ITALIAN MUSIC FOR GUITAR AND PIANO - Lapo Vannucci | Luca Torrigiani

ITALIAN MUSIC FOR GUITAR AND PIANO (CVLD275)

Lapo Vannucci (guitar) - Luca Torrigiani (piano)

Mario Castelnuovo -Tedesco
Fantasia op.145 - Tot. Time: 9'14"
01 - Andantino. Un poco mosso e scorrevole. Più mosso, danzante. Sempre mosso e festoso. Tempo I - 5'21"
02 - Vivacissimo - 3'53"
Franco Margola
03 - Fantasia - 7'11"
04 - Improvviso - 3'02"
Carlo Mosso
05 - Fantasia - 6'08"
Adriano Lincetto
Divertimento a due - Tot. Time: 9'35"
06 - Preludio - 3'00"
07 - Danza - 3'01"
08- Finale - 3'34"
Luigi Giachino Il silenzio del tempo - Tot. Time: 11'22"
09 - Incosciente - 2'52"
10 - Ineluttabile - 2'47"
11 - Viaggiando - 2'10"
12 - Congedo - 3'33"
Giuseppe Crapisi
13 - Winter Time - 5'59"
Tot. Time: 52'35"

24bit/88.2 kHz original recording made at Magister Area Studio, Italy, on September 14rd-15th, 2015

Production: Velut Luna
Executive Producer: Marco Lincetto
Recording Engineers: Marco Lincetto
Editing Engineer: Mattia Zanatta
Mix and Mastering Engineer: Marco Lincetto
Photo: Marco Lincetto
English translation: Lesley Burgon
Graphics and Layout: L’Image

Lapo Vannucci plays on Guitar Masaki Sakurai Model Maestro-RF, especially made for Lapo Vannucci.
Luca Torrigiani plays on Steinway & Sons D274 Concert Grandpiano.

Italian music for piano and guitar
The cliché wants the union between piano and guitar to be resolved in a complicated rebus for both composers and performers: too distant sounds and approaches of the two instruments, too unbalanced their amalgam, too different the volume developed, diverging the way of 'thinking' or building harmonies. Put together, piano and guitar tend to be almost incompatible. In addition, if you do not rely on a minimum amplification of the guitar, the piano will find itself forced to play almost always 'on tiptoe'. Despite this, and despite the commonplace, several composers, especially in the twentieth century, have managed to achieve splendid results through a wise work on the 'full' and his 'empty' of their respective instruments, special attention to an unconventional dialogue, a watermarked writing and, of course, a good dose of instinct that never hurts. The record that you have in your hands is the testimony of these results and sees a series of original works for guitar and piano composed between 1950 and today by Italian authors known and less known.

The journey began in 1950 with one of the composers who, willingly or unwillingly on his part, has mostly linked his name to that of the guitar, namely the Florentine Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) who wrote the Fantasia op. 145 in two brief, savory movements dedicated to Andrés Segovia and his wife pianist Francesca 'Paquita' Madriguera Rodon. A miracle of balance that suffers from unavoidable French influences but that also shows an extroverted and personal lyrical inspiration, always poised between Spanish atmospheres and an all-Italian, or rather Tuscan, cantabilità.
Another 'conjugal' song that boasts the title of Fantasia is the page in a single movement that the composer from Brescia Franco Margola (1908-1992) wrote in October 1979 and that was dedicated to the duo formed by guitarist Guido Margaria and his wife Emilia. It is a quiet work with neo-baroque movements in which writing, shows however a happy hand in making dialogue between the two instruments actually trying cunningly more a constant alternation than an actual overlap.Altro track dedicated to the duo Margaria is the short Improvviso, composed between November 1979 and the spring of 1980, that little differs from the atmosphere of the previous.
Another Fantasia - and another piece dedicated to the duo Margaria - is the composition that the Piedmontese of transalpine origins Carlo Mosso (1931-1995) wrote in 1980. A page meditative and restless, wooden, full of archaisms and at the same time bearer of a resigned modernity, intentionally rough, built around a few melodic cells developed through a modal path that in some points recalls both the language of the Swiss Frank Martin and the beloved Gian Francesco Malipiero.
The Divertimento a due by Adrano Lincetto from Padua (1936-1996) composed in 1981 and divided into three movements (Very slow. Little moved - Allegro molto - Finale. Very moderate and cantabile. Allegro vivo) is undoubtedly a less Sibillino work, far from any complication both modern and postmodern, woven with a modal language in which there are numerous seventh chords.
This rich anthology ends with two passages written expressly for Lapo Vannucci and Luca Torrigiani and dedicated to them. The silence of the time of Luigi Giachino from Turin (1962) dates back to 2015 and is a four-stroke suite tinged with jazz veins and almost impressionist flavors.
Not at all different is Winter Time by Sicilian Giuseppe Crapisi (1967), which in an incisive page of about six minutes mixes repetitive and stubborn gestures typical of minimalism to a more elegiac vein. In this case the two instruments rarely alternate, often finding themselves weaving their textures now delicate and rhythmic mostly contemporary.Ennio Speranza

Lapo Vannucci and Luca Torrigiani:

Since 2010 Lapo Vannucci and Luca Torrigiani form a duo born from a deep friendship, with the intent to explore new areas of music for guitar and piano.Both graduated with honors at the Conservatory "Luigi Cherubini" of Florence, deepen their studies at prestigious musical institutions such as the Academy "Meetings with the Master" of Imola, the School of Music of Fiesole, the École Normale de Musique de Paris "Alfred Cortot".
In parallel with the intense solo activity, as a duo they regularly perform in Italy and abroad, receiving unanimous approval everywhere. The critics exalt its great communicative ability and constant attention to the beauty of sound. Particularly active in the field of contemporary music, they performed for the first time songs dedicated to them by the composers Luigi Giachino and Giuseppe Crapisi. With the Philharmonic "Ion Dumitrescu" of Râmnicu Vâlcea and the Philharmonic "Mihail Jora" of Bacău they performed "Three Landscapes": a concert for guitar, piano and string orchestra written for the duo by composer Francesco Di Fiore.