Scelsi / Simonacci - Music For Cello Solo - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

?The essential contribution that Milan-born Giovanni Battista Sammartini (c.1700-1775) made to the history of music is universally recognised. He laid the foundations for the Classical symphony he helped establish the standard composition of the orchestra and promoted independence and individual timbres in his part-writing, while Baroque customs (most notably the basso continuo) gradually gave way to sonata form. In terms of repertoire and recordings, however, Sammartini is still a relative rarity; if you set aside his symphonies and start investigating his chamber music and works for solo instruments, for example, it is soon apparent that many enthralling compositions remain silently filed away in libraries and archives, waiting patiently for the recognition they deserve. The programme on this record ventures into this very partially unexplored terrain, showcasing a selection of sonatas for cello and basso continuo the collection of six from his Op.4, published in Paris in 1742, and two sonatas of uncertain date, one in G major and the other in G minor. Although more modest than the symphonies, the cello sonatas display a similar penchant for succinct and elegant writing. Often simple in form, their brilliance stems from the inventiveness of the melody and rhythm and moments of particularly intense and expressive lyricism that are not reliant on excessive ornamentation. Christoph Willibald Gluck, according to some sources, studied under Sammartini there are plenty of moments in the cello sonatas where echoes of what must have inspired the German master can be heard. When Franz Joseph Haydn was alive, he was also considered to owe a great deal to Sammartini; this seems to have struck a nerve, as he felt the need to distance himself from these claims, even calling his Italian colleague a 'pencil pusher'. However, it is important to note the confusing history behind

The Venetian-born Antonio Caldara was the son of Giuseppe Caldara, a violinist and, allegedly, a youthful pupil of Giovanni Legrenzi. For more than thirty-five of the forty years of his creative life, vocal music - whether in the shape of cantatas, operas, oratorios or liturgical settings- dominated his output. Yet Caldara began his career by the late 1860s as cellist at the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, and returned to his instrument, if briefly, within eighteen months of his death. Composed five years before the publication of the famous cello sonatas of the most famous Venetian, Antonio Vivaldi, the collection of sixteen sonatas by Antonio Caldara represent a substantial contribution to the late Baroque repertoire of sonatas for solo cello. Those selected for this recording reveal that they come from a collection enriched by experience and maturity, warmed by a fluid and flexible melodic style, enlivened by chromatically enriched harmony, sophisticated in craftsmanship, and imbued with a spirit of confident independence. Album Tracks 1. Sonata Ottava in E-Flat Major 2. Sonata Undecima in G minor 3. Sonata Sedicesima in G Major 4. Sonata Quarta in D minor 5. Sonata Quattordicesima in a Minor 6. Sonata Decimaquinta in a Major 7. Sonata Dodicesima in D minor 8. Sonata Nona in G Major

When the Catalan cellist Pablo Casals revived the solo suites of Bach in the first decades of the last century, he reminded both audiences and composers of the huge potential of his instrument to hold the stage in it's own right, no less than a violin or a piano. Inspired by his charisma, and that of his successors such as Tortelier and Rostropovich, many modern composers have followed Bach's example. The Italian cellist presents music by ten of them on this exciting debut album for Brilliant Classics. Tortelier and Rostropovich are represented by their own, little-known but highly imaginative works - a Circus Suite and an innocently titled but fearsomely challenging study respectively. Carter Brey, the principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic, has also written for the instrument with inside knowledge, in a tango of big, seductive gestures preceded on Tarantino's album by Latin-themed showpieces from Albeniz, Piazzolla and Rogerio y Taguell. Each half of the album is brought to a reflective close with a soliloquy by the modern Italian composer Giovanni Sollima. The cello's melancholy moods are further explored by Ilse de Ziah and Sebastian Diezig, but Tarantino has chosen and ordered his repertoire to display the cello's expressive range to it's fullest. Mixing familiar and little-known composers, it's a perfect introduction to the ever-expanding universe of solo cello music beyond Bach. Born in 1977, Luciano Tarantino is a performer and teacher with his origins in Puglia, in the far south of Italy. He has played with many of today's greatest conductors and founded a music festival in the region of his birth. On this recording he plays a fine 1736 cello by Antonio Testore. Album Tracks 1. Suite Mon Cirque 2. Sonata Op. 134 3. Study in E Flat 4. Suite 5. Toccata Capricciosa Op. 36 6. Alone 7. Asturia 8. Tango Etude No. 3 9. Suite Espagnole N