Duo Gazzana
The Gazzana sisters, Natascia and Raffaella, were born in Sora near Rome and formed the Duo Gazzana in the mid-1990s. Their joint musical education allowed them to develop a great sensitivity toward the conversational demands of subtle chamber music. They took additional degrees at La Sapienza University in Rome – Natascia in visual arts, Raffaella in musicology, presenting a critical review of Walton's Toccata for her dissertation.
The two musicians studied in Rome, Geneva, Brussels, Siena, Lausanne, Fiesole and Salzburg and received inspiration from prominent teachers including Bruno Canino and the Trio di Milano, Yehudi Menuhin, Corrado Romano, Uto Ughi, Piero Farulli, Pierre Amoyal, Pavel Gililov and Ruggiero Ricci. They have given recitals in many European countries, Africa, Oceania and Asia and cultivate special relations with the Far East, including guest performances in Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong, where they have also [...]
The Gazzana sisters, Natascia and Raffaella, were born in Sora near Rome and formed the Duo Gazzana in the mid-1990s. Their joint musical education allowed them to develop a great sensitivity toward the conversational demands of subtle chamber music. They took additional degrees at La Sapienza University in Rome – Natascia in visual arts, Raffaella in musicology, presenting a critical review of Walton's Toccata for her dissertation.
The two musicians studied in Rome, Geneva, Brussels, Siena, Lausanne, Fiesole and Salzburg and received inspiration from prominent teachers including Bruno Canino and the Trio di Milano, Yehudi Menuhin, Corrado Romano, Uto Ughi, Piero Farulli, Pierre Amoyal, Pavel Gililov and Ruggiero Ricci. They have given recitals in many European countries, Africa, Oceania and Asia and cultivate special relations with the Far East, including guest performances in Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong, where they have also held master-classes.Works have been dedicated to the duo by Valentin Silvestrov (Ukraine), Đặng Hữu Phúc (Vietnam), Fabio Maffei (Switzerland) and Tõnu Kõrvits (Estonia), Bruno Canino (Italy).
Five Pieces, their first recording for ECM New Series, featuring works by Takemitsu, Hindemith, Janáček and Silvestrov, was released in 2011. A second album, presenting music of Poulenc, Walton, Dallapiccola, Schnittke and Silvestrov followed in 2014. Their subsequent recording, with music by Ravel, Franck, Ligeti and Messiaen, released in 2018, was nominated by both the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) and Opus Klassik in Berlin.
The duo’s newest album, released in November 2022, finds Natascia and Raffaella venturing back to the 19. century for impassioned interpretations of Robert Schumann’s sonata op. 105 and Edvard Grieg’s sonata op.45, while premiere recordings of Estonian composer Tõnu Kõrvits’ Stalker Suite and Notturni make up the contemporary part of the programme – the pieces were composed explicitly for the Gazzanas. In an early rave-review of the album, Die Zeit and SWR’s Christine Lemke-Matwey noted that “one can hear how intimately the duo identifies with the music” and that with them “it’s not just about virtuosity or euphony, but about intuition, penetrating the score and becoming one with the music.”
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