Juventas Ensemble - Raspberry Man - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Piano arrangements were the main way for people to become acquainted with concert repertoire in Schumann's day, and publishers ensured that the huge demand for such versions was met. Otto Dresel's arrangement of the String Quartet, Op. 41, No. 3 was approved by the composer. Clara Schumann was dedicatee and soloist for the Piano Quintet, Op. 44, and she was able to draw on her intimate knowledge of her husband's work to make her own highly effective arrangement. This is the first of seven volumes including Schumann's entire orchestral works arranged for piano duet. Mariko and Volker Eckerle founded the Eckerle Piano Duoin 2006. The German-Japanese duo regularly plays central works of the piano duet repertoire along with rarely heard pieces and works, accompanied by other musicians, actors and ballet companies.

The Milanese composer Riccardo Malipiero was born in Milan in 1914 and took lessons with his uncle, Gian Francesco Malipiero in the late 30s. Malipiero disowned all that he wrote up until 1938 and saved only a small amount of that written before 1945 the surviving early pieces show the influence of his uncle's teaching and the neo-classicism of Casella and Stravinsky. However, influenced by Luigi Dallapiccola, he came to embrace a personal, lyrical language of 12-tone composition which ultimately traces it's roots back to the music of Berg. The four-movement Violin Sonata from 1956 makes an ideal introduction to Riccardo Malipiero's music, with a nervous, waltz-like Scherzo and a frozen slow movement leading into the finale's extensive violin cadenza, beautifully written for the instrument and played here by Rebecca Raimondi with burning conviction as well as ferocious accuracy (she included the sonata within her Master's recital at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, from which she graduated in 2017). At her graduation recital she was accompanied by Alessandro Viale, and together with the other members of the Rest Ensemble they have given concerts of Malipiero's music in both the UK and Italy, lending to these studio recordings the ring of intimacy and impassioned authenticity that is rare in recordings of unfamiliar modernist music. The Piano Trio of 1969 sets a tougher challenge to both performers and listeners, more angular and explosive, yet still imbued with a strain of wit and grace that runs through his output.

Ensemble MidtVest - Chamber Music 1 [COMPACT DISCS] date 09/27/2011