Marco Mal Aldo

Ferruccio Busoni composed a significant number of works for two pianos throughout his life. While Bach’s pervasive influence is already evident in some of his early compositions including the Preludio e Fuga and Capriccio, it reaches its most complex and glorious expression in the definitive 1921 version of his Fantasia contrappuntistica. In the case of Schumann’s Op. 134 for piano and orchestra, Busoni simply reduced the orchestral part for a second piano. However, his skill as a master transcriber and composer is revealed in his brilliant arrangements of Mozart’s works, which also highlight the subtlety and originality of his style.

Printed in Rome in 1669, the fifteen pieces that make up the Concerto madrigalesco a tre voci diverse by Ercole Bernabei (1622-1687) are recorded here for the first time in their entirety. These madrigals transport us to Baroque Rome and the world of Flavio Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, to whom they are dedicated. They afford a glimpse of the tastes that prevailed at that time among the aristocratic families, who were convinced that the arts, and music in particular, reflected not only the power and fortune, but also the sensitivity and refinement of those who patronised them.

A brilliant Italian pianist, Marco Schiavohas a calm connection with music. He does not like competitions and admires those who are capable of transmitting any emotion, even a small one. He has been acclaimed for his mastery, variety and control of the sonorities of the piano. Attracted by nature, he is simple and spontaneous, loves life and tries to give importance to people less fortunate than himself. He loves “mozzarella”, good wine and, like a true Mediterranean, beautiful girls.

The album is a tribute to what is perhaps the most prolific year in the piano produc­tion of the great Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, 1926, also known as "the piano year" by several musicologists. During the summer months, Bartók wrote two of his most revolutionary pieces: the Piano Sonata Sz. 80 and Out of Doors Sz. 81. While the Sonata, an undisputed masterpiece of the 20th­century repertoire, presents itself as a work of great harmonic, rhythmic, and expressive complexity in its three movements of harsh and percussive character, Out of Doors, inspired by nature and rural life, is instead a cycle of five pieces distinguished by its timbral originality, for­mal freedom, and visionary ability to translate fragments of outdoor life into some­ times violent and dizzying, sometimes dreamlike and surreal sound gestures.

Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, became famous for two reasons: the bloody double murder of his first wife and her lover, and his passionate and erotic view of profane love. The Madrigals chart the changes in Gesualdos style, and contain some of the most inspired and anguished vocal works in the entire madrigal repertoire, on the themes of love, rejection, death, suffering, joy and sorrow. Brimming with often astonishing and sometimes unpredictable melodic and tonal contrasts to express the agonies and ecstacies of love, Gesualdos Madrigals show him to have been one of the most inventive and eccentric musical minds of his age.