Ciquelo Marco Mezquida

The idea for this album came about during the recording of its predecessor Cinema Suites (BBC Music Magazine’s “Screen Choice”, Album of the Week on WDR3 etc.), when the Morricone family sent Marco Serino a number of rarities that they hoped could also be recorded, particularly “Dedicated to Maria” (from the film The Sleeping Wife ) that the composer had dedicated to his wife. These works, along with others that Serino rediscovered in his own archives, make up the backbone of Cinema Rarities , an ideal sequel to the previous recording. After twenty years as Ennio Morricone’s chosen violinist, Serino continues his exploration of the compositions for violin and orchestra, but this time with a particular focus on pieces that, besides being less well known to the wider public, all share a degree of “Italianness”.

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.

In his opening remarks, Marco Blaauw admits that only latterly did he enjoy the extrovert tendencies of his instrument – and this recital “shows off” in exemplary fashion. Only Hanna Kulenty’s Brass No 1 is a truly abstract study: the first in a cycle of trumpet-centred pieces that puts the double-bell instrument as thoroughly and as scintillatingly through its paces as any music written from a non-jazz perspective.

Since his highly praised Carnegie Hall début in New York City, the saxophonist Marco Albonetti has been engaged for performances and master-classes around the world. He has appeared at countless Italian theatres and numerous distinguished international venues, and his concert tours have taken him to Armenia, Belgium, Canada, China, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States. Albonetti first discovered the music of Piazzolla on the day he died 4th July 1992 when RAI reported the news and broadcast his music.

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.

Transcriptions of chamber works to orchestral works have been interesting asides for composers for a long time - whether the transcription are alterations of a composer's own songs or chamber works to full orchestral size or those of other composers for which the transcriber had a particular affinity. Stokowski's transcriptions of Bach's works are probably the most familiar to audiences. The two transcriptions on this recording are the creations Gustav Mahler and his election to transcribe the quartets of Beethoven and Schubert is not surprising: Mahler 'transcribed' many of his own songs into movements or portions of movements for his own symphonies. Listening to Mahler's transcriptions of these two well known quartets - Franz Schubert's String Quartet in D Minor 'Death and the Maiden' and Ludwig van Beethoven's String Quartet in F Minor 'Serioso' - provides insight into both the orginal compositions and the orchestration concepts of Gustav Mahler. The themes of these two works would naturally appeal to Mahler's somber nature. Mahler naturally extends the tonal sound of each of these transcriptions by using the full string orchestra and in both works it is readily apparent that his compositional techniques within string sections are ever present.