This is the recording debut of Italian sisters Natascia and Raffaella Gazzana, named for the “Five Pieces” for violin and piano by Valentin Silvestrov which conclude the album. These works – a gently-pulsing elegy, a serenade, an intermezzo, a barcarole, a ghostly nocturne – receive their international release here in a context which combines the familiar and the far-flung, as Duo Gazzana finds creative affinities between the music of four very different composers. “The programme as a whole is typical of the duo’s inquiring and sensitive approach to repertory”, writes Paul Griffiths in the liner notes. “What we hear here is a vital freshness”.
Five Pieces - Takemitsu / Hindemith / Janáček / Silvestrov
Duo Gazzana
- 1Distance de fée (1951)
06:22 - Sonata in E (1935)
- 2Ruhig bewegt03:32
- 3Langsam - Sehr lebhaft05:50
- Sonata
- 4Con moto05:05
- 5Ballada. Con moto04:21
- 6Allegretto02:25
- 7Adagio04:09
- Five Pieces (2004)
- 8Elegie. Andante larghetto02:59
- 9Serenade. Moderato03:08
- 10Intermezzo. Moderato02:38
- 11Barcarole. Andantino03:13
- 12Nocturne. Larghetto03:08
"First recording of the young and highly promising sisters Natascia and Raffaella Gazzana with the album “Five Pieces”. The album title is taken from the work by Valentin Silvestrov, living Ukrainian composer, and the duo, in ‘Elegie’, develop – from a few traces of notes, and with candid pictorial simplicity - lyrical themes which allude to the world of the romantic ‘Wanderer’. (…) The duo possess a wide spectrum of interpretative possibilities, as they show in Takemitsu’s crepuscular ‘Distance de fée’, in the structured symmetries of Hindemith’s Sonate in E, and in a passionate sonata by Janáček, where technical mastery is united with the ability to dive deep into the tormented Slavic soul."
Riccardo Lenzi, L’Espresso
"È un disco di grande eleganza quello del duo Gazzana […] ascoltiamo il suono estremamente pulito di questo cd, merito delle sorelle Gazzana e della qualità tecnica della registrazione. […] Che sia musica „contemporanea“ o „del nostro tempo“, il disco possiede una forte coerenza. La diversità deglie stili, peraltro sembra risiedere tutta nel „recupero“ operato da Silvestrov di sonorità precedenti a quelle presentate dagli altri autori. Il repertorio inconsueto e la qualità dell’execuzione rendono itneressante questo disco così riflessivo."
Giovanni Desideri, Giudizio Universale
“Five Pieces” führen die Geigerin Natascia Gazzana und die Pianistin Raffaella Gazzana von Paul Hindemith bis Valentin Silvestrov. Dabei können sie auf eine musikalische Sensibilität bauen, die über die Spielkompetenz hinaus dem Programm Tiefe, Nachdruck, Bedeutung verleiht. Zwei Schwester sind doch mehr als nur ein Duo.
Paul Hammerthal, Sono Magazin
"„Five Pieces“: il titolo dell’album è tratto dai brani che concludono l’album e che Valentin Silvestrov ha dedicato nel 2004 a Gidon Kremer. Eccetto proprio questi ultimi […] lunare il clima di „Distance de fée“ di Toru Takemitsu, col suo carattere sognante e l’uso degli armonici; della „Sonata in mi maggiore“ di Paul Hindemith lodiamo l’intensa interpretazione del movimento lento."
Bresciaoggi
"Troviamo conferma nel recente CD realizzato dal duo Gazzana, il cui filo nasce da una poetica pagina di Takemitsu, „Distance de fée“ per concludersi nelle cinque trepide pagine di Valentin Silvestrov, ad incorniciare due più forti Sonate, quella in mi die Hindemith e quella di Janacek. A dire di una coerenza sotterranea animata da un modo di vivere la dimensione del suono, mai concluso entro una stringente visione strutturale ma un suono che „respira“, che si libra bell’aria. Sensazione che si coglie felicemente nella intesa delle due giovani sorelle, Natascia violinista e Raffaella pianista, che appunto sembrano dividere, con la loro strumentalità ben collaudata, la particolare atmosfera generata da queste opere, il carattere rapsodico, nelle asprezze come negli abbandoni, della struggente Sonata del musicista ceco come nel passo eloquente del discorrere hindemithiano. […] tra cui, appunto, l’ucraino Silvestrov i cui „Five Pieces“, nella fresca quanto lirica proposta del Duo Gazzana, lasciano intendere una natura poetica di incantevole fascino."
La Gazzetta di Parma
"Cammeo insolito nel catalogo ECM: un duo italino. Natascia e Raffaella Gazzana, sorelle die sangue e di temperamento, offrono un impaginato ricco e raffinato, ben caratterizzando i Novecenti diversi di Janacek, Hindemith, Takemitsu e Silvestrov: quest’ultimo, coi “Five Pieces”, è un soprendente capolavoro."
Il Sole 24 ore
"La musica scorre fluida. Accarezza. A modo suo. Anche negli intervalli più dissonanti. Le due giovani interpreti … recitano, sussurrano, addolciscono le note di Silvestrov, le affondano nel pianissimo per poi riportale a vita nuova."
Corriere della Sera – Bologna
"Natascia e Raffaella, classiche con brio – curiose ed eclettiche, le due sorelle Gazzana. […] Il duo possiede poi un ampio spettro di possibilità interpretative, come dimostrano un crepuscolare “Distance de fée” di Takemitsu, le ordinate simmetrie della Sonata in Mi di Hindemith e un’appassionata Sonata di Janacek, dove il dominio tecnico si unisce alla capacità di scavare nella tormentata anima slava."
Riccardo Lenzi, L’Espresso
This is the recording debut of Italian sisters Natascia and Raffaella Gazzana, named for the “Five Pieces” for violin and piano by Valentin Silvestrov which conclude the album. These works – a gently-pulsing elegy, a serenade, an intermezzo, a barcarole, a ghostly nocturne – receive their international release here in a context which combines the familiar and the far-flung, as Duo Gazzana finds creative affinities between the music of four very different composers. “The programme as a whole is typical of the duo’s inquiring and sensitive approach to repertory”, writes Paul Griffiths in the liner notes. “What we hear here is a vital freshness”.
Unorthodox perspectives inform both the programme and the duo’s approach to it. The album begins with Tōru Takemitsu’s “Distance de fée”, written in 1951 when the composer, as yet in pursuit of a stylistic identity, was still strongly influenced by Messiaen and Debussy, Europeans who themselves were looking eastward for inspiration. Distance and proximity are underlying themes here. Two worlds, Wolfgang Sandner suggests, are combined yet not reconciled in “Distance de fée”, which nonetheless anticipates the haiku-like vividness of later Takemitsu, the composer who would say, “I’d like to produce sounds that are as intense as silence.”
Paul Hindemith’s 1935 Sonata in E, travelling from pastoral beginnings to harmonic complexity, offers challenges to which the Duo Gazzana respond adroitly, likewise the Janáček Violin Sonata with its balance of lyrical flow and expressive gestures. One historical connection between the two works is that Hindemith gave the international premiere of the Janáček piece in Frankfurt in 1923. Janáček had begun the Sonata in 1914 as the First World War was erupting (“I could just about hear the sound of the steel clashing in my troubled head”, he would later write), and continued to revise the music over the next several years. It is one of his most concentrated chamber pieces, packing a wealth of detail into its four movements, and also amongst his most impassioned music, juxtaposing dense writing in the piano and expansive thematic material in the violin. Contrasts are explored, also with conflicting elements, as in the final movement where – as critic John Tyrell has remarked – ‘interruption motifs’ from the violin, tiny repetitive fragments, challenge the broad-arched melodies of the piano.
The album “Five Pieces” was recorded in March 2011 in Auditorio Radiotelevisione Svizzera, Lugano.
Unorthodox perspectives inform both the programme and the duo’s approach to it. The album begins with Tōru Takemitsu’s “Distance de fée”, written in 1951 when the composer, as yet in pursuit of a stylistic identity, was still strongly influenced by Messiaen and Debussy, Europeans who themselves were looking eastward for inspiration. Distance and proximity are underlying themes here. Two worlds, Wolfgang Sandner suggests, are combined yet not reconciled in “Distance de fée”, which nonetheless anticipates the haiku-like vividness of later Takemitsu, the composer who would say, “I’d like to produce sounds that are as intense as silence.”
Paul Hindemith’s 1935 Sonata in E, travelling from pastoral beginnings to harmonic complexity, offers challenges to which the Duo Gazzana respond adroitly, likewise the Janáček Violin Sonata with its balance of lyrical flow and expressive gestures. One historical connection between the two works is that Hindemith gave the international premiere of the Janáček piece in Frankfurt in 1923. Janáček had begun the Sonata in 1914 as the First World War was erupting (“I could just about hear the sound of the steel clashing in my troubled head”, he would later write), and continued to revise the music over the next several years. It is one of his most concentrated chamber pieces, packing a wealth of detail into its four movements, and also amongst his most impassioned music, juxtaposing dense writing in the piano and expansive thematic material in the violin. Contrasts are explored, also with conflicting elements, as in the final movement where – as critic John Tyrell has remarked – ‘interruption motifs’ from the violin, tiny repetitive fragments, challenge the broad-arched melodies of the piano.
The album “Five Pieces” was recorded in March 2011 in Auditorio Radiotelevisione Svizzera, Lugano.
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