D&s Vol. 66

The most comprehensive tribute ever issued on record to the art of the Italian pianist Sergio Fiorentino. Many recordings here newly remastered and receiving their first-ever issue in the digital age. A landmark set for pianophiles.
This set has been curated by the collector Ernst Lumpe, who contributes a lengthy appreciation and introduction to the booklet of the set, alongside an essay by Christoph Schlüren & Ottavia Maria Maceratini. It was Lumpe who drew the pianist out of retirement during the 1990s, resulting in an ‘Indian Summer’ of recordings made in Berlin until not long before the pianist’s death in 1998. They are reissued here, alongside much less familiar solo and concerto recordings from the 1950s and 60s – ‘The Early Recordings’ – and separate sections dedicated to Fiorentino’s particular, free-wheeling mastery of Chopin and Liszt.

The most comprehensive tribute ever issued on record to the art of the Italian pianist Sergio Fiorentino. Many recordings here newly remastered and receiving their first-ever issue in the digital age. A landmark set for pianophiles.
This set has been curated by the collector Ernst Lumpe, who contributes a lengthy appreciation and introduction to the booklet of the set, alongside an essay by Christoph Schlüren & Ottavia Maria Maceratini. It was Lumpe who drew the pianist out of retirement during the 1990s, resulting in an ‘Indian Summer’ of recordings made in Berlin until not long before the pianist’s death in 1998. They are reissued here, alongside much less familiar solo and concerto recordings from the 1950s and 60s – ‘The Early Recordings’ – and separate sections dedicated to Fiorentino’s particular, free-wheeling mastery of Chopin and Liszt.

For elodie Vignon, the decision to record Debussy's complete piano works in chronological order was born of what the Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune was in Debussy's day: a revelation! For her, playing this music is like entering a cocoon that belongs to you alone. This first volume (generous with 2CDs) of the three that will make up the complete works, naturally begins with Debussy's early works, pieces directly inspired by poems by Mallarme and Verlaine and which embrace the mysterious dimension of the sensory imagination. In the years that followed, he increasingly freed music from the polarisation exerted by the tonal note, keeping the sound space open and ultimately initiating spectral music. Debussy liked to draw inspiration from memories when composing, in order to maintain a distance between his own emotions and those he wished to arouse in the listener. Alfred Cortot spoke of evoking sensations rather than feelings, thus rejecting the late-Romantic aesthetic of emotional identification between composer and listener: an obligation that seemed too constraining to Debussy to be able to give rise to an open dialogue with the listeners of his work. Giving the impression of being invented as it is played, Debussy's music invites us to dream, to better understand the complexity of the world.

For elodie Vignon, the decision to record Debussy's complete piano works in chronological order was born of what the Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune was in Debussy's day: a revelation! For her, playing this music is like entering a cocoon that belongs to you alone. This first volume (generous with 2CDs) of the three that will make up the complete works, naturally begins with Debussy's early works, pieces directly inspired by poems by Mallarme and Verlaine and which embrace the mysterious dimension of the sensory imagination. In the years that followed, he increasingly freed music from the polarisation exerted by the tonal note, keeping the sound space open and ultimately initiating spectral music. Debussy liked to draw inspiration from memories when composing, in order to maintain a distance between his own emotions and those he wished to arouse in the listener. Alfred Cortot spoke of evoking sensations rather than feelings, thus rejecting the late-Romantic aesthetic of emotional identification between composer and listener: an obligation that seemed too constraining to Debussy to be able to give rise to an open dialogue with the listeners of his work. Giving the impression of being invented as it is played, Debussy's music invites us to dream, to better understand the complexity of the world.

The most comprehensive tribute ever issued on record to the art of the Italian pianist Sergio Fiorentino. Many recordings here newly remastered and receiving their first-ever issue in the digital age. A landmark set for pianophiles. This set has been curated by the collector Ernst Lumpe, who contributes a lengthy appreciation and introduction to the booklet of the set, alongside an essay by Christoph Schlüren & Ottavia Maria Maceratini. It was Lumpe who drew the pianist out of retirement during the 1990s, resulting in an ‘Indian Summer’ of recordings made in Berlin until not long before the pianist’s death in 1998. They are reissued here, alongside much less familiar solo and concerto recordings from the 1950s and 60s – ‘The Early Recordings’ – and separate sections dedicated to Fiorentino’s particular, free-wheeling mastery of Chopin and Liszt.

The most comprehensive tribute ever issued on record to the art of the Italian pianist Sergio Fiorentino. Many recordings here newly remastered and receiving their first-ever issue in the digital age. A landmark set for pianophiles. This set has been curated by the collector Ernst Lumpe, who contributes a lengthy appreciation and introduction to the booklet of the set, alongside an essay by Christoph Schlüren & Ottavia Maria Maceratini. It was Lumpe who drew the pianist out of retirement during the 1990s, resulting in an ‘Indian Summer’ of recordings made in Berlin until not long before the pianist’s death in 1998. They are reissued here, alongside much less familiar solo and concerto recordings from the 1950s and 60s – ‘The Early Recordings’ – and separate sections dedicated to Fiorentino’s particular, free-wheeling mastery of Chopin and Liszt.