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CD is available for purchase at Reference Music Store
Presentazione a Primo Movimento RAI RADIO 3
Video Intervista QUI
The Études-Tableaux are miniature masterpieces of an extraordinarily harmonious beauty: of form, pianistic writing, synthesis, evocative images, and not least an immense musical and technical difficulty. No further description is needed; the music is so wonderfully vivid that it is appropriate for the listener to imagine for themselves the pictures, even worlds, that each etude paints in sound. Although the repertoire is known to enthusiasts, this is a rather particular album, and contrary to convention, I shall tell you about it firsthand.
I lacked the courage to play the Études while I was a full-time pianist despite having Rakhmaninov's major works under my hands, including his formidable third concerto. As it turned out, I decided to study and record them after my life had become considerably more complex: working as an engineer by day and a pianist by night. Suffice it to say that reconciling the two is not easy. To play such repertoire at a level suitable for recording is already a significant undertaking; to do so after a complex day job is exceptionally challenging. This admission serves as context for a fundamental concept I wish to pass on to anyone who reads these words: it is possible to set seemingly impossible goals when life is already more than full, and doing so is worth it whichever the path. The challenge - won or lost - gives us invaluable teaching about ourselves and our limits (which soon prove to have been underestimated) and accumulates into a magnificent wave of broad-spectrum knowledge. What is needed is a good dose of stainless will, a predisposition to resist fatigue (sometimes suffering) and distractions from the primary objective. I would even go further: never be fully satisfied with learning, study, challenges and improvements because such satisfaction is the death of desire.
Now, coming to the particularities of this album, I begin with the fact that the piano used is my own, a beautiful Bechstein D282 that I call Albus. To own such an instrument has been a lifelong dream of mine, realized after over twenty years when, this April (2023), Albus was delivered to me directly from Berlin. The recording of this album is its inauguration. I oversaw, in detail, the preparation and tuning of the instrument and the recording of the album itself. By this, I mean that I carried out the detailed work of sound and balance engineering (positioning the microphones, balancing, acoustic treatment and recording) myself. The result I had in mind was one of detail and precision, with particular attention to creating the perfect soundscape while resembling the true character of my instrument as faithfully as possible. I chose electronics of absolute superiority with a linear frequency response and neutral timbre: Sennheiser and Schoeps microphones, omnidirectional and sub-cardioid for a sense of presence and crystalline clarity, Millennia and Rubert Neve preamplifiers to guarantee the lowest possible alteration of the natural signal, and signal cables corresponding to the quality of the components mentioned.
This process has been the fruit of years of study, experience and mistakes; dutiful thanks go to my producer, Marco Lincetto, for his precious advice. I entrusted the delicate mixing and mastering phase of the finished tracks to his expert hands, strictly in an analogue chain, as I prefer. The result is a natural-sounding, impactful recording that, with a well-designed system, brings the piano into your home in all its glory.
Concerning the works appearing on the album, I feel destined to have found this exact sequence. As someone who naturally perceives and imagines abstract worlds, this recording manifests a personal journey of sound and images that have developed in my imagination, one to which I am deeply attached and which ought to be free from further illustration. Nevertheless, beyond images that these sound-paintings evoke, and in words teetering on the edge of intelligibility, I offer the following elucidation: a beautiful iteration of sinusoidal wave functions in three spatial dimensions and one temporal, transmutable into a single, higher-order of pure space which moves sinuously, able to envelop you, interspersing moments of great impetus with those of profound reflection, sometimes dismaying but always intimate. The complete recording, which illuminates these twelve works in a specific sequence, has only confirmed this abstraction I intuited long ago. I recommend listening to this album chronologically and as a whole to better understand these words.
Rakhmaninov and me.
I could dedicate the entire album to this theme alone. Simply put, Rakhmaninov is my musical soulmate. I have dedicated the last fifteen years to studying and playing his works. His language is so much a part of me that I dedicated a whole album (Within & Without - Homage to Rakhmaninov, which collects a series of my original compositions) to the great master. With this album, I pay homage to him again, this time by playing his compositions, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth.
Recorded on the 1st and 20th of May 2023.
Released: October 30th 2023.
Download Booklet:
CD is available for purchase at Reference Music Store
Presentazione a Primo Movimento RAI RADIO 3
Video Intervista QUI
The Études-Tableaux are miniature masterpieces of an extraordinarily harmonious beauty: of form, pianistic writing, synthesis, evocative images, and not least an immense musical and technical difficulty. No further description is needed; the music is so wonderfully vivid that it is appropriate for the listener to imagine for themselves the pictures, even worlds, that each etude paints in sound. Although the repertoire is known to enthusiasts, this is a rather particular album, and contrary to convention, I shall tell you about it firsthand.
I lacked the courage to play the Études while I was a full-time pianist despite having Rakhmaninov's major works under my hands, including his formidable third concerto. As it turned out, I decided to study and record them after my life had become considerably more complex: working as an engineer by day and a pianist by night. Suffice it to say that reconciling the two is not easy. To play such repertoire at a level suitable for recording is already a significant undertaking; to do so after a complex day job is exceptionally challenging. This admission serves as context for a fundamental concept I wish to pass on to anyone who reads these words: it is possible to set seemingly impossible goals when life is already more than full, and doing so is worth it whichever the path. The challenge - won or lost - gives us invaluable teaching about ourselves and our limits (which soon prove to have been underestimated) and accumulates into a magnificent wave of broad-spectrum knowledge. What is needed is a good dose of stainless will, a predisposition to resist fatigue (sometimes suffering) and distractions from the primary objective. I would even go further: never be fully satisfied with learning, study, challenges and improvements because such satisfaction is the death of desire.
Now, coming to the particularities of this album, I begin with the fact that the piano used is my own, a beautiful Bechstein D282 that I call Albus. To own such an instrument has been a lifelong dream of mine, realized after over twenty years when, this April (2023), Albus was delivered to me directly from Berlin. The recording of this album is its inauguration. I oversaw, in detail, the preparation and tuning of the instrument and the recording of the album itself. By this, I mean that I carried out the detailed work of sound and balance engineering (positioning the microphones, balancing, acoustic treatment and recording) myself. The result I had in mind was one of detail and precision, with particular attention to creating the perfect soundscape while resembling the true character of my instrument as faithfully as possible. I chose electronics of absolute superiority with a linear frequency response and neutral timbre: Sennheiser and Schoeps microphones, omnidirectional and sub-cardioid for a sense of presence and crystalline clarity, Millennia and Rubert Neve preamplifiers to guarantee the lowest possible alteration of the natural signal, and signal cables corresponding to the quality of the components mentioned.
This process has been the fruit of years of study, experience and mistakes; dutiful thanks go to my producer, Marco Lincetto, for his precious advice. I entrusted the delicate mixing and mastering phase of the finished tracks to his expert hands, strictly in an analogue chain, as I prefer. The result is a natural-sounding, impactful recording that, with a well-designed system, brings the piano into your home in all its glory.
Concerning the works appearing on the album, I feel destined to have found this exact sequence. As someone who naturally perceives and imagines abstract worlds, this recording manifests a personal journey of sound and images that have developed in my imagination, one to which I am deeply attached and which ought to be free from further illustration. Nevertheless, beyond images that these sound-paintings evoke, and in words teetering on the edge of intelligibility, I offer the following elucidation: a beautiful iteration of sinusoidal wave functions in three spatial dimensions and one temporal, transmutable into a single, higher-order of pure space which moves sinuously, able to envelop you, interspersing moments of great impetus with those of profound reflection, sometimes dismaying but always intimate. The complete recording, which illuminates these twelve works in a specific sequence, has only confirmed this abstraction I intuited long ago. I recommend listening to this album chronologically and as a whole to better understand these words.
Rakhmaninov and me.
I could dedicate the entire album to this theme alone. Simply put, Rakhmaninov is my musical soulmate. I have dedicated the last fifteen years to studying and playing his works. His language is so much a part of me that I dedicated a whole album (Within & Without - Homage to Rakhmaninov, which collects a series of my original compositions) to the great master. With this album, I pay homage to him again, this time by playing his compositions, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth.
Recorded on the 1st and 20th of May 2023.
Released: October 30th 2023.
Download Booklet:
| Booklet.pdf |
