It was to a young girl, in fact to a pupil, that Armand-Louis Couperin (b. Paris, 25th. February 1727 – d. Paris, 2nd. February 1789) dedicated his second set of harpsichord pieces. Anne-Louise-Marie de Beauvau- Craon (1750-1834) was currently receiving an education at the Port-Royal convent; an education of the finest quality which included the music lessons given by Couperin. The publication of Couperin’s Sonates en pièces de clavecin marks the end of a fifteen-year hiatus in the composer’s production, since the 1751 publication of a first book of Pièces de clavecin, dedicated to Madame Victoire de France. The prefatory “Notice” begins by underlining the probity and discretion of the author, who, although he bows to the solicitations of his friends, yet fears the judgment of the public, and who makes it his aim, in this first attempt and after mature reflection, “there to vary the colours and to be new” to mix and imitate different genres. “Sonatas in the form of harpsichord pieces” gives us the key: the renewal of the French style by the introduction of Italian elements, or rather by naturalising the Italian sonata by incorporating its novelties into the tradition of the French clavecinistes and their pieces, in a synthesis conciliating head and heart, novel in its means and effects. The resources of a harpsichord accompanied by a violin were sufficient for Couperin to combine all the force and vivacity of an orchestra with the grace of varied melodies.

The piano works on this CD date from different periods in Gian Francesco Malipiero’s creative life. From his unpublished juvenilia to the late Ricercar toccando, from the evocative Poemi asolani of 1916 to the disillusionment of the pieces written in the years following the First World War: a range of works that bear witness to the development of the composer’s conception of the piano miniature as a kind of intimate diary, between nostalgic impressions and aphoristic humour.

In the CD Lisboa-Milano the Portuguese saxophonist Manuel Teles explores the contemporary repertoire for solo saxophone, delving into the creative architecture of the scores by Italian and Portuguese authors linked to the two cities of Milan and Lisbon. The program of the CD, which unfolds between works that cover a vast period of time, from 1985-87 to 2023, features pieces by Vincenzo Parisi (Eclamre, 1985-87), Christopher Bochmann (Essay XIII, 2001), João Pedro Oliveira (Integrais IV, 1987) and Salvatore Sciarrino (Bergson's clock, 1999). The album offers itself as a singular musical journey with a wide sound horizon, in a fascinating mix of styles, references and creative ideas. Protagonist of the recording Manuel Teles, a musician with active performances in prestigious concert halls and with numerous collaborations with various orchestral realities.

After deepening the piano works of Francesco Pennisi, Stefano Cascioli undertakes the exploration of the work of the Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas (1905-2000).

The Hungarian composer had particularly close ties to Italy. This, however, was not only of decisive importance in his career but also an influence on the development of Hungarian music history through his students, which even indirectly left a mark on European music.

Farkas was the head of the composition department of the Budapest Academy of Music from 1949 to 1975; and his class produced such excellent composers as György Ligeti; György Kurtág; Emil Petrovics; Sándor Szokolay; Miklós Kocsár; Zoltán Jeney; Zsolt Durkó; and Attila Bozay. His legendary lessons played an important role in turning the interest of Hungarian composers toward Latin culture and loosening the grip of the German influence that lasted for centuries.

Farkas followed Respighi’s example both in his approach and in his referencing the musical past; but in terms of style Alfredo Casella and Gian Francesco Malipiero were closer to him. His songs and chamber works were soon successfully presented in the Italian capital; where the Teatro Indipententi performed the comedy of Amelia Della Pergola (stage name Diotima) Non ci sono più donne with his music on March 15, 1930.

The Duo got its name from the binary star Anser, a star system formed by two stars orbiting around their common centre of mass. In the same way Virginia Sutera and Alberto Braida, two different identities, revolve together around a common musical research and idea. Their first CD, ANSER, featured totally improvised pieces as well as compositions signed by the duo. In this new work, the music was entirely born in the here and now of the sound, in the very moment. Violin and piano dialogue without boundaries, finding the very essence of the duo in improvisation. Anser's music is created in the very moment it is performed; composition and performance overlap in the same gesture and instant. Sutera and Braida are both performers and authors of the music in this project: the dynamism of a single path made of relationship and creation opens to a musical world, where anybody can be transported with a free and curious spirit. The will to stretch towards unknown destinations is led with intensity and refinement: the aim is to suggest stories, images and moods, on the push of unseen musical solutions.

The first piece by Manzoni that that I have listened to was Quadruplum, for four trumpets and four trombones followed, again on vinyl, by the memorable Masse. Only much later I had the opportunity to conduct some of his orchestral works, always with voice, such as Kokin b and Allen. For its ninetieth birthday, the choice fell on two works by Anglo-Saxon authors: Dieci versi di Emily Dickinson and Parole da Beckett. The first work can be defined as a metaphor about the silence of the speech, on the vertigo of a poetic and inner world that the composer renders in extremely visionary terms. The musical horizon traced by the strings and the two harps is indeed at the same time dissociated and convergent: a string quartet and its double, a small string orchestra (ten like the verses of the poetess), are separated on the scene by a veiled diaphragm which also ideally delimits the mental and perceptive space of the composition …The Parole da Beckett score, composed by Manzoni in 1971, contains very detailed performance instructions for both the choruses and the instrumental groups; nevertheless, this study demonstrates how the aleatory sections and the presence of hidden, completely inaudible texts (shown only in the separate parts for the two choruses) leave considerable room for choice and alternative readings on the part of the performer. In fact, the apparently paradoxical tendency of the European avantgarde at the time, was on one hand to strive for an ideological liberation from the constraints of music notation, leaving the outcome of the work itself in the hands of the performer (co-author), while at the same time to provide the score with a series of such detailed instructions that it virtually became a system of ineluctable gestures and actions (thereby reducing the work simply to a series of its own performance directions).

The Lebhaft recording project was conceived and produced by clarinettist Silvia Puggioni
and pianist Claudio Sanna. It all started in 2014 when, by pure chance, the two performers
came across Hans Poser’s Sonate für Klarinette und Klavier. Since then, albeit on and off,
Puggioni and Sanna have dedicated themselves to researching this composer and studying
his music. The peak of their interest was reached in 2017 with the pubblication of the first
biography in Italian of the composer, whom they discovered to be totally unknown in Italy.
This prompted the decision to record the Sonate für Klarinette und Klavier, trying to place
it geographically and historically in its original context. Alban Berg, Paul Hindemith and
Max Reger are the other composers chosen as companions on this journey through the
musical Germany of the 20th century.

The Complete Piano Sonatas, Vol.1 is the first volume of a new project that will see Mariangela Vacatello perform the entire cycle of Scriabin's piano sonatas.

Scriabin's Piano Sonatas (the ten to which the composer assigned an opus number) date from between 1891, during the last months of his studies at the Moscow Conservatory, and 1913, in his final phase dominated by the vast project of the "Symphonic Poem" Prometheus. They thus reflect the composer's entire artistic itinerary: from the fiery romantic gestures of Liszt to the dissolution of rationality in the more symbolic esotericism. And so it happens that the musical discourse, rather than being based on an orderly succession of different figures, is transformed into a sort of efflorescence of thematic recurrences between one movement and another (in the First, Third, and Fourth) and of self-quotations between the Fifth and the following Sonatas (becoming exacerbated in the Ninth and Tenth), with a network of cross references (of trills, fanfares, arpeggios, languid chromaticisms, etc.) that makes it possible to suggest the hypothesis of a single work (as such, monstrously intricate) that embraces the Sonatas from the Fourth to the Tenth as phases of a single spiritual experience, dominated by the mysteriosophic idiosyncrasies of the philosopher and mystic Vladimir Solovyov.

Anca Vasile Caraman was born in Romania and began studying the violin at the age of 4 in her hometown with Prof. Mioara Prisada and Alexandru Piculeata. Afterwards, she attended “George Enescu” Music High School in Bucarest with Prof. Olivia Papa, Cornel Micut and Valeriu Rogacev, since 1998, the National Music University in Bucarest with Prof. Octavian Ratiu, where she graduated in 2005. In 2006, she started her Advanced Specialization study course in Violin at Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, studying with Domenico Nordio and subsequently graduating in 2009. She won 9 national prizes in Romania and 3 international prizes, the last of which won in soloist category “Rovere d’Oro 2010”. Caraman also succeeded in important international competitions such as the “Queen Elisabeth” in Brussels and the “Violin Masters” in Montecarlo and she has played as a soloist with the national orchestras of Bucharest, Ramnicu Valcea, Galati, Pitesti, Brescia. She also took part has participated in various masterclasses of violinists: Yuri Torcinsky, Mark Lubovsky, Nabueko Aseada, Giulio Franzetti, Kim Nam Num, Yvry Gitlis, Stefan Gheorghiu, Helena Bondarenko and Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli. From 2012-2018 he taught preparatory violin at the Brescia and Darfo Conservatory. He has performed concert activities in a number of productions in Italy and Romania, as well as in France, Moldova, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Japan, China, the Netherlands, Belgium and England. She currently cooperates with the pianist Enrico Pompili with whom she recorded two CDs, presenting music works by Alberto Bonera; she also plays with various chamber ensembles. In September 2018 a selection of operatic transcriptions by Antonio Bazzini, a composer from Brescia, was released with the magazine “Amadeus”, and in November of the same year the complete works in 5 CDs for “Brilliant Classics” where she performed together with the pianist Alessandro Trebeschi. For the publishing house Aldebaran she also supervised the publication of the first volume (out of four) including the arrangements of the works by A. Bazzini. In 2019 the record company BAM published Vivaldi and Piazzolla Eight Seasons, recorded in Brescia where she performed together with Bazzini Consort. In 2021 for “Stradivarius” label was released the CD with 24 Caprices of N. Paganini, the 6 Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach and the 6 Sonatas for solo violin op.27 of E. Ysaye. He is pursuing a research doctorate with the theme “Violin in the works for violin by composer Max Reger, in Musical Interpretation at the National University of Music in Bucharest (Romania) under the guidance of prof.dr.univ. Șerban Dimitrie Soreanu. From 2022 he began the conducting course, as an auditor, in the class of Maestro Gilberto Serembe at The Italian Conducting Academy.

This was my first encounter with the music of Amy Beach, an American pianist and composer of the early 1900s. I was thunderstruck by it. I asked fellow European and American musicians, pianists, conductors, soloists and musicologists who gravitate around my Theater (Teatro alla Scala, Milano) if they had any information on her, but to no avail. No one knew her. Some had heard her name, but no one had actually listened to her compositions. Today I can say that Amy Beach is almost unknown in America. I can also say that she is unknown in Europe, given the caliber of the musicians I talked to about her, and the fact that they hadn’t heard of her. Starting with manuscripts requested from the University of New Hampshire, I began transcribing four pieces and a sonata, originally written for Violin and Cello and Piano, into a version for Viola and Piano. I discovered that, not only the music, but also the incredible life of Mrs. H. H. A. Beach (that is how she signed her compositions) is a beautiful novel that remained locked in a drawer all this time. In fact, I have every intention of reopening that drawer through this CD and through the musical edition that printed my transcriptions for Viola and Piano. I believe that the instrument of the Viola and its alto key have given a new color to this music, enhancing it, but never altering its true essence. Born with this CD is a project of popularization and knowledge of Amy Beach's compositions and life story, a story and music that are at once incredibly modern and of other times. Matteo Amadasi

A solo album for clarinet inevitably becomes a test on the clarinet, on its expressive power andon the musician’s mastery in playing it. Especially if the musician plays a contemporary repertoirethat is made up of works that follow two different visions. One pays an obsessive attention to the peculiar features of the instrument, the other is apparently more indifferent to the technical limits of execution of the musical score. With his album Gian Maria Matteucci aims to unify the two visions trying to perform the score pointing out the clarinet related features. Adopting this approach of playing highlighting the role of the clarinet, in der Partitur, is for the listener an unusual and moving journey up to the spiral staircase of what the essence of the clarinet is. Let’s analyse in detail all the different stages of the experience we go through listening to Matteucci’s album “Al telaio del tempo”, where the game of implicit and explicit time, of qualitative and quantitative time, of subjective and objective time produces a large amount of moments that make it everlasting.

The album Walking on the air that I completed during lockdown consists of twelve piano pieces that are highly representative of my musical experience and life journey. They portray my youth, my passions, my afternoons spent improvising and listening to classical music and the great jazz musicians, in an attempt to reproduce their incredible harmonisations, to steal, to possess, to understand the mystery of their art. My music is also inevitably imbued with the sound of the orchestra, that of La Scala, in which I play double bass, and is nourished every day by that endless source of beauty. These pieces also evoke the sleepless nights after symphony concerts on countless tours, spent with friends and colleagues on the pianos of hotel lobbies around the world. Emanuele Pedrani

Recorded in 2022 in various places in Europe, the album includes five works for solo instruments written in different times. The most recent one, composed between 2021 and 2022, is Ikoro, which contains two double bass’ compositions (played by Emiliano Amadori, tracks no. 5 and no. 6); then, going back to 2018, we have Orizzonti ossessivi for classical guitar (played by Ruben Mattia Santorsa, track no. 3), and Sonata for solo piano (performed by Anna D’Errico, track no. 2) which was composed in 2013. The other two works started in a further period and developed at different times: Sonazzos, which gives the name to the album, was written between 2005 and 2009 (Federico Tramontana, percussion, track no. 1); Un ORA lungo un respiro, for bass clarinet, was rewritten in 2017 starting by a shorter piece dating back 2003 (clarinettist Benjamin Maneyrol, track no. 4). This discographic project aims to design a sketched geography of my sound research across some pieces for solo instruments. The compositional approach is different for every piece, however, all the works are characterised by the hybridization between a contemporary experimental style and a sound derived from the traditional culture of the Mediterranean, that was underlined in the timbre (think about ethnic instruments), in the melodies, and in the gestures (motifs or expressive mediums from oral tradition). Alessandro Milia

“ … Ne quid nimis”, “nothing more than the necessary … ” – so in the early twentieth century the philosopher Ortega y Gasset expressed his idea of a “suprarealist” art, an aesthetic capable of overcoming the sentimental sublimation of late Romanticism or positivistic Realism. It was during these years that in Spain poets, musicians, artists, composers, philosophers, were processing a new vision of the world and Spain itself. Looking at the experience of Manuel de Falla, but in a way going beyond this, the composers of the Grupo de los Ocho sought a Spanish way to create a European musical language, moving away from the passive to late Romantic folklorism. It is neoclassicism, which in Spain it takes a particular shape as casticismo, a Iberian inclination to combine the search of formal elements from its glorious past with the acquisition of popular element praised and utilized into a oneness and universal perspective. It is with this perspective that the guitar becomes the core element of this dialectic …

Inspiration and order, visionary and concrete: the compositional path shown by Edoardo Dadone could be summarized with these (and other similar, ad libitum) apparent antitheses. It is certain that any opening of the page the scores show an unceasing push towards tonal and gestural invention, ready to make use of the entire palette available to a composer today. At the same time, however, every resource, even the most surprising, is never abandoned to sterile contemplation but inserted within stringent and highly controlled formal logics: an expertly unstable balance achieved in a very short span of years, as evidenced by the dates of composition of the works here presented in a sort of first evaluation.