Aldo Orvieto Togni: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 5

Camillo Togni loved the piano and fully understood the instrument’s great potential for colour and virtuosity. This final volume in the series explores Togni’s very first piano works, redolent of Chopin and Liszt, as well as pieces from his formative years of development. They include the Pezzo per pianoforte and the Fantasia a quattro voci e pedale where his use of chromaticism and contrapuntalism is vividly audible. His two cadenzas for the Mozart piano concertos reflect Togni’s endless admiration for his erstwhile teacher, the great pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.

The period 1940-44 covered in this fourth volume of the piano music of the progressive and fiercely independent Italian composer Camillo Togni saw him rethinking elements of twelve-tone technique, chromatic harmonies and lyrical impulses. The result was a unique synthesis of competing styles reflected in the inner diary of his Serenatas, of which three are heard here. The imposing Serenata No. 2, Op. 11 is a complex nocturne and the companion works are both meditative and lively. His fondness for the music of Casella is reflected in the Baroque-tinged Suite, Op. 14a whilst Busoni haunts the attractive Quattro Pezzi, Op. 22.