Classical Music

Across the XXth century, creative musical thinking has increasingly focused not only on the organization of sound, but also on the generation and production of musical sound itself: in that direction, the role of electrocoustic composition has been fundamental, if not crucial. One might view Agostino Di Scipio's work as belonging to such creative musical framework. It shows a remarkable maturity in compositional conception, characterized since the beginning by two peculiar traits: a definite sonic imagination - just as harsh as much captivating - and a special interest for different sorts of "systems", that Di Scipio embeds in his works as instances of reality (historical and present) in an interplay of interactions of both experiential and conceptual nature. The piano, seen as a complex cluster of cultural references - with it's complicated mechanics, with playing techniques of both traditional and experimental origins, with the grandeur of it's repertoire born across the centuries and still practiced today - is an overloaded token of historical reality for today's composers, keen or not to take over it's implications. The five works collected here (representing Di Scipio's entire piano oeuvre, as of today) seem to reflect various manners of conceptualizing and re-shaping the piano, by situating it in a hyper-system of live electronics means. Underlying is a strategy of feedback, a web of interactions among different components of non-linear and adaptive nature - a web that ideally extends itself to potentially also include innumerable other systems in it's instantaneous and unforeseeable feedback dynamics, and thus open to an "ecological" aesthetics.

Classical Music

The five composers contributing to the musical selections of this album were each chosen through the idea of tracing the presence of composers of Jewish origin who wrote for oboe and piano in twentieth century European music. One can also find a work by Antal Dorati. His inclusion in this release is based on his statement from 1981, when he declared to be "of mixed blood, with a prevalence of Jewish blood." Thus we have the opportunity, in this context, to discover a work of intense and playful creativity: the Duo concertante for oboe and piano.

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is the "pièces" that show Marais’ mastery in interpreting with great originality the resources of the jeu d’harmonie, in a variety of technical solutions. These are sometimes vey demanding, ever more associated with stylistic or expressive inventions, also these new and sometimes strange. Still more obvious are the peculiarities of writing and character of these pieces in an execution on solo viol without the support of the basso continuo, integrating it if necessary into the harmony. On the other hand, it is evident how the inclination of Marais approached that of De Machy, who included the viola da gamba (low register), with the harpsichord, lute, theorbo and guitar among the instruments “qui font d’harmonie d’eux-mêmes”, without the need for additional parts.

Luigi Dallapiccola was an Italian composer who specialized in lyrical, twelve-tone compositions. Dallapiccola's career was quite irregular throughout his lifetime, inspired by Wagner to begin composing and inspired by Debussy to stop. Camillo Togni was also an Italian composer was greatly inspired by Schoenberg and developed his own technique in not only composition but in his piano playing as well.

The Accademia Strumentale Italiana was founded in Verona in 1981 with the specific purpose of recreating the atmospheres of those ancient and illustrious academies, where the pleasure of meeting one another gave a special flavour to making music together. It's repertoire encompasses instrumental and vocal music ranging from the Renaissance to the early Baroque, performed according to strict philological canons, but without compromising it's ability to comunicate with the present. The Accademia has performed extensively in Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Germany and has been invited to several international festivals where it has always met with widespread critical acclaim. The pieces on this new release are centered around a single idea: comedy. Each piece has an element of humor and would have been used to lighten the mood on stage.

Classical Music

Very few contemporary composers are capable of creating music, or more precisely, 'philisophical sound works', in the manner of Carlo Alessandro Landini. The sensations evoked by his music in the listener are a continuous and incessant reminder of the concept of space-thought, of heart becoming mind.The Arditti Quartet enjoys a world-wide reputation for their spirited and technically refined interpretations of contemporary and earlier 20th century music. Many hundreds of string quartets and other chamber works have been written for the ensemble since its foundation by first violinist Irvine Arditti in 1974. Many of these works have left a permanent mark on 20th century repertoire and have given the Arditti Quartet a firm place in music history. World premieres of quartets by composers such as Abrahamsen, Ades, Andriessen, Aperghis, Birtwistle, Britten, Cage, Rihm, Scelsi, Sciarrino, Stockhausen and Xenakis and hundreds more show the wide range of music in the Arditti Quartet’s repertoire. The ensemble believes that close collaboration with composers is vital to the process of interpreting modern music and therefore attempts to work with every composer it plays. The players’ commitment to educational work is indicated by their masterclasses and workshops for young performers and composers all over the world.

The recording is a tribute to Ettore Desderi (1892-1974) and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968), two composers of about the same age, highly influenced in their formation by Ildebrando Pizzetti, both sharing the same cultivated and refined compositive vision, love for poetry as a source of inspiration, deep curiosity in the musical expressivity of the guitar, which ended up in Desderi regrettably too soon. With the intent of uniting and giving value to the two authors' works for guitar, we collected Desderi's complete works for solo guitar and made a first world recording of their two beautiful works for voice and guitar, which were composed within only a few years of each other: Desderi's Due Cacce quattrocentesche (1955) and Castelnuovo- Tedesco's Vogelweide, Ein Lieder-Cyclus op. 186 (1960). If Castelnuovo-Tedesco is universally known for his contribution to the guitar repertoire, Desderi still needs to be rediscovered and appreciated. Born in Asti, he was a professor of composition in Bolzano and Milan - Castiglioni and Donatoni were among his students - Director of the Liceo Musicale of Alessandria and of the Conservatory of Bologna, a versatile composer, an essayist, a critic and a music promoter as well. He took a degree in architecture from the Polytechnic of Turin in 1920, and a second degree in composition with Alfano in Bologna in 1921. Moreover, he had the opportunity to study in Florence with Pizzetti. A short trip to Germany in 1928 brought him close to the International Sacred Music Association, of which he founded, in the same year, an Italian section. The great reviews he received by German music critics to his cantata Job linked him to the German culture, especially in the field of sacred music.

At least in their titles, almost all the pieces in this release evoke extra-musical semantic horizons. Thus we are prompted in listening to refer to the meanings evoked by the titles, however indefinite they may be. Rossella Spinosa is a musician accustomed to interpreting the composition linguistically, since she is a prolific composer of music for silent films. Her scores are not only merely accompaniments, but rather comments on the images by an artistic language autonomous and parallel to the visual, but for this very reason effective and synergetic. Her pieces recount, on a different level and through a language that is neither conceptual nor descriptive, what happens in silent films. Something similar takes place in her production created outside the relationship with images, like the pieces on this album.

Classical Music

Classical Music