Aldo Fiorentin - Complete Piano Works - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Niccolò Castiglioni was one of the most singular figures on the Italian music scene of the latter half of the 20th century. Including world première recordings, Volume 1of this complete edition reveals the exceptional quality of Castiglioni's early piano works, the cantabile solemnity found in his exploration of twelve-tone techniques, and the quest for simplicity in later pieces that include the Seconda sonatina discovered among the composer's papers after his death. The acclaimed pianist Aldo Orvieto has recorded and performed extensively throughout his career and is a specialist in Italian 20th-century repertoire.

Volume 1 (of 4) of the complete piano music of the influential Italian composer, teacher and pianist Camillo Togni features both original works and transcriptions of Mahler and Bach. Togni's fascination with the Second Viennese and Darmstadt Schools is evident in works that are notable not only for their fine craftmanship and technical brilliance but for their poetic depth and eloquence. Acclaimed soloist Aldo Orvieto's Ex Novo Ensemble has also recorded Togni's chamber works (Naxos 8.572074).

Within the context of the wide and multifaceted creative activity of Gian Francesco Malipiero (Venice, 1882 - Treviso, 1973), piano production represents a marginal branch, or at least one that was developed less systematically. However, there are about thirty titles - spread over more than sixty years - in which the most typical forms of Malipiero's language find perfect expression from the melancholy restlessness of the first works to the clear expressive intensity of the last ones. Malipiero is not a pianist - in his youth he half-heartedly studied the violin and then for some time the bassoon - but the piano will always be his working instrument. In the large studio on the first floor of the Asolo house, surrounded by a vast library, a grand piano from the FIP (Fabbrica Italiana Pianoforti) will be his companion for a long time. InchPianists who perform my piano works are rare. Perhaps they feel that the piano does not love me. However, I bear no grudge against this strange enemy of mine, on the contrary, I am very much in love with certain piano sounds, with their brightness. I understand the poetry of the keyboard and the vibrations of the most complete sound organism, but acrobatic virtuosity sickens me.Inch The result, however, is an imaginative and coherent world, one of the most original and unique of the first half of the twentieth century in Italy.