and Louise Farrenc remain attractive outliers in the chronology of French violin sonatas, which began proper in 1877 with the first performance of Fauré’s First Sonata, followed in short order by comparably significant works by Saint-Saëns and Franck. These three works considered together form a trinity linked by features which came to define the character of the French violin sonata as a genre over the next few decades: recitative-like sections, cyclical form, modal techniques and organ-like pedal points, especially in the piano part – all three composers having spent a good part of their career as titular organists at landmark churches in Paris.

A further spur to the flood of of violin sonatas from Paris during the first decades of the 20th century was the abundance of superb performers who had made Paris their home: foremost among them Pablo Sarasate, Eugène Ysaÿe, Georges Enescu, and Jacques Thibaut. The Wagnerian shadow falling over works by Roussel and Lekeu is decisively dispelled by Debussy’s late and sinuous masterpiece, and then more radically by Ravel in the lazy, seductive Blues of his Sonata. The collection evolves further with a bold Sonata of 1932 by André Jolivet, whose movement titles advertise his rejection of the classical forms honored by previous rarities – not only Louise Farrenc but also Rhené-Emmanuel Bâton, who composed in a richly mystical but traditional idiom as an outlet for the creative urges accumulated and repressed like Mahler during his occupation as a conductor.

REVIEW:

A sure-fire bet for collectors of unusual repertoire is Brilliant Classics’ set of French Violin Sonatas, which is headed, interpretatively, by the Debussy, Ravel (Second), and Franck sonatas, superbly played by violinist Kristóf Baráti and pianist Klára Würtz. All of these excellent recordings date from between 1987 and 2020.

-- Gramophone

Born in Vienna in 1765, Anton Eberl lived a quieter life than Mozart, and his music does not court the scandal or venture to the expressive extremes of his contemporary, friend and mentor. After Mozart’s death in 1756, Eberl toured with his widow Constanze Mozart and her equally accomplished sister, Aloysia Lange, before Eberl married a third talented soprano, Maria Anna Scheffler, and the pair moved to Saint Petersburg, which at the time was establishing an artistic court to rival any of the capitals of Europe. Eberl worked there as Kapellmeister to the Russian royal family for a decade (1796-1805) before moving back to Vienna. Only two years later, at the height of his reputation, Eberl caught scarlet fever and died at the age of 41. By then Eberl had also become well acquainted with Beethoven. Sayuri Nagoya’s personal selection from Eberl’s keyboard output encompasses the earlier and later stages of his career, beginning with a set of variations on ‘Bei Männern’ from Die Zauberflöte which was composed within months of the Singspiel’s premiere at the Theater an der Wien. Dating from a year or two after Mozart’s death, the Sonata Op.1 was originally published under his name, and Eberl’s Sonatina Op.5 (1796) likewise inhabits a Mozartian grammar. By the time of the G minor Sonata Op.27, however, Eberl had developed a bolder and more dramatic idiom of keyboard writing, doubtless also under the influence of the intervening decade of technological innovation which brought about instruments with a wider compass and broader dynamic range. The C major Sonata Op.43 opens with a grand introduction before launching into an Allegro of high contrasts. The album leaves the listener with a full appreciation of Eberl’s gifts as well as a tantalizing sense of where his talents might have taken him next.

Proyecto Brunetti is a flexible ensemble formed with the aim of promoting the chamber music of Gaetano Brunetti (1744-1798). Its founder-cellist is Pere Joan Carrascosa, who has also edited the manuscripts of this divertimento collection for publication and written the authoritative booklet essay on the composer’s life and work. The album can be considered a first port of call for anyone looking to investigate the figure of Brunetti. When they do so, they will find music of elegant gestures and appealing gentility, clear-cut melodies and subtle innovation. The greater part of his surviving music is cast in the genre of string trio which was a reliable source of entertainment for both amateur musicians and audiences in the latter half of the 18th century. There are 47 such trios in eight collections of six (minus one in the last case), and this album presents the third such collection. Brunetti probably wrote it between 1772 and 1774 while in service to the Prince of Asturias, later to become Charles/Carlo IV of Spain. The Prince himself probably played second fiddle to the composer in those pieces scored with two violins, with the composer’s son Francesco on the cello. Structurally straightforward, each divertimento comprises two movements cast in either a basic sonata or rondo form. It is their melodic freshness, harmonic invention and the stylishness of their writing, treating all three parts as equals, that elevates them beyond the value of ephemeral entertainment.