Mirrors of Music - Luca Chiandotto

Miroirs de la musique (CVLD344)

Luca Chiandotto, piano

Available in: HD File, CD

Alexander Nikolaevich Scriabin (1872 – 1915)
01 - Poème op. 72 Vers la flamme (1914)   5:36 
 
Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937)
Miroirs (1905)   30:04
02 - Noctuelles  5:23
03 - Oiseaux tristes   4:33
04 - Une barque sur l’océan   7:05
05 - Alborada del gracioso   6:52
06 - La vallée des cloches   6:11
 
Samuel Barber (1910 – 1981)
Sonata in E flat minor op. 26 (1949)  21:10
07 - Allegro energico   7:30
08 - Allegro vivace e leggero   2:26
09 - Adagio mesto   5:58
10 - Fuga: Allegro con spirito   5:16
 
Total Time: 56:56

24 bit / 88.2 kHz original recording, made at Magister Recording Area, Preganziol (Italy), on October 8, 9, 10, 2021
Luca plays on Steinway & Sons D274 Concert Grandpiano, tuned and prepared by Silvano Zanta
 
Production: VELUT LUNA
Executive Producer: Marco Lincetto
Recording, mix and mastering engineer: Marco Lincetto
Musical producer and editing: Mattia Zanatta
Design: L'Image
Photo: Photoservice Latisana

 
Mysterium, an ambitious work, carrying the revolutionary idea of the synesthetic union of the five senses. Its realization - to be set at the foot of the Himalayas - requires a large orchestra, a mixed choir, dancers, incense, and light effects. The ultimate goal is the spiritual evolution of the users of this immense work, in line with late-Romantic aesthetics. Scriabin worked for years on this unprecedented project - albeit indebted to Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk - leaving it unfinished upon his death. It is in this context that Vers la flamme finds its light, a poème in which the voice of fire is the protagonist, from the beginning where it burns under the embers, subterranean and magmatic, to the increasingly intense and eager crackle, until the end where it expands uncontrollably, burning everything around it. The ecstatic conclusion is in Scriabin's style, recalling the sense of liberation that the composer yearned for with the Mysterium.
The French face and title of the present production, focused on early twentieth-century piano music, is Ravel's Suite Miroirs. It is composed of five episodes, each depicting a different subject, observed through a mirror. The musician was in fact inspired by a line from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "The eye sees not itself, but by reflection, by some other things."
Barber's Sonata can be defined as a "War Sonata", written only four years after the end of the Second World War, and characterized by explicit violence, especially in the opening and closing movements. The allegro energico is outlined in an overbearing and willful, almost oppressive, action of the first theme, which opposes the passive lament of the second. It can be seen from the first movement how the Sonata adheres to classical formal models, in this case, to the sonata form. The allegro vivace e leggero, with its grotesque atmosphere, contains fragments of dance, probably a waltz, which give it a falsely carefree and heedless character. The expressive heart of the sonata lies in the third movement, the adagio mesto, which develops an extremely tormented and agonizing song; in the second page of the score, we can witness a perfect imitation of an anguished cry, which evolves into a climax tremendously overwhelmed by reason. Among the minor ninth and major seventh dissonances, the final quietude is reached, an unexpected B minor chord, a provisional peace before the fourth movement. The final four-voice fugue is famous in concert halls, combining the drama of the previous movements with very characteristic syncopated rhythms and jazz-derived harmonies. Surprising is the carefree nature of the diversions in the central section, and even more so the return to anguish in the final stretto, where the powerful basses are infernal drums that sanction the tragedy that had been evident from the first notes of the sonata.