Peter MAXWELL DAVIES

Sonata for Violin Alone Dances from The Two Fiddlers Sonata for Violin and Piano Piano Trio: A Voyage to Fair Isle

Duccio Ceccanti, Violin Vittorio Ceccanti, Cello Matteo Fossi, Piano • Bruno Canino, Piano Peter Maxwell Davies (b. 1934): Sonata for Violin Alone Dances from ‘The Two Fiddlers’ • Sonata for Violin and Piano • Piano Trio: A Voyage to Fair Isle This recording focusses for the most part on more recent Stromness. Although central to the denouement of the the Gianicolo. I imagine arriving on the heights of the demands on the island chorus and the folk musicians that chamber works by the late Peter Maxwell Davies. Such opera, with its use of supernatural elements, these make Gianicolo, when all the bells of Rome’s churches ring out would daunt professionals, but which, in performance, music forms the central part of his composing in this for an effective recital piece in their own right. After a call in joyous clangour.” gave everyone huge satisfaction. I was most of all moved period, notably a cycle of ten ‘Naxos’ String Quartets as to attention, the first dance unfolds as a lively and The work begins with a musing interplay that soon by this extraordinary expression of a community’s emerged between 2002 and 2007 [the whole series is humorous jig. There follows a pensive dialogue with brief takes on a more forceful and increasingly combative essence: one felt a challenging piece of new music had recorded on Naxos 8.505225, 5 CDs), but there are syncopated interludes which build to a brusque climax, quality, though this itself diversifies as these instruments really permeated, through months of rehearsal, into the various sundry pieces in which Davies investigates the followed by a heavily accented dance with pungent evolve highly contrasted personas in which elements of spirit of Fair Isle, so as to become a part of its fabric in a possibilities of other ‘classical’ chamber combinations – harmonies. A short interlude for violin alone leads to a recurrence (even if not repetition per se) come periodically way new music seldom can – affecting and even not least the works featured here. characterful dance, followed by a more speculative to the fore. Notable passages include the dextrous changing the lives of a very special community. My Trio is The Sonata for Violin Alone is among Davies’ final interplay. The final dance rounds off the appealing rhythmic interplay just after the eight-minute mark, on an attempt to express my delight at and my appreciation works. Composed in 2013, it was first performed on 7th sequence with its headlong dash ensuring an energetic each occasion countered by an eloquent violin response; of this experience. I based it on a plainsong, proper to the October the following year at Teatro Piccolo Arsenale in and good-natured close. latterly alighting on a folk melody that appears as if the day composition commenced, for the birth of the Virgin, Venice, as part of the city’s Biennale Musica. The soloist Composed in 2008 and premièred that 22nd June in goal to which the whole piece had been heading. This which generates and permeates the whole of the single (as on this recording) was Duccio Ceccanti, to whom the Kirkwall by violinist Ilya Gringolts and pianist Alexander proves to be short-lived, however, and the music soon movement.” piece is dedicated. Unfolding as a single movement of Madzar, the Sonata for Violin and Piano is in a single resumes its unpredictable course while retaining an air of The piece opens with lyrical harmonic interplay around 20 minutes, it commences with an intense movement that, in the words of the composer, “traces an restrained melancholy which builds to a terse final climax between violin and cello, a mood of inward musing barely cantilena that takes the instrument almost to the height of imaginary traffic free walk across Rome, taking inspiration before the pensive ending. ruffled with the entrance of the piano as the music its compass while moving between multi-stopping and from a fantastic proposal in the book Progetti. Frammenti Composed in 2002, the Piano Trio was first heard in gradually assumes a greater rhythmic motion. At length austere monody. Although the underlying tempo does not di architettura italiana, by my oldest Roman friend, the Kongsberg (Norway) on 26th January the following year the instruments strike up a much more animated perceptibly alter, an intermittent increase in activity is architect Giuseppe Rebecchini, for a continuous walkway by the Grieg Piano Trio. The work is subtitled ‘A Voyage dialogue, replete with dance inflections, which then evident when rhythmic and folk-like elements make their from Borromini’s 17th century Chiesa Nuova, across the to Fair Isle’, the island that lies in the North Sea midway alternates with more understated passages as a longer- presence felt. This is audible just after the nine-minute reconstructed Renaissance area della Moretta (destroyed between the Orkney and Shetland archipelagos. The term momentum is inferred. Motivic ideas heard earlier mark, with an impassioned outburst such as echoes to no good purpose by Mussolini), down to and over the composer further explains its genesis. “The inspiration for are touched upon, while the violin also has an extensive across what follows until an animated dance music Tiber, then straight through the superannuated Regina this piece was a trip to Fair Isle, an island I can just see folk-like melody that serves almost as a cadenza prior to assumes the foreground, though the earlier poise and Coeli prison (transformed into an exhibition space for from my home in Orkney on a good day but a place the final section – cello and piano (the violin playing introspection are soon re-established and the music ancient Roman sculpture) and up through parkway to the which, under normal circumstances, is difficult to get to ghostly harmonics) unfold an inward dialogue as seems withdraws into a reverie which holds good through to the Gianicolo, from where one has breath-taking views over and which one would hardly have time to visit. However, I to distil the essence of this work as a whole into a rapt final pages. At length this heads off into the the whole city. Although this walk will probably never be was invited to the first ever music festival there. The touching elegy. The cello also has a folk-like solo, after stratosphere, just prior to the lengthy and elegiac closing realised in practice, it is a wonderful fantasia and while I physical remoteness and the craggy beauty of this place which all three players are caught up in a tense climax chord. do not wish to limit the imaginations of players or are well known, though it was the involvement of the prior to the serene closing bars. What is likely to prove one of Davies’ most enduring listeners, I should point out the opening of this sonata population of 70 or so souls in the mounting of a new work works for the stage, The Two Fiddlers is an opera for refers back to my Seventh ‘Naxos’ String Quartet by Alasdair Stout which struck home most. It made Richard Whitehouse children (based on the Orkney version of a well-known [recorded on Naxos 8.557399] that concerns Borromini’s Nordic scenario that concerns two fiddlers at a wedding) architecture, in particular the relevant church; and that the which received its first performance at Kirkwall in June melody like a Lazio folk tune about two-thirds of the way 1978. These dances were arranged for violin and through refers to an incident in the 1950s, when I heard ensemble soon afterwards, then for violin and piano in such a tune echoing from behind the high walls of the 1988 – with György Pauk and Peter Frankl giving the prison, as sung by a good solo tenor voice. At that date, première of this version on 19th June that year in there were goats with goat herds in the groves just below Duccio Ceccanti Matteo Fossi

Duccio Ceccanti graduated from the Florence Conservatoire Matteo Fossi began his musical studies at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole. Piero Farulli, Photo: L. Centola Photo: Federico Cutuli when he was very young and then continued his studies with Maria Tipo, Piernarciso Masi, Alexander Lonquich, the Trio di Milano, Mstislav Ştefan Gheorghiu, Boris Belkin and . As a Rostropovich and Maurizio Pollini were among his foremost teachers. He started a soloist and chamber musician he has performed in festivals busy concert career while still very young and is now regarded as one of ’s most including the Venice Biennale, the Ravello Festival, active and versatile chamber musicians. For many years he has been playing in a duo “Mittelfest” di Cividale del Friuli, Gog of Genova, the with the violinist Lorenza Borrani. In 1995 he founded Quartetto Klimt and more International Festival of Prague, Huddersfield Contemporary recently a piano duo with Marco Gaggini, with whom he is recording the complete Music Festival, Festival “Music08” at Cincinnati University, works for two pianos by Brahms, Bartók and Schoenberg. With these groups, and as a “Flâneries Musicales d’été”, Reims, and in concert series solo performer, he has taken part in most of the main concert seasons in Italy and held at major opera houses and theatres in Italy, Cairo Opera abroad. He is constantly engaged on projects with artists of international standing. He House, the Teatro Coliseo, Buenos Aires, the Teatro has recorded for Decca, Universal, Nimbus, Hortus, Tactus, Amadeus, Stradivarius and Municipal, Santiago, and the Sala Vaz Ferreira, Montevideo, Brilliant Classics, and is widely appreciated as a teacher and organiser, teaching piano among many others. He has been a soloist with several at the ISSM in Siena and chamber music at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole. orchestras and in chamber music groups with Boris Belkin, Alain Meunier, Bruno Canino, Moni Ovadia, Domenico Nordio, Pietro De Maria, Boris Petrushansky, Roberto Prosseda, and Emanuele Arciuli. He has given first performances of many works by composers such as Sylvano Bussotti, Mauricio Sotelo, Peter Maxwell Davies, Henri Pousseur, Luca Mosca, Azio Corghi, Goffredo Petrassi, Adriano Guarnieri, and Fabio Vacchi. His recordings for Amadeus, Arts, Brilliant Classics and Naxos have been acclaimed internationally. Bruno Canino

Born in , Bruno Canino studied piano and composition at the Conservatorio Vittorio Ceccanti Verdi in , where he taught solo piano for 24 years. He has performed both as a soloist and a chamber musician in all the great concert venues of Europe, the United Vittorio Ceccanti began studying the cello at the age of five and worked States, Australia, Japan and China. For over forty years he has been regularly with Mischa Maisky, David Geringas and Natalia Gutman, graduating performing with Antonio Ballista, his piano duo partner, and for some thirty years he has with honours as a pupil of the last at the Hochschule für Musik in been a member of the Trio of Milan. Bruno Canino is deeply interested in contemporary Stuttgart. Winner of several international prizes, he made his début as a music and has collaborated with such distinguished composers as Pierre Boulez, soloist at the age of seventeen, performing the Lalo Cello Concerto with Luciano Berio, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Ligeti, Bruno Maderna, Luigi Nono, the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra (ORF) conducted by Pinchas Sylvano Bussotti and others, the works of whom he has often premièred. Bruno Steinberg at the Musikvereinsaal in Vienna, and the Saint-Saëns Cello Canino’s recent recordings include the Goldberg Variations, the complete piano works Concerto No. 1 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, televised by RAI-TV. by Casella, and the complete Debussy piano works. In 1997 Passigli Editions published Since then, he has been regularly invited to perform as a solo artist in his book Vademecum for a Chamber Pianist. Europe, the Americas and Asia. He has a number of recordings to his Photo: Niccolò Ceccanti credit including Beethoven’s Cello Sonatas for EMI Classics, and Chopin’s complete works for cello and piano and the Trio Op. 8 as part of the Chopin Edition for Brilliant Classics. He has recorded Mendelssohn and Fauré’s complete works for cello and piano with the pianist Bruno Canino and the complete works for cello by Peter Maxwell Davies for Naxos on three CDs. Vittorio Ceccanti is the founder and artistic director of the Livorno Music Festival. He plays a cello made in Venice in 1720 by Carlo Tononi. In 2005 he was presented with the silver medal of the Italian Republic by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. Duccio Ceccanti and Peter Maxwell Davies at the Venice Biennale in 2014 Photo: Akiko Miyake Chamber music formed the central part of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ output in his later years, and the marvellously poised and largely introspective Sonata for Violin Alone, dedicated to Duccio Ceccanti, is among his final works. Also cast in a single movement, the Sonata for Violin and Piano is a fantasia that traces an imaginary walk through Rome, while the Piano Trio takes us on the lyrical wings of plainsong to the remote and craggy beauty of Fair Isle near the composer’s home in Orkney. The acclaimed Ceccanti brothers worked closely with Maxwell Davies, performing many premières of his music. Sir Peter MAXWELL DAVIES (1934-2016)

1 Sonata for Violin Alone dedicated to Duccio Ceccanti (2013)* 17:51

2 Dances from The Two Fiddlers (arr. violin and piano) (1978/88)* 6:27

3 Sonata for Violin and Piano (2008)* 18:11

4 Piano Trio: A Voyage to Fair Isle (2002) 20:42

* WORLD PREMIÈRE RECORDING

Duccio Ceccanti, Violin • Vittorio Ceccanti, Cello 4 Matteo Fossi, Piano 2 4 • Bruno Canino, Piano 3

Recorded in the Museo di Santa Croce, Umbertide, Perugia, Italy, on 10th March, 2016 (track 1); in the Torri dell’Acqua, Budrio, Bologna, Italy, on 25th February, 2016 (tracks 2 and 4); and live at the 72° Festival del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in the Teatro Goldoni, Firenze, Italy, on 29th May, 2009 Produced and edited by Luca Ricci • Engineers: Luca Ricci (tracks 1, 2 and 4); Luca Logi (track 3) Publishers: Schott Music GmbH & Co. (tracks 1, 3); Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers, Ltd. (track 2); Chester Music Ltd. (track 4) • Booklet notes: Richard Whitehouse • Cover painting by David Lemon