Stefano Cascioli - Ferenc Farkas: Piano Works, Vol. 2 - Stefano Cascioli (piano) - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Various Artists - Dinner Classics 1 / Various [COMPACT DISCS] Boxed Set date 01/25/2011

The Viennese-born Carl Czerny (1791-1857) is best remembered for his countless pedagogical studies, hundreds and hundreds of them. But his astonishing fecundity - his opus numbers go up to 861, and there is much more music than that - has obscured the fact that he was an important composer in his own right, his works forming a link between Beethoven (his teacher) and Liszt (his student), between the Classical and Romantic eras. The four pieces recorded here - two for two pianos and two for piano four-hands - were intended to impress the salons of Biedermeier Vienna. The titles of three of them contain the word 'brillant' Czerny's intention was to dazzle and entertain, and that's just what this sparkling music does.

This recording contains Francesco Pennisi's (Acireale, 11 February 1934 - Rome, 8 October 2000) complete works for solo piano, according to the latest catalogue. The piano compositions have rarely been performed and studied even less frequently, for many reasons. They are concise and liberated at first sight from a serious commitment to composition and open to 'other' dimensions compared to his main production, since they unfold playfully, almost with nostalgia. This recording not only has the merit of restoring Pennisi's piano repertoire to it's full entirety for the first time, but it illustrates it's due importance in the composer's active pursuit of an underlying texture of echoes, sounds, and resonances. Pennisi's piano pieces were composed in the period between the late 50s (Sei pezzi brevi, 1957) and the year 2000 (Na nuttata tanta ranni. Un canto natalizio etneo trascritto dalla memoria, 2000). Pennisi is one of the leading exponents of Roman avant-garde music in the period following the Second World War. Initially selftaught, influenced by Dallapiccola's music, Pennisi moved to Rome to study composition with Robert W. Mann, while attending university. He was one of the founders of the Nuova Consonanza Association, which is still a reference point for the promotion of new Italian music. Not only was Pennisi a composer, but he was also a graphic artist, painter, set designer and writer.