Miroirs de la musique - Luca Chiandotto

Miroirs de la musique (CVLD344)

Luca Chiandotto, piano

Aleksandr Nikolaevič Skrjabin (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 Mi bemolle minore 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, the bearer of the revolutionary idea of ​​the synesthetic union of the five senses. Its realization - to be set in the foothills of the Himalayas - requires a large orchestra, a mixed choir, dancers, incense and lighting effects. The ultimate goal is the spiritual evolution of the users of this immense work, in line with the late Romantic aesthetic. Skrjabin worked for years on this unprecedented project - albeit in debt to the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk - leaving it unfinished with his death. In addition, it is in this context that Vers la flamme finds the light, a poem in which the voice of fire is the protagonist, from the beginning in which it burns under the embers, underground and magmatic, to the increasingly intense and eager crackle, until the final in which expands uncontrollably, burning everything around it. The ecstatic conclusion is Skrjabinian, and recalls that sense of liberation that the composer craves with the Mysterium.
French face and title of this production, focused on the early twentieth century piano, is Ravel's Suite Miroirs. It consists of five episodes, each of which portrays a different subject, observed through a mirror. The musician was in fact inspired by a verse from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "The eye sees itself only by reflection, through 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. Allegro energy is outlined in a dominant and strong-willed, almost oppressive action of the first theme, which is opposed to the passive lament of the second. It can be seen from the first movement that the Sonata adheres to classical formal models, in this case, to the sonata form. The lively and light Allegro, with a grotesque atmosphere, contains fragments of dance, probably a waltz, which give it a falsely carefree and careless character. The expressive heart of the sonata lies in the third movement, the sad adagio, which develops an extremely tormented and tortured song; on 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. Between the dissonances of the minor ninth and major seventh, we reach the final stillness, an unexpected chord of B minor, provisional peace before the fourth movement. The final fugue for four voices is famous in concert halls, and combines the drama of the previous movements with very characteristic counter-tempo rhythms and jazz-derived harmonies. Surprising is the lightheartedness of the entertainment in the central section, even more so is the return to anguish in the narrow finale, in which the powerful basses are infernal drums that sanction the tragic nature that had been revealed since the first notes of the sonata.