Over several years and several decades, Domenico Scarlatti composed a new sonata for his royal piano pupil practically each week. And so something gradually evolved that can justifiably be described as his life's work. But what does a life's work mean for us today? An immense number of sonatas, 555 in total. Their grandiose diversity and originality are only actually unlocked when, instead of consuming them ne masse, you listen to just one a week. However you should then listen to this one sonata every day, just as Scarlatti originally intended. And in one fell swoop, your life is over! Can we really do them justice today? In view of this, mine and Christoph Ullrich's undertaking to stretch the production over 17 years seems appropriate. Besides this, at the same time, Christoph Ullrich is still working on other lifelong projects, such as his large-scale children's project Laterna Musica (formerly Earworm). And so with our altered perception of time, we're battling to revive the past whilst remaining modern and curious in order ot meet today's demands. But the battle is worth it! What an adventure! Because who knows what'll come out of it after 17 years? What will the fingers and ears end up doing? Will there still be music at the end of it all? In all of his playfulness, craziness and childishness, in his cacophony of hand-crossing and sensuality, this cycle can also offer something very special compared to so many others: the realization that doing more and more and doing it faster doesn't actually help. Composer in the face of the fact tha tour existence is finite.
Played by the right hands, the astonishing freshness of invention of Scarlatti’s sonatas emerges with no less brilliance on the piano than his intended harpsichord. So why not the organ, too? In fact, Scarlatti probably intended only three of his 555 surviving keyboard sonatas specifically for an organ. Yet even on the instruments of his own time, in churches and chapels across Europe and especially his native Italy and adopted home of Spain, the palette of colors offered by a well-appointed organ brings these vibrantly colored works to life without any fear of them being obscured by clouds of bass pedal or resonance. Organist Nicola Reniero explains that his selection of 19 sonatas concentrates on particularly intricate or individual examples of polyphony and fugue where the organ’s diversity of register and color may be thought to excel. He does so, however, without neglecting the principle that in Scarlatti’s music almost everything is vocal and theatrical: the introduction is like the curtain that rises; the themes are the characters, and the various sections of the piece are like scenes of a wordless drama. Reniero has chosen to avoid the kind of echo effects which would be a conventional way to introduce contrast between phrases: “I have tried instead to emphasize the originality of the harmonies or the characters of famous themes.” The album closes with the most spectacular of all Scarlatti’s fugues, K417 in D minor. It is a stunning piece not only on account of the frenzied finale and the unexpected change of scene that comes about halfway through the piece, but above all for the boundless energy that pervades it throughout. For this new recording, Reniero plays the organ of the Duomo di Desenzano in the town of Garda, a two-manual instrument first reconstructed by the Serassi Brothers and then restored and partially rebuilt by Marco Fratti in 2014.
This 2CD set represents the first release on TACET of what will ultimately become a complete recordings project of Domenico Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas. Pianist Christopf Ullrich, a prolific recording artist whose embarked on other projects of this or similar kinds, sets out in this extended journey with 30 Essercizi and 12 Sonatas.
Tacet's ongoing survey of all 555 sonatas written by the great Italian Baroque composer Domenico Scarlatti as recorded by the prolific and acclaimed pianist Christoph Ullrich reaches, with these 30 works, K.454-83, available on 2 CD's, it's fourteenth volume. "Unlike Horowitz, who brought out the inner eccentricity of the pieces, or Christian Zacharias, who liberated them from the smell of mere glamour, Ullrich waits for the moment in which the music begins to float." - Die Zeit.
The importance of Giovanni Battista Viotti in the history of violin music has long been acknowledged. One of the most original characteristics of these works is the fact that their movements are often linked, thematically, by a certain affinity in their first few bars which makes each work distinctly coherent. Viotti was a very polished composer, gifted with a rich melodic vein and an inborn sense of formal balance.
This album features three first-rate, greatly underperformed, Italian Sonatas for Violin and Piano. Respighi, Martucci, and Rota are all three wonderful composers, and it shows clearly in these works. Italian artists Fabrizio Falasca and Antonio Pompa-Baldi infuse these three great works with the life they deserve.
You know this phenomenon? You impose restrictions on yourself and watch a thing or do an operation within these limits, and as a result you extend the horizon and find a new world seeming bigger than the whole. It is like a magnifier showing new details hidden under the roughness of the surface. Welcome in the world of 555 Domenico Scarlatti piano sonatas! Most of them have only one movement with one double bar in the middle and two repetitions. In his self-created cosmos Scarlatti moves totally spontaneous, confident and unsystematical. Inside the system he breaks nearly all rules such as 4 bar scheme, style, rhythms, colors, playful like a child that does not know if there are any limits and where they are. However, you have to take the magnifier, otherwise you stay outside on the surface. This is exactly what Christoph Ullrich does. He looks for every sonata and it's character in detail and lives all the playfulness of Scarlatti with enthusiasm. The seventh release of the 17-part complete edition shows another chaotic solar system of the Scarlatti universe. Fascinating, weird, glittering and beautiful.
The keyboard works of Giacomo Gotifredo Ferrari (1763-1842) represent a synthesis of the styles circulating around Europe at the turn of the 19th century. The sonatas on this album, from his Opp. 9, 10 and 12 collections, reveal both his admiration for Mozart and his own tendencies towards Classicism, in dialogue with the French galant style, with the melodic traits of the Italian operatic style, and with the virtuosic formulae of the innovative piano music associated with Muzio Clementi. The six Balletti are more modest in scale and probably intended for domestic use by amateurs. On the other hand, the Caprice Op.8 undoubtedly addresses the power and dynamic range of the new piano, with an innovative, unresolved conclusion on the dominant. Born in the Trento region of Italy, Ferrari studied music in Verona and could play the flute, oboe, violin, viola and double bass by the age of twenty. He became friends with both Paisiello and Thomas Attwood, the friend and contemporary of Mozart, whose quartets dedicated to Haydn made a deep impact on the young Ferrari. Having written operas in Naples, in 1792 he moved to London, where he met Haydn and Clementi and quickly became a leading singing teacher, with the Princess of Wales among his pupils. It was there that he achieved his most lasting professional success. He wrote a pair of piano concertos, and about 50 sonatas. The instrument used in this recording is a replica of a five-and-a-half octave 1804 Walter und Soehne fortepiano, built by Paul McNulty in 2008. Like Ferrari, Stefania Neonato hails from the Trento region; she is now professor of fortepiano at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart, and her activities in teaching, performance and recording are concentrated on Classical-era music for fortepiano.
For many decades, students of Domenico Scarlatti, including me, have been debating about the relationship between most of Scarlatti's Sonatas and Flamenco dance. Silvia Rambaldi and Andreina Di Girolamo deserve our praise for presenting a practical demonstration that moves beyond the boundary of words, uniting dance and harpsichord performance, by means of the collaboration of the dancer Rita Marchesini, who is an expert on both Baroque and Flamenco dance. And since very often within certain Sonatas there is an alternation between the Andalusian style and the Italian one, the dancer, with her performance, demonstrates that it is possible to "play" with both styles appropriately. (Emilia Fadini) This interesting production on the harpsichord sonatas "encrypted" by Domenico Scarlatti is accompanied by a DVD rom containing the video of the sonatas for two harpsichords filmed in the performance "La festa dorata dell'anima", in which Rita Marchesini (historical dance and flamenco) and Alberto Rodriguez (Andalusian guitarist) join the harpsichordists Andreina di Girolamo and Silvia Rambaldi in this "field demonstration" of the influence of Italian and Spanish dance on the works of the great composer. The comments in the interview with the late Emilia Fadini are not to be missed.
Beethoven: The Violin Sonatas / Francescatti, Casadesus
Sony Masterworks
CD
$22.98$45.98Save 50%May 08, 2020
These two patrician French musicians were leading lights at American Columbia from the 1940s until well into the 1960s. During World War II, violinist Zino Francescatti and pianist Robert Casadesus began performing as a duo (they were both also collaborators with Ravel early in the careers), and in the decades since then the Columbia/Sony catalogue has documented this partnership distinguished by interpretive grace and technical polish. Although Francescatti is probably best remembered for his wide-ranging concerto recordings with Bernstein, Ormandy and Bruno Walter and Casadesus for his sparkling Mozart concertos with Szell, their duo recordings were also greatly admired by music lovers, especially their landmark interpretations of the Beethoven Violin Sonatas. The first of these recordings – made in mono between 1949 and 1957 in New York, when both musicians were living in the US – comprised Nos. 3–9. A remake, this time the complete cycle, was recorded in stereo in Paris in 1958 and 1961. Now Sony Classical is reissuing all of these performances in a single 7-CD box set.
All of their recordings of Beethoven violin sonatas were held in the highest critical esteem. The mono recordings earned special praise from Gramophone in the UK for expressiveness without undue romanticism and from High Fidelity in the US for an equality between the two musicians not often found in recordings of these works. Similar plaudits for the stereo versions, Gramophone commending Francescatti’s “cool, relaxed ease and sweet tone [in the “Spring” Sonata] … Casadesus is wonderfully good, too … The playing is effortless and relaxed in the true chamber music way … Both in this [Op. 96] and the C minor Sonata they give the kind of limpid, poetic classical performances in which every detail falls miraculously into place. This is playing with a lifetime of musical experience behind it … The perspective is faultlessly calculated; but of course not even the best engineer in the world could have produced such a result without a ‘marriage of true minds’ between the performers.” High Fidelity’s reviewer referred to the players’ “general tendency towards objective clarity, rhythmic brio, and superb instrumental refinement … The entire set – flawlessly well articulated, cleanly reproduced, and with every element of Beethoven’s writing meticulously set into proper perspective – can be highly recommended.”
The new box contains two performances never before issued: the duo’s 1957 New York recordings of the “Spring” Sonata and of Op. 30 No. 1, which were apparently withheld because of the imminent commencement of the cycle’s complete remake in stereo.
The city of Modena, under the rule of the Este family, was the capital of the Dukedom of Modena e Reggio. Thanks to Duke Francesco II's fondness for the violin, music became an essential element in the most important events at the Este court, such as receptions, weddings and official visits of foreign sovereigns. These were the occasions in which the Duke displayed all his magnificence. Modena stands out for the abundance of it's collection of musical documents in the Biblioteca Estense: the library is a real mine, largely unexplored so far. This consideration gave rise to the idea of making this beautiful, extraordinarily modern music available to those who are "pursuing" culture and art. So our goal is to promote a rediscovery of the enormous heritage preserved in the Biblioteca Estense, by carrying out a meticulous study of the sources of the works of the composers who were active at the Este Court in Modena, transcribing them into modern notation and critical editions, and producing monographic recordings of them. The first step consisted in the study and recording of the instrumental works of Giovanni Battista Vitali. In this first of 6 albums dedicated to his music preserved in the Estense Library of Modena, the baroque group Italico Splendore presents the very pleasant dances of the Chamber Sonatas op. 14.
On their third CD, the outstanding concertante duo Reinhold Friedrich & Eriko Takezawa bring to life music that has hitherto lain dormant or not yet appeared in a deservedly splendid light. In their new CD production, the two exceptional artists present three new discoveries by Alexander Albrecht, Boris Asafiew and Harold Shapero, which are of the utmost importance for the trumpet-piano repertoire. Also noteworthy are the three important repertoire works, the sonatas by Thorwald Hansen, Jean Hubeau and George Antheil, which shine in completely new splendour here. The works are all set between the end of the Romantic period and the transition to the modern era. One can already speak of a historically important recording, as this is the last CD production in the "old" Hans Rosbaud Studio in Baden-Baden before the building was demolished. This acoustically valuable space was home to the great and greatest composers of our time - from Olivier Messiaen to Jorg Widmann, from Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Karlheinz Stockhausen to Peter Eotvos and Wolfgang Rihm. This album Sonatae e Variacie certainly has the potential to become a milestone in the repertoire for trumpet and piano.
Tessarini: Sei Sonate, Op. 14; Il Piacier delle dame
Tactus
CD
$21.99Sep 05, 2025
Japanese flutist Eriko Oi, winner of the International Early Music Competition in Yamanashi (Japan), is joined by harpsichordist Tung-Han Hu in this production featuring the world premiere recording of works for flute and continuo by Italian composer Carlo Tessarini, born in Rimini in the late 17th century. A violin virtuoso active throughout Europe and a prolific composer, Tessarini - like many of his contemporaries - also ventured into writing for the flute, significantly enriching the instrument's repertoire. The performance of the two collections presented in this CD demonstrates that Tessarini was undoubtedly a profound connoisseur of the flute's unique qualities, fully exploiting it's dynamic and expressive potential.
Composed in the early 19th century, the four grand piano sonatas by Carl Maria von Weber round out the Classical age and herald in the Romantic style. All four of these sonatas are featured on this two-disc set, as well as Weber’s Rondo brilliante in E flat major, Op. 62, and Aufforderung zum Tanz, Op 65. +Pianist Michelangelo Carbonara studied at Lake Como Academy under such pianists as Dimitri Bashkirov, Leon Fleisher, Claude Frank, and Alicia de Larrocha. He has won several international competitions, including the Schubert International Piano Competition.
We do not know precisely the date of birth and death of Gaetano Sborgi, a composer who lived between the second half of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. We can say with reasonable certainty that Sborgi was born in Florence, as in the frontispiece of his sonatas he states that he is Florentine. Sborgi was chapel master and piano-forte teacher at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. He studied with his brother (or father according to Picchianti) Gasparo and then moved to Naples in the Conservatory of S. Onofrio, where he had Marco Santucci as a companion and where he stayed for seventeen years. Back in Florence "he made himself known... with several of his theatrical pieces of real good taste, and in others of different kinds. He had three works of piano sonatas printed, which show his genius and talent". Six harpsichord sonatas dedicated to Lorenzo Niccolini, ciamberlano of Peter Leopold I and Ferdinand III, can be included in the context of those compositions that show the gradual transition from the traditional harpsichord with plucked strings to the new conception, piano et forte, with struck strings. Jacopo Sibilia uses a copy of a 1783 Stein fortepiano, which can be played with two different types of action, in order to make the performance more expressive and harmonious.
Angela Hewitt's notes for this important new album describe a teenager's moment of revelation when she first came to appreciate the epic masterpiece that is the Liszt Piano Sonata. Here we have a heart-felt recording where this palpable sense of wonder is manifest alongside Hewitt's enthralling technical facility at the keyboard. The program is completed by the second half of Liszt's dazzling second Annee de pelerinage collection: The three Petrarch Sonnets and the noble Dante Sonata, the latter composed as a fund-raiser for the Bonn Beethoven monument in 1839.
Following her critically acclaimed recording of Mozart Concertos with Sir Roger Norrington and the RSNO, Francesca Dego turns to a selection of his Sonatas with her long-term recital partner Francesca Leonardi. Dego commented ‘Francesca and I have been playing together for seventeen years, more than half my life and the totality of my career. To work as a duo on a regular basis means reaching common interpretative solutions, ones that sum up each player’s qualities, and creates a great sense of mutual responsibility. What you do together somehow feels naturally complete. We decided to build this album around our very favorite Sonata, KV 454 in B flat major, which we had been performing for many years and in which Mozart’s simplicity and flamboyance coexist in perfect harmony.’
REVIEWS:
“… the balance between Dego and Leonardi is impeccable, along with the sense of two musicians singing from the same hymn sheet…If you’re looking for unfailingly tasteful and refined playing, then Dego and Leonardi neatly tick that box…”
– Gramophone (Charlotte Gardner)
“…The approach is modern-instrument with period awareness, the youthful playfulness of much of this music well caught…Dego and Leonardi’s polished and deeply considered performances of all four sonatas provide 70 minutes of unvarnished pleasure.”
– The Strad (David Threasher)
“…There is an infectious delight in give-and-take between piano and violin throughout …an exquisite recital.”
