Davide Locatelli Hyper Silent

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948) is a composer difficult to classify. A child of his time he kept aloof from the innovations of the modernists and dodecaphony. As son of a German father and a noble-born Venetian mother he was born in Venice and went to study in Munich. He became famous as an opera composer. His style is romantic, tinged with impressionism and the odd neoclassical hint. His aim was to create a “universal beauty” in his works, where no rules apply, but only a feeling of well-being and sensuousness.The keyword in this recording of the complete three Violin Sonatas is “Beauty”: far from the avant-garde and even from realism, he sought an ideal of timeless beauty, independent from the artistic movements of the moment, and for this reason he was often inspired in his works by eighteenth-century grace. Beautiful, idiomatic performances by the excellent Italian violinist David Alogna and pianist Costantino Catena, who both previously recorded for Brilliant Classics, o.a. works by Wolf Ferrari (piano works).

Diego Cantalupi ha studiato chitarra sotto la paziente guida di Mauro Storti.
Interessato ad approfondire la prassi esecutiva antica, si è diplomato in liuto con Andrea Damiani; contemporaneamente si è laureato in Musicologia presso la Scuola di Paleografia e Filologia Musicale di Cremona (Università di Pavia) svolgendo una tesi sulla storia e il repertorio della tiorba ed organizzando un piano di studi incentrato sulla musica rinascimentale e barocca, sulle notazioni antiche e sulla filologia musicale.Collabora con numerosi ensemble, tra i quali l'Arte dell'Arco, Venexiana, La Barocca, il Pomodoro, Kammerakademie Potsdam, i Solisti Filarmonici Italiani, i Solisti Veneti, e con importanti solisti, tra i quali dame Emma Kirkby, Federico Guglielmo, Sergio Azzolini.

L'Arte dell'Arco is thorough in its exploration of the Italian Baroque, recording Tartini's complete concertos and all of Vivaldi's published works.

RITOGRAFIA (1971) proposes a series of musical sketches alien from any predetermination. The episode-theme is based on a moto perpetuo in the higher-middle register of the piano, which progressively evolves towards synchronies initially consisting of two simultaneous sounds that ultimately become three, four, five or more agglomerations of sounds. The complex harmonic structures of these clusters create an ecstatic atmosphere. The form is indeterminate, and each graphic “sign” does not correspond to a specific sound but wants to evoke unexplored acoustic worlds. The title, Ritografia, precisely attests its procedure as illustrated.

The sonatas for guitar by the Mexican composer Manuel María Ponce (1882-1948) demonstrate his remarkable ability to compose music inspired by a wide variety of styles. From early romantic works like Estrellita (1912) to the more complex harmonic language of his Concierto for violin (1943), Ponce displayed extraordinary versatility.

This recording on Coviello comes from staged performances at the opera festival in Heidenheim in 2016 where, judging from the black-and-white booklet photos, the plot was relocated to an Italian pizzeria in the 1970s. Thankfully, very little stage noise can be discerned. Marcus Bosch leads the Cappella Aquileia in a buoyant account of the jaunty Overture, the main theme of which returns in the opera’s finale. His cast are young but decent, although it can’t hold a candle to the starry ensemble gathered under Lamberto Gardelli’s baton for Philips’ early Verdi series.

Born in Genoa in 1819, Carlo Andrea Gambini began his career as a piano teacher to local aristocracy thanks to his familys privileged connections. Showing equal energy and invention in both words and music, however, he soon pursued parallel activities as a composer and a critic. He was friends with both Rossini and Mercadante but held Verdis music in little esteem. His own music looks to the north of the Alps for its inspiration: to Chopin and Schumann, Thalberg and Liszt. Though he engaged in operatic composition writing a Christopher Columbus drama, for example Gambini focused his compositional energies on piano music and vocal chamber works such as the Romanzas recorded for the first time on this album.

The three previously unpublished and unrecorded chamber works in this programme were all written after Castelnuovo-Tedescos enforced move to the United States from his native Italy. Evoking the emotional day on which the composer sailed into New York for the first time, the Third Violin Concerto was composed for Jascha Heifetz specifically as a duo for violin and piano. Established as a highly regarded teacher and composer of film music, Castelnuovo-Tedesco rediscovered the joy of chamber music making as part of the Hollywood musical community.