Pieces of Dreams (2023) [KHA]
Alessandro Viale piano
Rebecca Raimondi violin
Recorded on January 5, 6, 7, 2018
at Abbey Rocchi Studios, Rome, Italy
Sound engineer: Tommaso Cancellieri
Editing: Alessandro Viale and Rebecca Raimondi
Mixing and mastering: Tommaso Cancellieri
Piano: Steinway Model D
Piano technician: Roberto Girolami
Cover Image: Landscape by Paul Cézanne
Courtesy of The Met Museum
TRACKLIST
1) Arvo Pärt Spiegel im Spiegel
2) John Cage Six Melodies: No.3
3) Lera Auerbach Prelude No. 15 (Op. 46) Adagio sognando
4) David Lang Light moving
5) C. W. Gluck Orfeo ed Euridice: Melody (arr. by G. Sgambati)
David Winkler: Chamber Music (2023) [Da Vinci]
It is really a pleasure to provide this introduction for my composer colleague David Winkler. David and I first began to collaborate in 2012 when he was composing the Piano Quintet with Double Bass for the Martha Argerich Project and its 2013 Festival in Lugano, SW. This CD, featuring a solo sonatina, an extended one movement cello sonata and then finally the Piano Quintet, a major work of three movements, shows great variety in melody, harmony and form. […] It is a great joy to participate in the development of this work, to shepherd its world premiere and to introduce its first recording. After the Lugano premiere my colleague Martha Argerich remarked “what a beautiful work and what an amazing composer” and in my opinion, “David Winkler is one of the greatest composers of our time whose style possesses unique characteristics”.
Enrico Fagone, double bassist, conductor
Performed by Alessandro Viale, Gabriele Baldocci, Ignazio Alayza, Valentina Ciardelli, Andrey Tchekmazov, Manuel De Almeida-Ferrer, Svetlana Gorokhovich, Urška Horvat
https://davinci-edition.com/product/c00716/
Reviewed on: Musicvoice.it
Piano Chillout (2022) [KHA]
Relaxing... peaceful... piano classics... chillout... some of the greatest composers of classical and contemporary music...
KHA Records is proud to announce the release of the new album PIANO CHILLOUT: 22 Relaxing Classical Piano Themes by Various Artist;
featuring music of Handel, Satie, Yiruma, Chopin, Arvo Pärt, Mozart, Philip Glass, Gurdjieff, Kancheli, Max Richter, Brahms, Sommacal, Aphex Twin, Pelēcis, Mussorgsky, Silvestrov and Alessandra Celletti.
Performed by Alessandro Viale, Alessandro Stella, Andrea Bellini, Alessandra Celletti, Mario Sollazzo and Andrea Corazziari
https://album.link/i/1629137286
Moments of Vision (2021) [Sheva Contemporary]
British composers Robin Holloway and Peter Seabourne have instantly recognisable, distinctive voices which readily communicate and place them apart from many of their contemporaries. Their piano trios, in quite different ways, are both masterworks worthy of a wide audience, combining beauty, energy, wit, elegance and passion. They are complemented by Holloway’s luminous “Moments of Vision”, described as a “song cycle for speaker”, written originally for Sir Peter Pears. Performances here by Avant Trio are brimming with colour and energy, and the exceptional recorded sound truly places the listener among the musicians. A disc of which the label is justifiably especially proud!
AVANT PIANO TRIO
Rebecca Raimondi (violin), Urska Horvat (cello), Alessandro Viale (piano)
with Benjamin Harris (speaker) and Peter Britton (percussion)
SH271CD [62:28]
Reviewed on: The Art Music Lounge (winner of the What a performance! prize), Limelight, Pizzicato, The Arts Desk.
Marco Quagliarini: Ricercare (2020) [Stradivarius]
In this monographic CD, dedicated to the Italian composer Marco Quagliarini, Rebecca Raimondi and Alessandro Viale perform his three Ricercare. In these three pieces, each of them 15 to 20 minutes long, the term ricercare has “the double meaning of interior and structural research”. The third one, for violin solo, was written for and dedicated to Rebecca Raimondi.
DUO ARDORÈ
Rebecca Raimondi (violin) and Alessandro Viale (piano)
Cover painting by Marco Crispano.
STR 37152 [54:56]
Reviewed on: Pizzicato, Percorsi Musicali, Blow Up
Geoffrey Álvarez: Hölderlinfenster (2020) [Sheva Contemporary]
The German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin spent most of his life in isolation in a tower on the banks of the Neckar river, following a mental illness. His poems have long fascinated composers. 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of his birth. The Nicaraguan-British composer Geoffrey Álvarez’s monumental song cycle, “Hölderlinfenster” imagines the poet through a “frame” of Schubert’s “Schwanengesang”. Poet and composer never met in real life but perhaps here their spirits do. Álvarez writes music of great intensity and intimate drama on a sometimes epic scale. His highly personal tonal language defies easy categorisation but conveys a “Hölderlin river journey” with admirable expressiveness.
April Fredrick (soprano)
Alessandro Viale (piano)
SHEVA SH250 [118:37]
Reviewed on: Pizzicato ★★★★★ , The Art Music Lounge (winner of the What a performance! prize)
Riccardo Malipiero: Chamber Music (2020) [Brilliant Classics]
A recording endorsed by the Edizioni Suvini Zerboni and the Centro Internazionale di Studi “Riccardo Malipiero”. Riccardo Malipiero’s chamber music works recorded in this CD span from 1956 to 1987. Since 1946, the Milanese composer adheres to dodecaphony: he will always consider it a technique and not an aesthetic and, as such, he will make full use of it, exploring its expressive possibilities with great ingeniousness and naturalness.
REST ENSEMBLE
VIOLIN Rebecca Raimondi
VIOLA Daniele Valabrega
CELLO Michele Marco Rossi
PIANO Alessandro Viale
Recorded at the Auditorium of the Casa delle Culture e della Musica, in Velletri, by Luca Burocchi e Daniele Marinelli, Studio Teclas.
Reviewed on: Rivista Musica, Planet Hugill, The Art Music Lounge, Clicmusique
MINIMAL WORKS (2019) [Kha Records]
Minimal Works is an album that presents sixteen minimalist music pieces by different authors, from J. Cage and G. Ligeti to contemporaries A. Pärt and M. Richter. A sound journey in which all the composers, beyond the chronological and conceptual differences, are united by an invisible thread whose intent is to remove the superfluous to return the music to its essentiality.
PIANO Alessandro Viale VIOLIN Rebecca Raimondi PIANO Assunta Cavallari
Reviewed on: textura, Planet Hugill, MusicWeb International, gothicNetwork, Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review
Broadcast by: Battiti (Rai Radio 3) and Primo Movimento (Rai Radio 3)
“Listening to the forty-eight-minute release is a bit like ingesting one delectable morsel after another, each piece an exquisite confection.” textura.org
Available in all the digital stores:
MUSIC FROM THE SPHINX (2019) [Da Vinci Publishing]
DOUBLE BASS Valentina Ciardelli, PIANO Alessandro Viale
Alessandro Viale’s “Notturno a Lerici" for double bass and piano is recorded in this CD.
Reviewed on: Khatodik, Militant Esthetix, Amici della Musica, TG Music, Corriere Bit, Silver Medal in the Global Music Award 2020
An extract from the booklet, by Valentina Ciardelli:
Music from the Sphinx is a humorous reaction to this famous quote from Arturo Toscanini:
“I will die before getting to understand women and the intonation of the double basses.” As a woman and a double bassist, that must make me doubly difficult to understand! I must indeed be a sphinx. My musical journey has been to arrange, adapt and bring to life a range of repertoire that responds to Toscanini by turning the unknowable into the approachable.”
“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible” F. Zappa
Robin Holloway’s Trios and Viola Sonata (2018) [Sheva Contemporary]
Robin Holloway is one of Britain's most commissioned composers. This disc was recorded in his presence and released to celebrate his 75th birthday year. Rest Ensemble presents sparkling performances of three chamber works, beautifully capturing the music's many facets - lyricism, invention, virtuosity, playfulness, poetry, warmth and joyful exuberance.
REST ENSEMBLE
VIOLIN Rebecca Raimondi
VIOLA Henrietta HIll
OBOE Rees Webster
CLARINET Oliver Pashley
PIANO Alessandro Viale
Reviewed on: Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, Limelight, The Arts Desk, Planet Hugill, Classical Music Sentinel, Pizzicato, The Quarterly Review and Financial Times.
Primavera a Casalmaggiore (2019) [Cremona Records]
A project in collaboration with the Cremonese luthier Paolo Genzini and his label Cremona Records. Three Sonatas by Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms recorded on a violin made by Philippe Devanneaux, which supported the recording.
DUO ARDORÈ
Rebecca Raimondi (violin) and Alessandro Viale (piano)
Scenes and Messages (2018) [Sheva Contemporary]
Two Pieces for solo flute, Op. 62 (1970/2017)
Messages of Hope, Op. 87 (1987)
Three Ben Jonson Songs, Op. 126b (1984/1994)
Scenes from Shakespeare, Op. 164 (2009-2010)
When Most I Wink, Then Do Mine Eyes Best See, Op. 147
Three Shakespeare Duets, Opus 167 (2006/2011)
Sweet Song of the Summer Woods (reprise with birdsong), Op. 62 no. 2 (1970/2017)
Laura Cioffi (flute)
Patricia Auchterlonie (soprano)
Oliver Brignall, Jonathan Hyde (baritone)
Alessandro Viale (piano)
rec. 2018, The Sheva Studios, Fulbeck, UK
SHEVA SH209 [67:47]
Reviewed on: The Arts Desk and Music Web International
David Collins’s Violin Sonatas (2017) [Sheva Contemporary]
David Collins (b.1953) is a composer of huge invention and craft. He shuns both the contrived gestures of modernism and a simplistic return to tonality, creating a completely unique sound world. This has great internal logic, economy of material and clarity of expression, and offers the listener a fascinating journey of beauty and sparkling energy. Rising stars Rebecca Raimondi and Alessandro Viale have busy careers in Italy and the UK, both with specialisms in early and contemporary music. They are assuredly names to watch! Their performances here, are captured in superb sound quality.
DUO ARDORÈ
Rebecca Raimondi (violin) and Alessandro Viale (piano)
Reviewed on: Gramophone, The Art Music Lounge, The Arts Desk and Music Web International.
Peter Seabourne's STEPS Volume 5: sixteen Scenes before a Crucifixion (2014) [Sheva Contemporary]
The Passiontide paintings of Caravaggio provided the catalyst for the fifth volume of my large piano cycle series, Steps. The brilliant, but wild, often violent, "free-spirited" painter depicted several scenes of incidents preceding the crucifixion. t is perhaps surprising, though, that he never actually produced a Christ on the cross, given the subject's almost commonplace treatment. (His two works in the genre instead portray the crucifixions of the apostles Peter and Andrew). This is all the more remarkable given Caravaggio's fondness for alluding to his own dark secrets on canvas, a feature that even carries a sense of his own impending metaphorical "crucifixion". As is well known, he was effectively murdered when his enemies finally caught up with him.
Reviewed on: The Classical Reviewer, Gramophone, Pizzicato, Piano News, Musical Opinion, The Art Music Lounge and Cross-Eyed Pianist.