Mary Preston Plays Durufle & Widor

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Latin American Guitar Music by Barrios and Ponce

Ten years after their first highly estimated Cage CD "Works for Percussion" (WER 62032), Quatuor H�lios are presenting a second one with works by the inventor of the prepared piano. In the wake of this process comes the series of the five "Imaginary Landscapes". "Credo in US" is another heroic work, particularly in the ambiguity of it's title: is Cage patriotically referring to the United States, or is he simply humanistically proving allegiance to the first person plural? And then again, doesn't this Credo relate to the 1937 manifesto whose title it reflects? Collages, layerings and overlaps clash with omnipresent wild and scattered piano bits, strewn with explosions and streaked with silences that are in themselves aggressive. In "Inlets", the performers do offer Nature what we could call a choice gift: letting it do the composing... The crackling fire or the water gurgling in the conches redefine music! Quatuor H�lios has always been open to collaboration with composers in order to develop new contemporary percussion languages, often associating "classical" instruments, new technologies and musical theater.

The first complete recording based on the new Curci edition of the famous 20 Studies of the Spanish composer Fernando Sor (1778 - 1839) selected by Andrés Segovia and edited by Angelo Gilardino. Angelo Gilardino (Vercelli, Italy, 1941), composer, guitarist, musicologist and teacher, was the artistic director of the Andrés Segovia Foundation at Linares (Spain) from 1997 until 2005. He rescued many unknown works for guitar in the Segovia's archive, providing a powerful contribution to the repertoire of this instrument in the 20th century.

Completely revisited in the timbres and colors of high value music for six strings belonging to the classical repertoire and of great interest to students and professionals.

A complete and innovative reading, carried out thanks to 'urtext' version, the latter the result of a comparison of minunzioso sources. It follows a synoptic reading of the two versions from which emerge in a transparent way the nature of the work of Segovia and creative teaching of a classical author that he read and interpreted in the light of his aesthetics and his ideal.

The double bass is the focus of this collection of music by Sofia Gubaidulina presented here in powerful interpretations by Daniele Roccato. Written over a span of over forty years, these compositions have become staples of the double bass literature. In Pantomime, one immediately senses a certain theatricality, which is evoked by melodic contours, dramatic pauses and dynamic progressions. Originally written for cello, the Preludes were later arranged for double bass. For in Croce, Gubaidulina pairs the bass with a bayan, (a Russian accordion). The work was inspired by the composer's experiments in improvisation using either ancient or folk instruments. Roccato is accompanied by pianist Fabrizio Ottaviucci and bayan player Massimiliano Pitocco.

Classical Music

Angelo Gilardino (b.1941) is a guitarist and composer who has done much to expand the contemporary repertoire of the classical guitar. Concertos, sonatas and variation sets all testify to a bright and airily melodic style and a series of studies of varying degrees of difficulty and virtuosity show Gilardino's commitment to the generations of performers below him.

This particular set of 20 'easy studies' is aimed at the young or at least new student: it covers any number of technical challenges such as tenuto, legato, staccato and marcato playing styles, but it does so in a way that makes learning never less than fun and worth pursuing, since the pieces have a worth beyond the mastering of their particular challenges.

Cristiano Porqueddu has made several recordings for Brilliant Classics, among them a 5CD set of Gilardino's studies for more advanced guitarists. Next on the menu for this fine young Sardinian guitarist is a 5CD set of 19th-century guitar preludes, slated for release at the end of 2012: watch this space.

Other information:
- New recording, Recorded in 2012, Nuoro, Italy.
- This CD presents the complete "20 Studi Facili" , studies on a more modest scale, but offering attractive and colourful music in the form of a technical exercise for training a certain facet of guitar technique. A must for every guitar player (whether amateur or professional) and for adventurous music lovers in general.
- The issue of Gilardino's Transcendental Studies for Guitar, by Cristiano Porqueddu created quite a stir; many excellent reviews praised both music and performer.
- The English and Italian liner notes provide a short introduction to every individual study.

Classical Music

The second installment of Antal Zalai's complete Bartok violin edition centers on the monumental Sonata for Solo Violin. The work is a landmark of the 20th century where contrapuntal and fugal writing, folkloristic elements, and the unique harmonic and rhythmic language of Bartok fuse into a work of intense expression. The 44 Duos for Two Violins serve as a foil for the Sonata, performed with wit, irony, and folksy color by Zalai and Valery Oistrakh.

This disc offers a selection of compositions by Georgi Alexandrovich Mushel, the former Professor of Composition at the Conservatory of Tashkent became one of the first true exponents of Uzbek music. Also a gifted painter, he found inspiration in many forms of art, including the architecture of Samarkand, the ancient Islamic city. The music of his Samarkand Suite represents the many different elements of the site, such as the Deserted Hills surrounding the city and the monuments shown in their full splendour thanks to the Rising Sun.

The disc also contains the Uzbekistan Suite, beginning with the beautiful Aria and ending with a sprightly Toccata, as well as the Six Pieces for organ, and Elegy -- originally written for piano. Benjamin Saunders is Director of Music at Leeds Cathedral; his performances have been praised by Organists' Review for their "spirit and commitment".

Other information:
- New recording (2012) on the Grand Organ of Leeds Cathedral, by its titular organist Benjamin Saunders.First and only complete recording of this body of music.
- Georgi Mushel (1909-1989) was an Uzbek composer and painter. His great love for his home country he expressed in his paintings and his compositions, which are inspired by the rich traditions and music of Uzbekistan. His music is picturesque, colourful and often exuberant in its vivid depiction of nature and folklore.
- The Toccata from the Uzbekistan Suite is a popular showcase of organ virtuosity, and is played in its original version, a vibrant celebration of Soviet happiness and optimism!
- Contains notes on the composer and works.

Einaudi: Waves, The Piano Collection, Composer Ludovico Einaudi, Artist Jeroen van Veen piano, Format 7 CD, Ludovico Einaudi's aesthetic of emptiness has won him legions of fans worldwide, and Jeroen van Veen's survey of the piano music which is central to Einaudi's style belongs with his survey of minimalists including Glass and Nyman who are less concerned in music as an expressive language than as a commercial artefact. Likewise, his listeners absorb the music less in the sense of engaging with meaning than as backdrop to activity or release from stress. The works on this compendious collection are nearly all 'songs' of between 3 and 7 minutes, with the influence from pop culture that this brevity implies, and sharing with the pop world an economically aware employment of simplicity and repetition so as not unduly to tax the attention-span of the consumer. As Jeroen van Veen remarks, 'Contrary to ordinary classical music, minimal music demands little of the listener but to escape life's troubles for a moment; no comprehensive musical structures ask their full attention.' All his compositions are more or less based on the music he heard when he was a child, when his mother played Chopin Preludes. Einaudi (grandson of the politician Luigi Einaudi) loved the almost hypnotic soft sound of the upright piano. Because of her he started to play the piano and tried to find his own way. The melody (if there is any at all) always goes down, hardly leaving the classical path of harmonies. His music is ambient, calm, meditative and often introspective, drawing on minimalism and contemporary pop. Ludovico Einaudi may well become the "Satie of the 21st century". His minimalist, deceptively simple piano works reach a massive audience well beyond the strict boundaries of traditional classical music. CDs with his music break sales records, the hypnotic calmness of his works being the perfect recipe against modern world's stress and fatigue. Einaudi's piano works fit in logically with Jeroen van Veen's survey of Minimalist Piano Music, and this 7-CD set is the most substantial collection available at present.

The Renaissance Lute

KOSENKO 11 Etudes in the Form of Old Dances, op. 19 • Natalya Shkoda (pn) • TOCCATA 36 (69:01)


Viktor Stempanovich Kosenko (1896–1938) trained at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied composition and theory with Mikhail Sokolov, a Rimsky-Korsakov pupil, and piano with Irina Miklashevskaya. His early years were hard, much as they certainly were for most other artists of his generation in a young Soviet Union. It wasn’t until 1929 that his employment prospects began to improve with a teaching position at Kiev’s Lysenko Institute of Music and Drama. In 1934, he accepted a post at the Kiev Conservatory, and in 1938, he received the Order of the Red Banner. With many concerts, a great deal of teaching, and a small number of published works to his credit, Kosenko died in his early forties of kidney cancer.


As for the Eleven Etudes , they fit into a genre of “olden style” pieces that reflected late 19th/early 20th-century nostalgia for a sentimentalized or nationalized 17th- or 18th-century past. A variety of composers tried their hand at this, including Grieg, Parry, Elgar, Giordano, Massenet, Reger, and Saint-Saëns, among others. Their works were never intended to be mistaken for period music, but were amiable stylizations that embedded thematic, harmonic, or contrapuntal devices in a generalized Romantic language, then poured the results into small-scaled Baroque or Classical dance forms.


Kosenko’s collection of gavottes, minuets, courantes, rigaudons, etc, fits perfectly into this group. It’s conventionally Romantic, with nothing evident of the olden style save in titles and a very occasional turn of phrase. Brahms, instead, is the main influence on Kosenko. Rhetorical devices and harmonic progressions occasionally point directly to specific pieces by the older master (the Sarabande in A Minor glances at Brahms’s Piano Concerto in D Minor), but the overall sense is of a composer finding his own creativity in the language of another, rather than simply as a Brahmsian manqué. The quality of the works varies, but at their best, they demonstrate some imagination, an idiomatic use of the instrument, and a good deal of charm.


Yet even if the music had no significant quality of its own, it would still be interesting because it had been composed at the end of the 1920s in the Soviet Union. This was a period unfriendly to traditional nationalists like Glière, much less composers who “whored after foreign gods.” (Fears of ideological contamination from abroad have a lengthy history in Russia, and the government there has always played this card successfully—much as governments have done elsewhere, but seldom with such ceaseless success.) Although the radicals of the Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians who briefly controlled the Soviet musical apparatus in the late 1920s were never as doctrinally unified as some musicologists believe, their repeated friendliness to Kosenko is surprising. Beginning in 1927, they invited the composer to give a concert of his music in Kharkov each year, for three consecutive years. Kosenko was also allowed to publish some of his music at that time, and his teaching position at the Lysenko Institute has already been mentioned. None of this would have been possible without RAPM intervention; yet these were the same people who urged the desertion of traditional classical structures for “revolutionary” ones, and the abandonment of the classical repertoire as bourgeois and formalistic. Perhaps RAPM’s Ukrainian branch was more ideologically flexible than its Russian one? The whole matter remains curious, and in need of greater elucidation through modern scholarship.


Natalya Shkoda’s thesis project for her Ph.D. earlier this year in piano performance at Arizona State University was a combination of this CD and a research paper on Kosenko’s op. 19. I hope the research paper went well, because the CD is an attractive testament to her current level of skill. She displays a solid technique and a convincing ability to modulate between the intimacy of such works as the Gavotte in B Minor (a lovely little thing, Brahms in an autumnal mood) and the ambitious, flashy Passacaglia. Her rhythmic sense is elastic, and her affection and knowledge of this music is obvious at every turn.


Sound quality is good and close, with fine presence along the full range of the instrument. Shkoda herself supplies the better than average notes. As this is marked volume 1, I assume more is on the way, and I sincerely look forward to hearing it, too.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

WEINBERG Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes (arr. Weinberg). Violin Sonatas Nos. 2 and 5. Sonata No. 2 for Solo Violin • Yuri Kalnits (vn); Michael Csányi-Wills (pn) • TOCCATA 0026 (70:58)

Mieczys?aw Weinberg’s output continues to emerge on CD. One of the more interesting features of the Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes is that the music has a certain Hassidic quality, meaning the use of minor keys and descending melodic passages with flatted 7ths and 6ths. Of course, much Eastern European ethnic music falls into this category, including Rumanian and Polish music, but these themes (the notes explain) were consciously chosen because Weinberg’s mother came from Kishinyov (now Chisnâu), where “Bessarabian musical folklore was strongly influenced by the huge Jewish population.” The exuberant and exciting way Weinberg manages his musical materials makes the piece more than just a trifle. The composer made this violin-piano arrangement from his original orchestral version (of which there is a fine recording by Vladimir Lande and the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra on Naxos 8.572779) with fingerings for the solo part provided in the published score by David Oistrakh.

The Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano, composed in 1944, was not premiered until 18 years later, by Oistrakh and pianist Frieda Bauer. Its opening theme sounds very much like the Rhapsody, but its development is much more along the lines of Shostakovich’s music. Happily, Weinberg avoids—consciously or unconsciously—the crudeness of much of Shostakovich’s music and the streaks of self-pity. It is serious music, yet imbued by palpable energy in the first movement and wonderful lyricism in the second. The catchy but offbeat rhythm of the last movement rides the Sonata off into an almost ferocious Finale.

This is the first recording of Weinberg’s Second Sonata for Solo Violin. Composed in 1967, annotator David Fanning explains that its overall tone is “less confrontational in character and more of a suite in overall conception.” Indeed, the music is very quirky, its seven movements given titles descriptive of musical terms ( Monody, Rests, Intervals, etc.), and so diverse that one can very well imagine the individual movements being played alone in concerts. It is, however, well written and employs a great amount of contrast within each movement, short though they are (the timings range from 1:27 to 3:38, with most of them averaging around two minutes). In places, almost aggressively abrasive dissonances give way to fascinating in brief development sections.

Weinberg’s Fifth Violin Sonata dates from 1953, shortly after he was released following a harrowing 11 weeks at the Lubyanka prison on the charge of “Jewish bourgeois nationalism.” Like in his Second Sonata, and more so in the Rhapsody, Weinberg here “absorbs folk-like intonations” into his style, but the synthesis is now more complete, showing his marked maturity as a composer. There is a wonderfully plaintive quality in the first movement, for instance, where Weinberg simplifies his style harmonically and produces a simply gorgeous spun-out melodic structure. And here, particularly, Kalnits displays an almost otherworldly sense of pathos and lyricism, which then turns into lyricism combined with forward momentum in the rapid second movement. The third movement ( Allegro moderato ) is wistful and almost nostalgic in character despite its energetic tempo, as is the Finale (note, particularly, the diminuendo on the last high note). What excellent music this is!

Kalnits is a good violinist with strong emotion and wonderful empathy for this material, though his tone tends towards wiriness and a bit of whining in the upper range. Csányi-Wills is a fine, sensitive accompanist. Together they make a strong case for most of this music becoming part of the standard repertoire.

FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

WEINBERG Solo Violin Sonata No. 1. Violin Sonatas: No. 1; No. 4. Sonatina • Yuri Kalnits (vn); Michael Csányi-Wills (pn) • TOCCATA 0007 (78:08)

Violinist Yuri Kalnits and Michael Csányi-Wills recorded their program of violin music by the Russian composer Mieczys?aw Weinberg in two sessions: August 26–30, 2008, at Champs Hill, Coldwaltham (Sonata No. 1, Sonata No. 4, and the Sonatina), and July 13–18, 2009, at Moviefonics Studio in West London (the solo sonata). This constitutes the first volume in what will apparently be a complete set of the composer’s violin sonatas. Toccata bills the recordings of the First Sonata and the solo sonata as recording premieres.

The program opens with the three-movement First Sonata, which, according to David Fanning’s notes, Weinberg composed in 1943 after settling in Moscow. The sonata’s opening passages combine firmly tonal lyricism with sardonic punctuation, and although the harmonies eventually cloud over and grow less securely centered, they remain within a tonal orbit; and although its lyricism gives way to both slashing and motoric passages, in the manner of Dmitri Shostakovich, who inspired Weinberg, its melodic patterns hardly seem to cultivate unbroken ground. Kalnits sounds ardent—almost romantic—in his tone production (though he strops a keen edge on the angular passages), not only in the opening Allegro but especially at the outset of the Adagietto second movement. The engineers have captured his tonal glow, especially in the lower registers (they seem to have placed Csányi-Wills’s piano a slight distance behind Kalnits’s violin). The duo move alertly back and forth between the finale’s alternate cheerfulness and vigor and bring the sonata to an imposing conclusion.

The five-movement Solo Violin Sonata, 24-odd minutes in duration (in this performance), from 1964, inhabits an entirely different universe, less centered tonally, more dissonant, and less flowing both rhythmically and melodically. Thrusting in its first movement in a manner similar to that of Béla Bartók’s Solo Violin Sonata, it takes no prisoners—and neither does Kalnits, who enters into its more dour spirit, cavorting among its thorns. In the second movement, which begins after what sounds like an inconclusive final passage in the first, he shrieks his way through the predominantly double-stopped textures and effectively contrasts the aggressive pizzicatos with the more playful and lyrical sections to which they give way. Kalnits forcefully hammers the dissonant double-stops and chords of the ensuing Lento until quieter passages bring the movement to a close. The Presto, which begins almost immediately, recalls the finale of Bartók’s Solo Violin Sonata thematically, but without its ethnic outbursts. In fact, the entire sonata sounds like an internationalized version of Bartók’s, carrying its harmonic implications even further and stretching the violinist’s technique even less mercifully. Kalnits possesses ample resources to follow wherever Weinberg leads.

The Fourth Violin Sonata, from 1947, returns listeners to fringes of the First Sonata’s tonal world, although this sonata sounds much darker in the duo’s searing reading of its first movement. They dispel this atmosphere in an irresistible burst of energy in the second movement’s first section, and follow its biting premise through the cadenza that leads to the solemn conclusion. The duo’s expressive intensity makes this sonata a spellbinding emotional journey of discovery for listeners, as it must have been for the performers. Violinist Stefan Kirpal and pianist Andreas Kirpal also took this journey, on cpo 777 456 (David Fanning wrote the booklet notes for both releases), exploring the first movement’s more reflective side—as, for example, in the dark, complex opening contrapuntal piano solo—but no more ardent in the eloquent violin solo, and just about as incisive and visceral in the Allegro sections of the second movement. The Kirpal duo takes 19:58 for the journey, while Kalnits and Csányi-Wills completes it in 13:44. But how much of the atmosphere Andreas Kirpal creates in the opening piano solo would you trade for any added excitement in what follows?

The Sonatina, which Fanning assigns to 1949 and describes as an attempt to respond to the Soviet criticism that engulfed Soviet composers at the time, sounds more straightforward in its first movement, in which Kalnits alternately soars and engages in muted, plaintive conversation with Csányi-Wills, especially at the end. Violinist and pianist continue to explore this haunted ambiance through the second movement’s opening section, while he and Csányi-Wills wax extroverted in the middle section, which begins almost with the abrupt discontinuity of a separate movement. In their reading of the finale they mix ferocity with vigorous burlesque.

The release should provide a most auspicious introduction to Weinberg’s violin music, offering a chameleon-like variety that extends from the feral onslaught of the Solo Sonata to the profundities of the Fourth Sonata and to the outright melodiousness of the First. Strongly recommended for repertoire, performances, and recorded sound.

FANFARE: Robert Maxham

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It’s encouraging to see more and more of Joseph-Guy Ropartz’s music being recorded, as a casual glance at Amazon reveals. Timpani have led the way in promoting this unsung and largely forgotten composer; a couple of years ago I reviewed a delightful CD of instrumental music. I’m particularly fond of the five symphonies, a good starting point, and the six string quartets are similarly worth exploring. It’s promising that Toccata, a label to be lauded for its ventures off the beaten track, has now taken up the cause with this new release of the composer’s piano music; ‘first recordings’, as it states on 'the tin'.

Ropartz lived a long life into his nineties. He was born in Guingamp, Côtes-d'Armor, Brittany, into a wealthy family. He started off on the path of law but in 1885 entered the Paris Conservatory, where he studied harmony with Theodore Dubois and composition with Jules Massenet. It was around this time that he struck up a friendship with the Romanian composer Georges Enescu. In 1887 he entered the organ class of César Franck. In 1894 he moved to Nancy in the east of France, where he became director of the Conservatory, a post he held for the next twenty-five years. This was followed by a ten year stint (1919-29) in a similar position in Strasbourg. Retiring in 1929, he went on composing until 1953, when he was struck down with blindness. He died two years later.

Opening the disc is the suite Dans l’ombre de la montagne, the most substantial work here. The sombre narrative extends across all seven movements, with recurring motives throughout, providing an idée fixe. Ropartz takes his lead from Vincent d’Indy’s Poème des Montagnes, Op.15 and Promenades, Op. 7 by Albéric Magnard, both of which have been recorded by McCallum. She suggests that Ropartz makes direct reference to the d’Indy work in his title. The music throughout is generally of a bleak, thoughtful and reflective persuasion, with some respite being provided by the more animated and cheery fifth movement, marked ‘Ronde’. Stephanie McCallum’s performance of intensity and rhetorical eloquence has exceptional appeal.

Originally conceived as an orchestral work for the Paris Opera Ballet in 1929, Un Prélude Dominical et six pièces à danser pour chaque jour de la semaine is cast in a more joyous and optimistic vein than the previous work. The ballet characterizes each day of the week with its associated activities. The score showcases Ropartz’s more impressionistic style, and the music is awash in colour which McCallum imaginatively conveys in this piano arrangement which the composer made in 1930. I particularly like the reflective contrasts in Jeudi, the fifth movement. The jaunty swagger of Samedi brings this alluring suite to a close.

The Choral varié of 1904 clearly shows a Franckian influence, almost taking its lead from Franck’s organ chorales. Indeed, the piece was arranged for organ by Ropartz’s student and later colleague at Nancy, Louis Thirion. It consists of four variations on a chorale, each separated by a fermato, whose duration is stipulated by the composer. Having listened to the work several times, I can imagine its character more successfully expressed on the organ. The final two pieces La chanson de Marguerite: Caprice Valse and First-Love: Bluette of 1886, predate the composer’s contact with Franck. These seductively lyrical pieces have an endearing intimacy. McCallum's performances encapsulate the affability, genteel charm and captivating essence of these beguiling miniatures.

These are winning performances, warmly recorded, and make a strong case for both the attractiveness and quality of this composer’s music. Stephanie McCallum’s enthusiastic advocacy adds to the success of the mix. Peter McCallum’s detailed annotations, in English only, provide fascinating and informative background. Will there be any more of Ropartz’s piano music to come? Let's keep our fingers crossed.

– MusicWeb International (Stephen Greenbank)

In Ernst Krenek's 'Works for Violin', Christoph Schickedanz convinces with outstanding technical brilliance, multifaceted coloration and exuberant music-making.

The first of a three-part series of the famous Organ Symphonies this release commemorates the 75th anniversary of the death of organist composer and pedagogue Louis Vierne. These earliest of the Organ Symphonies steeped in rich timbres cyclic forms and the mysticism of Vierne's religious background are performed on the Goll organ of St. Martin Memmingen.

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"In the era of the great romantic pianists, it used to be the fashion at piano recitals to offer an improvisation in the same key as that of the piece that was scheduled to follow, in order to get the audience ‘in the mood’. To compensate for this lost art, I have thought of always playing one of the nocturnes before a major piano composition by Chopin. It makes these nocturnes appear more like an improvisation, to serve as counterweight to the very dense content of the Ballades, Scherzos, and Sonatas. This practice transfers smoothly the logic of a piano recital to a CD and makes more sense by allowing the listener to enjoy the contents in one stretch." - Louis Lortie

The immensely respected French-Canadian virtuoso Louis Lortie celebrates the Chopin anniversary with an album of Nocturnes and Scherzos for solo piano. These works stretch the pianist’s technique in every possible way. This Canadian pianist has long had an association with Chandos, and is recognized as one of the finest interpreters of Chopin. He first recorded Chopin’s Études for Chandos more than 20 years ago; it was named as one of the ‘50 great performances by superlative pianists’ by BBC Music Magazine. Since then he’s enjoyed an exceptionally rich performing and recording career. He won First Prize in the Busoni Competition in 1984. He was also a prize-winner at the Leeds Competition. He’s been named an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a Knight of the National Order of Quebec.

His passing most unfortunately coming on the same day as the dreaded Stalin's, Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), most fortunately, left to posterity a far better, less lethal legacy. His music, often marked rhythmically and instrumentally by the violence and war which surrounded him after his return to the Soviet Union, is all the more dramatic as a result. Few could capture that drama as well as his countryman Sviatoslav Richter, a pianist seemingly born to play his music. These 1956-8 Moscow recordings of the Sonatas Nos. 6, 7 & 9, capture Mr. Richter at the height of his interpretative powers.

Serge Rachmaninoff's piano music can serve as a powerful introduction to the instrument for those not yet familiar with classical repertoire: it's immediacy, sheer charm, and expressive power cannot fail to move even non-musical listeners. These same qualities, however, yield the most common prejudices against Rachmaninoff, especially among those who view him as a reactionary bent on easy appreciation, as if this were inherently synonymous with mediocrity. In these virtuosic performances of three Rachmaninoff solo works of which Isle of the Dead is a recording premiere Italian pianist Carlo Grante demonstrates the music's depth of thought, originality, and inventiveness, making a convincing case for it's viability today.

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