Rediscovering Himself

Within this monographic album, soprano Gabriella Morigi and pianist Adriano Tumiatti are rediscovering the vocal chamber music repertoire by Francesco Balilla Pratella belonging to the Italian Futurism, the historical literary, artistic and political movement founded by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909. The Futurism has left us great literary and figurative masterpieces yet, on its musical level, has been almost forgotten, partly due to its contemporaneity with the most famous “Generation of the Eighty.” After the Great War the wave of the futurist revolt came to weaken and Pratella devoted himself to ethnomusicological research publishing important studies and collections concerning the Italian folklore, and in particular that of his homeland, the Romagna region.

Serbian director Goran Paskaljevic prefaced a screening of Midwinter Night’s Dream by saying that it is “perhaps my only film without humor.” A modest statement, if also accurate considering its dismal subject of post-war, post-Milosevic Serbia, but so much of Paskaljevic’s humor comes from his humanism, something Midwinter Night’s Dream is severely not lacking in. The story begins with Lazar returning to the home of his mother who has died during his absence only to find it occupied by Jasna and her autistic daughter, Jovana. Initially intending to kick the family out, he decides to let them stay on and he becomes a surrogate father figure while re-acclimating himself to his new environment.

This CD is aimed at rediscovering Gaetano Amadeo, original organist and composer from Porto Maurizio (today's city of Imperia). Born in the early nineteenth century, he was immediately noted for his great predisposition to music, so much that he was sent to the famous opera composer Giovanni Pacini, who, recognizing the value of the boy, sent him to the Bologna Philharmonic Lyceum; soon afterwards Gioachino Rossini himself will introduce him to the prestigious Philharmonic Academy of the same city.

Violinist Mark Lubotsky was born in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) and grew up in Moscow. Along with Abraham Jampolsky, David Oistrakh was his most important teacher at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory there. Has has won prizes at international competitions such as Salzburg Mozart Competition and the Moscow Tchaikovsky competition. Lubotsky is deeply committed to Oistrakh’s musical ethics and this signifies the striving for maximum concurrence between emotional and intellectual components on a high technical level of interpretation.

Pianist Laurent Martin has made a personal speciality (amongst many other activities) of rediscovering overlooked French composers, left by the wayside of the mainstream repertoire. And so he has performed Castillon, Dubois, La Tombelle and Gouvy. He was one of the main architects of the resurrection of George Onslow, the composer Mel Bonis and Charles Valentin Alkan. Here he is getting into the, sadly rarely-performed, repertoire of Déodat de Séverac, who has something of the air of a nice regional Toulouse composer – but who's anything but!

Pianist Laurent Martin has made a personal speciality (amongst many other activities) of rediscovering overlooked French composers, left by the wayside of the mainstream repertoire. And so he has performed Castillon, Dubois, La Tombelle and Gouvy. He was one of the main architects of the resurrection of George Onslow, the composer Mel Bonis and Charles Valentin Alkan. Here he is getting into the, sadly rarely-performed, repertoire of Déodat de Séverac, who has something of the air of a nice regional Toulouse composer – but who's anything but!