Gian Francesco Malipiero - Piano Concertos (Sandro Ivo Bartoli)

Information

Composer: Gian Francesco Malipiero

CD1:

• (01-03) Piano Concerto No. 1
• (04-06) Piano Concerto No. 2
• (07-09) Piano Concerto No. 3

CD2:

• (01-03) Piano Concerto No. 4
• (04-06) Piano Concerto No. 5
• (07-09) Piano Concerto No. 6 "delle macchine"
• (10) Variazioni senza tema

Sandro Ivo Bartoli, piano
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken
Michele Carulli, conductor

Date: 2007
Label: cpo

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Review

ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9

Malipiero’s six piano concertos span a good bit of his long life (he died in 1973, aged 91) and they are all of a piece. With timings of around 15 minutes, they are too short to have much of a chance of being performed live, and they’re too quirky to make it into lighter “pops” concerts. But they have very real charms, not least of which is that they sound like no one else. The keyboard writing is elegant, never heavy, and beautifully integrated into the music’s ongoing flow. Malipiero’s scoring also is generally restrained and translucent, with hints of Respighi’s modal “Gregorianism” in the earlier works, and a more knotty but still obviously tuneful chromaticism from the Fourth Concerto on.

Formally Malipiero doesn’t seem at all constrained by the German tradition. Indeed, both in terms of length and style, with their toccata-like textures in the quick outer movements and aria-like central lentos, these are more concertos in the Baroque sense, save that they don’t sound “neo” anything. In short, say what you will about their viability on the concert stage, these works have real personality and style, and it’s wonderful to have them conveniently packaged together.

Pianist Sandro Ivo Bartoli offers nicely pointed, fluid accounts of these undemanding works, and the booklet photo of him doing his Mona Lisa impression is (unintentionally?) amusing. Michele Carulli and the orchestra accompany well, and the SACD multichannel recording offers natural balances and plenty of detail. There’s something quietly compelling here. I’ve already played this set several times, and will surely return to it with pleasure in the near future. Give it a shot. [10/15/2007]

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday

More reviews:
https://www.allmusic.com/album/gian-francesco-malipiero-piano-concertos-1-6-variazioni-senza-tema-mw0001405676
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Piano-Concertos-Variazioni-Senza/dp/B000VQQJO4

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Gian Francesco Malipiero (18 March 1882 – 1 August 1973) was an Italian composer, musicologist, music teacher and editor. Malipiero studied mostly with Marco Enrico Bossi. In 1913, Malipiero moved to Paris, where he attended the première of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, and after that, repudiated almost all the compositions he had written up to that time. Malipiero had an ambivalent attitude towards the Austro-German musical tradition, and was strongly critical of sonata form. His orchestral works include seventeen compositions he called symphonies, of which however only eleven are numbered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gian_Francesco_Malipiero

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Sandro Ivo Bartoli (born February 10, 1970 in Pisa) is an Italian pianist. From the early 1990s, with Shura Cherkassky’s encouragement, Bartoli has rediscovered, played and recorded Italian classical music from the early twentieth century, leading a fashion. After this success, Bartoli signed his first recording contract, with ASV, for an album of the piano works of Malipiero. Hí world premiere recording of Malipiero's piano concertos for CPO received a Diapason D'Or/Découvert award in France. More recently, Bartoli has been involved in a project to bring back to public attention the historic opera houses of Italy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandro_Ivo_Bartoli
http://www.sandroivobartoli.com/

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