Giuseppe Tartini was born in Pirano d’Istria in 1692 but spent the majority of his life in Padua. He was not a lover of fame: indeed, it took Padre Martini a great deal of time and convincing before managing to obtain a portrait of Tartini for his private collection (this original portrait, painted by Vincenzo Rota, is the only one we have today). Despite all this, however, young musicians arrived from all over Europe to study with this musician who, essentially self-taught, had dedicated his life to perfecting the violin from both a technical and theoretical standpoint. In the not insignificant output of this “Master of Nations” (as he was called), the violin predominates, for Tartini composed few works other than the concertos and sonatas dedicated to this noble instrument. The justification for this choice may be found in his theoretical writings, which represented for the eighteenth century a new moment of discovery and evolution. Implored by many to compose for the opera in Venice, he responded that “a throat is not a neck of a violin,” and this comment was followed by a strong criticism of Vivaldi, who instead tried his hand at virtually every genre. This album features the concertos for flute, for strings, and various sonatas including the famous “Trillo del Diavolo.” The two soloists Massimo Mercelli and Marco Rogliano are accompanied by the Ensemble Respighi from Bologna.
A. Clementi, Tansman, Milhaud, Ibert & Dvorak: Flute Sonatin
Dynamic
CD
$18.99Jan 30, 2026
This programme presents a fascinating excursion through the flute literature from 1893 to 1957, providing a glimpse into the evolution of the sonatina - a title suggesting music of greater brevity and stylistic freedom than that of a sonata. Qualities of a delightful sense of fun and simple effectiveness are shared in Petr Eben and Pal Jardanyi's pieces, while the Fox Trot in Alexandre Tansman's Sonatine reminds us of the popularity of jazz in 1920s Paris. Composed during his time in America, Dvorak's renowned Sonatina for violin and piano is heard here in an adaptation by Luisa Sello and Bruno Canino.
The fundamentally Romantic idiom of Carl Reinecke coexists with the twilight of the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th century. He was a precocious and prolific composer, who wrote music from an early age after his birth in the North German town of Altona in 1924. The last of his three cello sonatas was composed in the year of 1898 once he had retired from teaching duties at the Leipzig Conservatoire to become its director, while the first of them was composed in 1848, when Reinecke was serving as a young and brilliantly accomplished court pianist in Copenhagen. The trio of sonatas thus spans his maturity and effectively traces certain strands of his development as a composer. All three of them hew to the standard quick-slow-quick three-movement form in which the sonata’s argument is outlined by a discursive first movement, deepened by a reflective intermezzo and rounded off with an extrovert rondo finale. When it was belatedly published in 1855, the A minor Sonata won such popularity that Reinecke was soon asked to make a violin version of the piece. The dedicatee was Andreas Grabau, a cellist in the Gewandhaus Orchestra of which Mendelssohn was director, and indeed, the sonata rejoices in a quickness of thought and lively spirit which Felix would have recognized and appreciated. The D major Sonata Op.89 was composed in 1866 and published by Breitkopf & Hartel with a dedication to Carl Voigt. Is this a ‘midde-aged’ Reinecke? Certainly the first movement stands back from the high drama of the First Sonata, or at any rate gives way periodically to a very cellistic mode of introspection, inviting comparison in this regard with the recently composed E minor Cello Sonata of Brahms.
Diogenio Bigaglia, a composer who at present is unknown to most people, was active in Venice in the first half of the eighteenth century, so he was a contemporary of the much better known Tomaso Albinoni, Alessandro and Benedetto Marcello, and, above all, Antonio Vivaldi, whose work shows several evident – and more or less explicit – references to Bigaglia’s production. So he turns out to be a composer who is worthy of interest not only for the intrinsic musical worth of his works, but also for the influence his activity may have had on musicians with whom we are more familiar; this is why musicologists have recently started showing an increasing interest in him. This recording presents the complete "12 Sonate a Violino Solo o Sia Flauto e Violoncello o Basso Continuo Opera prima del Signor Bigaglia Padre Benedettino", as this work is called in the title page of the edition published in Amsterdam by Michel Charles Le Cène around 1722 . Davide Belosio solo violin interprets this world premiere recording accompanied by I Solisti Ambrosiani, already protagonists of a previous release dedicated to the rediscovery of the Venetian composer (v. Diogenio Bigaglia, Cantate per soprano e continuo, Tactus, TC670203).
Albéniz, I.: Piano Sonatas Nos. 3-5 / Suite ancienne Nos. 1-
Piano Classics
CD
$21.99Dec 06, 2019
Albéniz wrote seven piano sonatas during the 1880s, but only Nos. 3, 4, and 5 survive as complete works. As with so much of his output they are now better known in the form of guitar transcriptions - at least for Nos. 3 and 5 - but the piano originals show the same fantastical imagination and romantic temperament as his masterpiece Iberia, while conforming to a more conventionally Classical form. Their craftsmanship in harmony, scoring, and voice-leading are beyond reproach, but it is the lyric sweep and often playful touches of harmony that secure their place on the fringes of the repertoire. As a pianist, Albéniz was a noted interpreter of 18th-century music - not only Bach and Scarlatti but also Handel, Couperin and Rameau - at a time when such music was often disparaged as dryly academic or old- fashioned. The Suites anciennes are an early example of musical neoclassicism, comprising suites of gavottes, minuets, sarabandes and chaconnes in his own tribute to the Baroque era. But then the minuets, rondos and well-worked counterpoint to be enjoyed in the three sonatas also belong to an earlier era. The Fourth is a particular highlight, establishing Albéniz as the leading Spanish composer of keyboard sonatas since Antonio Soler, but the others are every bit it's equal in craftsmanship and elegance. Sebastian Stanley is a British pianist who has specialized in the piano music of Spain, making well-received recordings of the Danzas Espanolas and Goyescas by Granados. This is his debut album on Brilliant Classics, enhanced by booklet notes by the noted authority on Spanish piano music, Walter A. Clark.
Inspired by the power and clarity of an extraordinary instrument handcrafted by a legendary guitarrero from Granada, guitar virtuoso Stephen Marchionda presents his very own personal versions of Bach's Sonata in A Minor and the Suite in E Major; and together with the Lute Suite BWV 997 he has created an album that masterfully combines polyphonic intimacy with sonorous opulence.
This first volume of a complete Mozart Piano Sonata series from pianist Orli Shaham is dedicated to the three B-flat Major sonatas. Shaham embarked upon this project in August 2019. It follows her widely acclaimed release of Mozart Concertos with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. She combines musical and artistic insight with a deft technical virtuosity revealing an individual and sensitive musical offering. Recorded at Mechanics Hall in Massachusetts, these sonatas revel in the elegance of the Hall's acoustic. Since lockdown in March, Shaham has been releasing movements and performances from her Mozart recording sessions on her "MidWeek Mozart" to help restore souls in the current climate of the pandemic.
David Fray stands out as one of today's most distinctive French pianists, widely acclaimed for his profound interpretations of Bach. Each of his recordings is considered a major event, making this new release all the more anticipated, as it marks his return after several years of silence. This new album features masterpieces from Rameau to Scarlatti, including lesser-known composers like Royer, with a strong focus on Bach. The repertoire includes original keyboard works as well as piano transcriptions by legendary pianists such as Siloti, Kempff, Busoni, and Stradal. Additionally, the album also includes the world premiere recording of Monsaingeon's arrangement for piano of Bach's Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Minor, BWV 1003: Andante.
Evgeni Koroliov announces himself again with a recording of the Late Piano Sonatas of Beethoven (opp. 109, 110 and 111). A heavy, powerful touch is not his thing. Playing loudly where it is called for, Koroliov attempts to capture the listener’s attention in a different way, seducing one with his nuanced touch and an almost all-absorbing intensity. “If I could chose just one piece and soloist on a lonesome island, I would chose Koroliov. I would listen again and again to his recordings, dying of thirst and hunger till my last breath.” György Ligeti
Orli Shaham continues her survey of Mozart's complete Piano Sonatas in this, the fourth of a six-volume set. Shaham is revered as a "thrillingly expressive" interpreter of Mozart's works, bringing "technical virtuosity and deftness" to performances that "connect directly with an audience". Of the project as a whole, Orli Shaham says: "It has been eye-opening to look at the totality of [Mozart's] output across these sonatas. Of course, I knew them and had heard them so many times. But I had only ever thought about them in isolation, one sonata at a time, or about the small groups of three or four works written in close succession. When you become open to all eighteen sonatas as one body of work, you discover that the breadth of ideas, types of sounds, and depth of expression they contain are quite mind-boggling." The artistic genius in Mozart is that he leaves the performer to capture the mood in the music, and this Orli Shaham does with aplomb, the studio environment for this recording encouraging her to experiment and "go all out" with ornamentation, adding or subtracting trills and grace notes with successive takes.
Martin Helmchen embarks on a complete recording of Schubert's piano sonatas, with four double albums to be released between now and 2028, the bicentenary of the composer's death. He has waited until he was in his forties to embark on this adventure because, in his view, an artist needs maturity to meet the challenges posed by the radical contrasts in Schubert's sonatas: "constant virtuosity that is never needlessly complex, set against sober interiority, the exuberant joy of the Landler, and bouts of dramatic madness". Recording a complete body of work also meant studying the scores carefully and tackling the question of the movements left unfinished by the composer, should we stop at the precise point where Schubert stopped composing simply because Schubert either ran out of time or did not have enough money to buy music manuscript paper? Helmchen has chosen to complete these movements, inspired by the recordings and above all the analyses of the eminent pianist Paul Badura-Skoda. This first volume presents sonatas composed between 1815 (Schubert was 18) and 1825. The entire cycle has been recorded on a Bosendorfer piano at the Kronberg Academy.
Galuppi is an original and Napoli's performance makes this a good choice for connoisseurs of 18th century keyboard music.
Galuppi is an original and Napoli's performance makes this a good choice for connoisseurs of 18th century keyboard music.
Though Baldassare Galuppi is rightly famed for his huge contribution to opera buffa, he was also a prolific and popular composer of keyboard music, particularly sonatas. When British pianist Peter Seivewright released on the Divine Art label a programme of Galuppi's keyboard sonatas in 1999 it was the first volume in a projected complete set running to ten discs and 90 sonatas. So far, and possibly because of ill health (see footnote), Seivewright appears to have got no further than volume 3 but in the last decade more sonatas have been unearthed, and there are now known to be over 130. This is the first Naxos CD devoted to Galuppi's music, and volume 1 of his keyboard sonatas. Volume 2 has not yet been released on CD, but is available as a download.
One immediate question about this recording - major or minor, depending on individual sensitivities - is the choice of a modern pianoforte (Steinway D). There will doubtless be many who feel that Galuppi's sonatas belong on a period instrument - whether harpsichord or fortepiano. The sonorities, slender textures and delicate ornamentations of his alternately late-Baroque and forward-looking pre-Galant music are sometimes partially lost in the lush, deep sound of Napoli's piano. Nevertheless, within these self-imposed limitations, Napoli's performance here is creditable - plenty of sensitivity, no misplaced showmanship.
There is no question, however, about Galuppi's masterly, mellifluous musicianship. Sonata after sonata is packed with beautiful melody and fluent invention, and it comes as no surprise that it was not only his opera music that was in great demand. But though Galuppi was himself a keyboard virtuoso, this is idiomatic music written with an eye on, or an ear to, the amateur player - it is varied, beautiful and rewarding, without being technically overwhelming.
Often the music is quite reminiscent of Domenico Scarlatti - the outer movements of the superbly imaginative Sonata in D, for example (incidentally incorrectly catalogued by Hedda Illy in E), or the ebullient two-and-a-half minute, one-movement Sonata in C, Illy 98. There are also reverberations of C.P.E. Bach, as in the refined Sonata in F and the thoughtful Sonata in F minor, and even of J.S. Bach, as in the Sonata in G.
But Galuppi is an original, without doubt, and Napoli's performance makes this altogether a good choice for connoisseurs of 18th century keyboard music, particularly those for whom the idiosyncratic colour of the harpsichord or fortepiano holds little attraction.
Sound quality is generally high, although the Sonata in C, Illy 57 does have a couple of minor imperfections that sound suspiciously like edit joins.
-- Byzantion, MusicWeb International Footnote The reviewer refers to Peter Seivewright’s ongoing series having halted at volume 3 ‘possibly due to ill health’. I want to point out for the benefit of potential customers (and the music industry) that Peter is very well indeed – he did in fact undergo surgery not too long ago but is doing very well; his projects (which include several CDs of Bach, a Reger disc and a series of American Piano Sonatas, have also been held up due to his work commitments – he moved from Scotland to help set up and manage the new Department of Music at the University of Trinidad and Tobago. His fourth volume of Galuppi has been recorded and will appear in due course, hopefully with the other projected volumes to follow a little more quickly than heretofore. Stephen Sutton (Divine Art)
The most extensive survey ever produced of music by an outstanding Baroque violinist-composer whose accomplishment and originality has only been rediscovered in recent years. In 2009, Brilliant Classics released the first album ever dedicated to the music of Carlo Tessarini. His music had featured before in a few compilations of Italian Baroque chamber music, but only with this, and three further collections also issued by Brilliant Classics, has the stature of Tessarini become clear, as among the most individual and impressive contemporaries of better-known violinist-composers such as Pietro Locatelli and Arcangelo Corelli. This set compiles several of those previous albums to present an attractive, budget-priced introduction to the appealing world of Tessarini. The historically informed interpretations communicate a lively sympathy for his music, and extensive booklet notes give full details of his life and career, in so far as they can be traced in the historical record, as well as discussions of the salient features of the music. Born in the Adriatic port of Rimini in 1690, Tessarini moved north to Venice for his training, and joined the musicians attached to the Basilica San Marco. His own compositions seemed to have travelled across Europe before he did, thanks to their fresh and appealing melodies and elegant construction. Thus his rising reputation enabled him to undertake extensive tours as a violinist, and eventually he settled in Holland (possibly the city of Arnhem), where he died in 1767. The Op.9 collection of trio sonatas dates from Tessarini's years in Venice and then Urbino, while the Op 12 and Op.14 set of sonatas belong to his touring years in the late 1740s. Engaging and various as these collections are in themselves, they only scratch the surface of Tessarini's productivity. He published at least 20 opus-numbered collections, and his surviving output amounts to around 280 works including 40 concertos. While his music could be summarised as a skilful synthesis between a Vivaldian, Venetian idiom and a new, French-accented galant style, Tessarini evolved and developed like every artist of note, and this set traces a portion of that personal development. Anyone who has not encountered Tessarini before will find that this set presents an ideal opportunity to make amends.
Fazil Say brings together two, highly contrasted Viennese piano sonatas, composed at either end of the Romantic era. Conceived on an epic scale in four movements, Schubert's Sonata in B flat major was written shortly before his death in 1828, while in 1909 Alban Berg ushered in Modernism with his opus 1, the compact, haunting Piano Sonata in B minor. "Schubert was only thirty when he died," writes Fazil Say. "There is unique depth of sorrow and melancholy here, the pain of parting from this world. At the same time, we feel Schubert's joy of life, his vitality, his attachment, his passion, even his defiance." While the Schubert sonata is a recent addition to Say's repertoire, he explains that "I first encountered Alban Berg's piano sonata at the age of 15, and I performed it as a student in Ankara... he became one of the main figures who opened the door for me to contemporary music... His opus 1, while anchored in B minor, sails boldly toward atonality and modern expression... The piano is used almost orchestrally, full of colour and intensity. It is a remarkably beautiful piece."
Antonio Soler’s eminent position at the eighteenth-century Spanish court led to a series of important works, both sacred and secular. Of them, the best known are his keyboard sonatas, many of which were written for the young prince, Don Gabriel, son of Carlos III. The sonatas manage to absorb the influence of Domenico Scarlatti but also exude the prevailing modernist trends of Vienna. Some are designed in pairs, and many employ subtle echo effects, syncopation and exciting, athletic leaps that show his delight in repetition and contrast. This is Volume 3 of the complete Soler Keyboard Sonatas.
A New York Times Top 25 Classical Track Choice for 2020
A European bestseller in their time, Händel’s 1720 suites are far from having regained, in concert and on disc, the eminent place they once held. Does the fault lie with the anathema pronounced by the ‘pope’ Gustav Leonhardt, who always openly shunned Händel? With the man himself, a startling virtuoso, but keener to compose for the opera? With recordings that are often pleasant but rarely showcase the strongest personalities of their generation?
Three decades after the exceptional Scott Ross, Pierre Hantaï in his turn is determined to rehabilitate Händel the harpsichord composer.
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REVIEW:
Handel’s eight suites for harpsichord have sometimes been viewed more or less as training exercises. Pierre Hantaï, known for his vivid Scarlatti, dispels the slightly derogatory preconceptions with suave danciness and lucid touch.
Bufaletti: Piano Works; Dedicated pieces; Sound documents
Tactus
CD
$29.99Aug 30, 2024
This very interesting monographic recording is dedicated to the figure of Federico Bufaletti, a forgotten artist and main exponent of that Neapolitan piano school that at the end of the nineteenth century moved to Turin. The album is based on an in-depth investigation into the dual role of the Bufaletti composer and pianist: in addition to presenting his complete piano works, we have the recovery of rare recordings of the early twentieth century with the artist performing pieces by Scarlatti, Debussy, Mozart, Liszt, and others. The album also includes works dedicated to Bufaletti by exponents of the Italian piano school such as Alessandro Longo, Costantino Palumbo, Gaetano Foschini, and Pietro Floridia. The interpreter of Bufaletti's music is pianist Massimiliano Genot, already appreciated for having brought to light the piano works by Giuseppe Unia (on TC812101).
