Giovanni Sgambati: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 1
Composer: Giovanni Sgambati
Artist: Gaia Federica Caporiccio (piano)Born in Rome in 1841, Giovanni Sgambati cut an impressive but relatively familiar figure as a prodigious young virtuoso until, as a 21-year-old keyboard lion in the making, he was introduced to Franz Liszt. The encounter changed Sgambati’s life. Liszt, perhaps the single most influential figure in European musical life in the middle of the 19th century, took the young Sgambati under his wing, and his faith was richly repaid. Still in his 20s, Sgambati conducted the Italian premiere of the Dante Symphony and even the premiere of the first (lengthy) part of the Christus oratorio.
There is an irony that the single piece through which his name has travelled worldwide is a piano Melodie, a sensuously achieved transcription of the Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice. Guaranteed to hush a rapturous audience into silence, it became the much-loved encore piece for the late Nelson Freire, among others.
Too little of Sgambati’s music for his own instrument is known beyond the Melodie. This neglect is being redressed in style by the Italian pianist Gaia Federica Caporiccio, born in Florence in 1988. The first volume of a projected complete series of Sgambati’s piano works proceeds in mostly chronological fashion. Thus the curtain is drawn back with a flourish in the Gothic, Bachian arpeggios of the Prelude and Fugue Op.6.
The two Etudes de Concert Op.10 already show Sgambati’s gift for sketching a tone-painting while focusing on a particular piece of technique. While Sgambati made considerable use of patterned keyboard figurations to seize an audience’s imagination, He was scarcely less adept than Schumann or Chopin at outlining a mood and then drawing a veil over it. Thus there are no sonatas or even long-form ballades here, but a series of evocative impromptus, lyric pieces and nocturnes, each of them memorable in their own right, adding up to an absorbing portrait of a young pianist-composer with Romantic-era Europe at his feet.
Born in Florence in 1988, Gaia Federica Caporiccio’s first encountered the piano at the age of 5 showing a clear interest and an undeniable musical gift. At the age of 18, she received the Bachelor Diploma at the "Cherubini" Conservatory. Two years later, she obtained the Master in Music Performance – Concert with highest score. During the following years, she refined her art by attending some of the best musical academies with Pietro De Maria, Marian Mika, and Vovka Ashkenazy, performing in many concerts and winning several Piano Competitions.
Tracklist:
Prélude et fugue in E-Flat Minor, Op. 6:
0:00:00 I. Prélude
0:03:45 II. Fugue2 Études de concert, Op. 10:
0:11:17 I. Tranquillo
0:16:03 II. Agitato0:23:23 Étude triomphale in A Major
6 Pièces lyriques, Op. 23:
0:25:46 I. Rapelle-toi!
0:28:46 II. Á la Fontaine
0:30:50 III. Vox populi
0:34:11 IV. Do-do
0:36:51 V. Ländler
0:38:23 VI. Gigue0:40:07 Sérénade valsée
0:43:31 Nocturne No. 1 in B Minor, Op. 20
0:47:31 Nocturne No. 2 in G Major, Op. 20
0:50:05 Nocturne No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 20
0:55:49 Nocturne in B Major per l'album di Bellini
1:01:07 Nocturne in D-Flat Major, Op. 31
1:05:25 Nocturne in E Major, Op. 33
1:09:41 Nocturne in G MajorImpromptus:
1:13:38 I. Allegretto in E- Flat Major
1:17:39 II. Allegro moderato in B-Flat Major
1:20:51 III. Allegretto grazioso in E-Flat Major
1:25:28 IV. Animato allegramente in E Major
1:30:45 V. Andantino in A Major
1:33:15 VI. Allegro appassionato ma non troppo mosso in F-Sharp Minor1:38:09 Gavotte in A-Flat Minor, Op. 14