ITALIAN MUSIC FOR GUITAR AND PIANO (Remastered) ( CVLD377 )

Author : AAVV
Performer : Lapo Vannucci (guitar), Luca Torrigiani (piano)

Tracklist

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 - 9'35"
06 - Preludio - 3'00"
07 - Danza - 3'01"
08- Finale - 3'34"
Luigi Giachino Il silenzio del tempo - 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: The 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.

New CD remastering

ITALIAN MUSIC FOR GUITAR AND PIANO

ITALIAN MUSIC FOR PIANO AND GUITAR
The cliché is that the marriage between piano and guitar turns out to be a complicated puzzle for both composers and performers: the sounds and approaches of the two instruments are too distant, their amalgamation is too unbalanced, the volume developed is too different, the way of 'thinking' or building harmonies is divergent. In short, when put together, piano and guitar tend to immediately reveal themselves to be almost incompatible. Furthermore, if you don't rely on even a minimal amplification of the guitar, the piano will find itself forced to play almost always 'on tiptoe'. Despite this, and despite the cliché, several composers, especially in the twentieth century, have managed to obtain splendid results through a skillful work on the 'full' and 'empty' of their respective instruments, a very particular attention to an unconventional dialogue, filigree writing and, obviously, a good dose of instinct which never hurts. The album you have in your hands is a testament to these results and features a series of original works for guitar and piano composed between 1950 and today by well-known and lesser-known Italian authors.

The journey begins in 1950 with one of the composers who, willingly or not, has most closely linked his name to the guitar, namely the Florentine Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) who wrote the Fantasia op. 145 in two short, tasty movements dedicating it to Andrés Segovia and his wife, the pianist Francesca 'Paquita' Madriguera Rodon. A miracle of balance that is influenced by inescapable French influences but also shows an extrovert and personal lyrical inspiration, always balanced between Spanish atmospheres and a completely Italian, or rather, Tuscan, singability.
Another 'conjugal' piece that boasts the title of Fantasia is the page in a single movement that the Brescian composer Franco Margola (1908-1992) wrote in October 1979 and that was dedicated to the duo formed by the guitarist Guido Margaria and his wife Emilia. It is a quiet work with neo-baroque movements in which the writing, however, shows a happy hand in making the two instruments dialogue, in truth shrewdly seeking more a constant alternation than an effective superposition.
Another piece dedicated to the duo Margaria is the short Improvviso, composed between November 1979 and the spring of 1980, which differs little from the atmosphere of the previous one.
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 meditative and restless page, wooden, full of archaisms and at the same time bearer of a resigned modernity, deliberately 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 the Paduan Adrano Lincetto (1936-1996), composed in 1981 and divided into three movements (Molto lento. Poco mosso – Allegro molto – Finale. Molto moderato e cantabile. Allegro vivo) is undoubtedly a less sibylline work, far from any modern or postmodern complication, woven with a modal language that features numerous seventh chords.
This rich anthology ends with two pieces written specifically for Lapo Vannucci and Luca Torrigiani and dedicated to them. Il silenzio del tempo by Turin-born Luigi Giachino (1962) dates back to 2015 and is a four-movement suite tinged with jazz veins and almost impressionist flavours.
Completely different is Winter Time by Sicilian Giuseppe Crapisi (1967), who in an incisive page of about six minutes mixes repetitive and stubborn gestures typical of minimalism with a more elegiac vein. In this case the two instruments rarely alternate, often finding themselves weaving their delicate and rhythmic plots mostly at the same time.
Ennio Hope