AVAILABILITY

www.aura-music.com

Aura, rather like Dr Stefano Olcese's Dynamic (another admirable Italian firm), have a sleeping giant of a catalogue. Tucked in amongst its pages are many treasures both recent and historic. This disc, with its rather short playing time, draws our attention to the non-operatic heritage of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. You will probably know of Martucci from the ASV discs of his symphonies and two piano concertos. This Piano Quintet has the sunlit radiance of the Delius cello sonata encased in bel canto lyricism. It sounds a little like Franz Schmidt and Joseph Marx. The surging up-rearing dynamism of this work touches on similarly robust works such as the quintets by Vierne and Cras as well as the other ensemble chamber music of Widor and Bonnal. The Respighi is a much shorter work written by a young composer in his early twenties. This three movement quintet is a rousing and surging piece rather similar at times to early and triumphant Fauré (e.g. the Piano Quartet No. 1). It is an engaging work with some striking ideas and treatments as in the hoarse and scorching allegro. By the way, Martucci was one of Respighi's professors. Prati is a pupil of Ciccolini and András Schiff. She throws off the challenges of both works with confident abandon. If the quartet are a shade more careful the overall effect is still euphoric and fresh with discovery.

This is a worthy collection which, if short on duration, opens up world premiere recordings of these two splendid late romantic quintets.

Rob Barnett

Advertising Rates
Visitor stats
MusicWeb International
has over 25,000 Classical CD reviews on offer

Gerard Hoffnung Concerts &
The Bricklayer Story

New Releases

New Releases

Musicweb
Special Offers

Google Ads - for information about privacy matters, click here. 

Return to Index