Chiara Varano

Songwriter Chiara Berardelli releases new album Archaeology in Summer 2024 - This ten track album sparkles with lyrical and musical wit and soul, a stunning collection work by an understated Scottish talent.

Starting from our common passion for Italian instrumental music of the early twentieth century, we, Chiara Burattini and Umberto Jacopo Laureti, declare that we have composed a picture (as varied as possible) around the two key figures of the world of piano (Busoni) and cello (Mainardi) of the time. From the Kultaselle variations (a youthful page, dense and full of passion) and from Busoni's seraphic Albumblatt, we passed through the Art Nouveau drawings of the Wolf-Ferrari Sonata and the Two Album Pages of Alaleona, ending with the Malipiero Sonatines and by Mainardi (the latter, together with the songs by Alaleona, in the very first recording).

Although it was not common to study Johann Sebastian Bach’s music in Italy in the nineteenth century, Ferdinando Busoni (1834-1909), a clarinet player, used it as the foundation for his son’s music education. Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924) expressed gratitude for his father’s unconventional instruction in the epilogue to his edition of Bach’s keyboard works.

Ten years after its original release, after having sold thousands of copies on CD and collected millions of plays all over the world, “Canzoni” is finally available on vinyl, in a deluxe edition – double vinyl with gatefold sleeve – the album that revealed Chiara Civello’s talent as an interpreter, attesting her artistic depth on international stages. A record which embraces the Italian musical tradition in all its facets, capable of moving through Northern Soul, Bossa Nova, Blue Eyed Soul, Jazz and Pop. Produced by Nicola Conte, recorded in analog between Bari, New York and Rio de Janeiro, and enriched by the participation of extraordinary guests, including Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, Ana Carolina and Esperanza Spalding, with orchestral arrangements by the legendary Eumir Deodato, “Canzoni” still proves to be a very successful work today, capable of honoring the beauty and depth of Italian music, demonstrating once again Civello’s status as a timeless musical icon.

In the second half of 18th century, keyboard music in Tuscany was flourishing. Many composers wrote music for both the fortepiano and the harpsichord: the former, which was invented just before the turn of the 18th century in Florence by harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731), rose to an incredible degree of popularity in the last decades of the century at the expense of the latter, which experienced the last moments of its glorious history. At any rate, it was by no means uncommon that composers published music intended to be played on either instrument, as almost all keyboard pieces written in Tuscany during the 1780s were explicitly addressed per il clavicembalo o fortepiano (for the harpsichord or piano).