Includes sonata(s) by various composers. Soloists: Dorina Frati, Daniele Roi.

On this new release, a young, talented Italian pianist plays Liszt’s greatest works in St. Petersburg alongside the Saint Petersburg Music Hall Orchestra with conductor Fabio Mastrangelo. Alessandro Ambrosoli was born in Turin the 16th December, 1969. As a child, he took piano lessons with various teachers. Finally, at 12 years of age, he met Giorgio Costa, who was able to blend the complex personality of Alessandro Ambrosoli with his own musical knowledge and technical capacities. Under the guidance of Giorgio Costa, Alessandro Ambrosoli improved his natural talents, won prizes in a number of national and international competitions and took the decision to study Liszt, feeling that the music of the Hungarian composer was a positive challenge. His prior Liszt release received gleaming reviews, and this album, recorded in 2002 and 2015, will surely meet the same level of artistry.

Young and talented Elisa Tomellini loves challenges and is used to climbing high mountain peaks. Both physical as well as musical. No wonder then that she is the first woman to perform the first version of the Etudes aprés Paganini (S.140) that Robert Schumann reviewed as “the most difficult work ever written for the piano, as is the original for the violin. Certainly only a few pianists will be able to tackle them, perhaps no more than four of five in the world.” Dynamic is proud to feature one of them. As pianists almost always play the simplified version re-written by Liszt himself in 1852, the album Paganini Études and other virtuoso piano works contains the first 1838 version that Liszt wrote inspired by the Caprices, successfully achieving on the piano an extreme virtuosity that was unprecedented in that instrument’s literature. Born in Genoa, Italy, Elisa Tomellini has been studying piano since the age of five. She was admitted to the prestigious Music Academy ‘Incontri Col Maestro’ in Imola at the age of sixteen. In 1997 she gained a diploma at the Conservatory G. Verdi in Milan. She has won several pries at international competitions such as the ‘Viotti Valsesia,’ the ‘Concorso di Cantu’ and the ‘Concorso Citta di Pavia.’

My first encounter with Lucille Chung's cultivated pianism and individual artistry occurred at her 1996 New York recital debut where she played one of the most memorable all-Liszt programs in my listening experience. She proves every bit as impressive in a cross-section of Ligeti's piano music, and easily holds her own in the company of supreme Ligeti interpreters such as Fredrik Ullén and Pierre-Laurent Aimard. The chattering rhythmic complexities throughout the second book of Etudes benefit from the immediacy and impact of Dynamic's close miking. Chung doesn't delineate the inner rhythms of Der Zauberlehrling or L'escalier di diable with Aimard's easy adroitness, yet she makes Fém's staccatos more distinct and brings more varied articulation and melodic pointing to Columna infinita.


In the two early Capriccios and the Invention, I lean more toward Chung's fanciful, crisply dynamic readings than to Irina Kataeva's accomplished sobriety in Sony's Ligeti Edition. It's a toss-up between Aimard and Chung in the Musica Ricercata's 11 quirky, diverse short movements. Aimard makes his points through steady rhythmic cumulation and has a superior instrument on hand. However, Chung's discreetly effective rubatos personalize the music to more dramatic effect. I'm not sure if Chung coached these works with Ligeti, but I think he'll warm to how this gifted pianist plays his music.
--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

SCHMANN; LISZT; SCHUBERT; WAGNER/LISZT; RACHMANINOV: Lazar Berman, piano; Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, January 14, 1988.NTSC All Region; LPCM 2.0; Dolby Digital 5.1; 16:9; Approx. 100 mins. LAZAR BERMAN - THE 1988 TOKYO RECITAL - ROBERT SCHUMANN: Piano Sonta No. 1 in F sharp minor, Op. 11; FRANZ LISZT: Selections from"Annees de Pelerinage": deuxieme annees, Italie; FRANZ SCHUBERT/F. LISZT: Ave Maria; RICHARD WAGNER/LISZT: Isolde Liebestod; SERGEI RACHMANINOV: Moment musical in E minor, Op. 16 No. 4.

Gaetano Donizetti's La Favorite was rather laborious in the making: it started out as a re-working of L'Ange de Nisida, to which the composer added parts taken from some other operas of his. The work, which was premiered at the Opéra of Paris, is set in 14th-century Castile and tells the story of the hapless love between Fernand, who has second thoughts about taking holy orders and leaves the monastery of Santiago de Compostela, and Leonor, the mistress of king Alphonse XI. It is an intimate drama, where history and politics are but the backdrop to the protagonists' passions and torments. Fabio Luisi's conducting is both measured in balancing the orchestral sounds, and personal, varied and vigorous. The orchestra is crystal-clear, neat in its accompaniment, neither subject to the voices nor prevaricating. Veronica Simeoni (Leonor), Celso Albelo (Fernand) and Mattia Olivieri (Alphonse) give excellent vocal and acting performances.

Kalkbrenner was a very prolific composer and published nearly 200 opus numbers, mostly dedicated to his instrument (but his catalogue also includes three operas, a Stabat Mater and the cantata Die Zwingburg). The three Piano Sonatas Op. 1 that open the list of his compositions were published around 1807, when Kalkbrenner was just twenty-two years old, and are the works with which the German composer debuted in front of his audiences. They are a very clear calling card, where credentials and promises are manifest.

Kalkbrenner: 3 Piano Sonatas, Op. 4

JOMMELLI: Uccellatrice (L') (The bird catcher)

This is the first volume in what will be a three disc series profiling the best Overtures and Symphonies in Italian Opera. This release tackles the 18th century, and features favorites from Vivaldi, Salieri, and the great Neapolitan School. Specialists in the repertoire conduct these masterpieces, including Antonio Florio, and Giuliano Carella.

HUMMEL: Sonata for Mandolin and Fortepiano / Flute Sonata /

Hovhaness' admirers often tend to overlook the piano works in favour of his big orchestral statements. Nevertheless there's much to enjoy in these compact pieces which are here drawn from a wide time frame, spanning Op.36 to Op.390. The Twelve Armenian Folk Songs were composed around 1943 but not published until two decades later. The melodies are attractive in themselves but, more than that, they are most attractively played by Alessandra Pompili who shows a very strong affinity with all the music in this 52-minute disc. She plays the 'unfamiliar melodies' - in the composer's words - with simplicity and a real degree of affection in an acoustic that tends to the dry, though on balance I'd rather that than a billowing sound in these pieces.

Ghazal and Ghazal-Sufi date from 1938 and here the bass line underlies a weaving lyric right hand melody line. The former, which is the longer, has a tolling, melancholy-sounding motif whilst the latter is the more rarefied in expression. This is, it would seem the first ever recording of both pieces. Composed in 1959 whilst Hovhaness was in the Kashmir, Shalimar reflects his huge enthusiasm for Indian music. Formally, he introduced the idea of borders in this suite in an attempt to suggest the carpet-like designs of Moghul gardens. As much as rhythm drives this music, there is a huge amount of nature painting involved, the composer evoking the now-silent fountains through the memory of their music. Much is coolly flowing, beautifully expressive and often hypnotically rhythmic but there is also the Bachian element of the Third Interlude. Helpfully each incident - there are eight in all - is separately tracked.

The 'Cougar Mountain' Sonata, Op.390 dates from 1985 and returns to his love of nature - of vistas and expanse. As well as a slow opening movement there is a lament, a slumber song and, as finale, a dance. There are hints of Ravel in the early part of the sonata and the stomping dance with which the sonata ends certainly generates considerable dynamism. Its compact nature still allows a rich sense of characterization to emerge. The Fantasy, Op.15 - again this is a first recording - was written in 1938 but was later re-worked and absorbed into the Blue Job Mountain Sonata, Op.340. It's an unusually alternating work for Hovhaness, in which lyricism and percussiveness sit on opposite sides of the equation. Finally there is Dark River and Distant Bell which, with its oriental mood, was originally intended for harpsichord or clavichord. This is its first appearance on disc in piano guise.

Pompili, then, is a splendid young exponent of Hovhaness' music. That dry sound does help to clarify and centralize the piano writing without sounding off-puttingly objectified. Liner notes are in Italian and English and worth a detour, as indeed is this disarmingly well-played disc.

– MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)

Includes work(s) by Lou Harrison. Ensemble: Tammittam Percussion Ensemble. Conductor: Guido Facchin.

Hungarian pianist and composer Stephen Heller lived and worked at the same time as Schumann. Heller’s oeuvre includes 158 opus numbers, and several unnumbered pieces, most of which are piano works. For the first time, Heller’s Notenbuch fur Klein und Gross (Op. 138) is recorded on this album, alongside his Kinderszene (Op 124). With his remarkable techniques, Heller transports the listener back into the world of childhood. Pianist Luigi Gerosa performs these pieces.

The three sonatas for flute and piano featured on this CD were skillfully transcribed and adapted from a chosen three of Joseph Haydn’s late string quartets by the reputedly fine flautist and then Kantor of the famed Thomaskirche, August Eberhard Müller (1767-1817). Shorn of their minuet movements, they were then published as original Haydn works, with no mention of Müller. The works thus retain the masterful sonata structure of Haydn’s opening movements and his characteristic good-humored finales.