Rossini: Complete Piano Works, Volume 1

This is the first in Chandos’ new series of Rossini’s complete piano works.

The disc contains many premiere recordings.

These are works which Rossini composed at the end of his life, after twenty years of ill health. He refused to permit their publication and thus they remained barely known until the Fondazione Rossini began editing them in the 1950s.

Rossini’s piano music includes some of the most sparkling music in the piano repertoire, with all the wit and brilliance we know from his overtures. The historical impact of these works is yet to be examined but it is thought they had a significant effect on composers such as Saint- Saëns and Satie.

The series marks the debut of the awardwinning pianist Marco Sollini on the Chandos label.

Sollini studied piano with Franco Scala in Pesaro before going on to study with Gerhard Oppitz in Munich, Bruno Leonardo Gelber in Buenos Aires and Alexis Weissenberg in Lugano. He has performed extensively in Italy and abroad and his repertoire ranges from the masterpieces of piano literature to rare and unpublished Italian works, particularly those of the great opera composers.

Gioachino Rossini
1792-1868

For almost forty years after the first performance of his last opera, William Tell, in 1829, Rossini lived on, plagued by illness. After a protracted period during which he was altogether unable to compose, in the spring of 1855 he moved to Paris, and his health dramatically improved. His famous sense of humour was restored and, miraculously, he began to compose again. This new surge in creativity resulted in 150 piano pieces, songs, small ensembles and the Petite messe solenelle. Rossini referred to these pieces as his Péchés de vieillesse, the ‘Sins of old age’.

Although Rossini was disparaging about his talent as a pianist, all the works on this disc are technically challenging. Even harder for the pianist who tackles these charming, witty and sentimental works is the fact that the music requires a deep understanding of Rossini both as a person and a composer, for it was to the piano that he told the story of his life and at which he reminisced. It is in this music, written in old age and with the complicity of the companionable instrument, that he bares his soul.

Rossini was steadfast in his aesthetic ideals. When he abandoned composition in 1829 the musical world was in flux. In the works of his old age, he anticipated the neoclassical movement, whose early exponents included his young admirer, Saint-Saëns, and whose effects can be heard in the music of Stravinsky. Just as, for the first half of the nineteenth century, Rossini defined the nature of opera, the music of his twilight years dramatically influenced the next generation of French composers.

Rossini: Complete Piano Works, Volume 1

Marco Sollini

Camponogara, Venice, Italy

Gian Andrea Lodovici

Gabriele Robotti

Matteo Costa

Piano

Complete Piano Works, Volume 1

GIOACHINO ROSSINI

Valzer in mi bemolle maggiore

Thème

Allegretto

Scherzo in la minore

Un rien

From Péchés de vieillese, Book 3 'Morceaux réservés'

From Péchés de vieillesse, Book 9, 'Album pour piano, violon, violoncelle, harmonium et cor'