Ambra Piano Trio & Swiss Music Ensemble "New Wave" - Orazio Sciortino: Chamber Music for Piano and Strings (2017)

The works presented in this recording were composed between 2012 and 2013, and propose a combination of piano and strings, from cello duo to trio, quartet and quintet. Although not thought out as a cycle, these works were created simultaneously, at a time when I needed to reinforce my language while maintaining a rigorous but distant approach of a sort of aesthetic apriori declaration, musical conditioning or model, in an attempt to seek a voice, a stylistic identity of my own. The presence of the piano enabled me to override a kind of timidity that I had felt up until then towards pianistic writing.

Commissioned by ensembles of excellent musicians, who then became great friends, those pieces were for me a kind of ideal research ground, free from constraint or particular demands from the commissioner. Added to that, I had at my disposal interpreters of the highest level, of whom I could ask anything, with as much time as necessary to develop ideas, to alter them or even possibly discard them. It is no coincidence in fact that, with the exception of the cello and piano pieces, these pieces have a generic title that simply refers to an ensemble of instruments. Research was therefore concentrated on sound, on the style of writing that interested me, not necessarily new but that could broaden my vocabulary of sound. It was also a work of several years, which consolidated the way I envisaged my activity as musician, the relationship between musician and audience, the principle that conversing with the story does not mean being back-ward looking, and that refuting tradition does not mean being innovative.

The common feature of the works gathered in this CD is, as I said, the central position of the piano, which, especially in the Klavierquartet and Klavierquintet, has an almost concertante role, at the centre of a dialogue between timbre effects, resonance, but also certain moments of virtuosity that place the pianist in a role of soloist as opposed to a “tutti”. The Klavierquartet for violin, viola, cello and piano, dating from 2011 but revised the following year, is definitely the most complex of the cycle, both by its duration and the investment required of the musicians. It is a composition articulated in several sections, each being a kind of reinterpretation of the same musical material: a contiguous chord grid makes up the foundation onto which the complete work is built. These chords are repeated, superimposed, decomposed, create an extremely dense contrapuntal fabric from which certain melodic fragments emerge, which the ear can pick out throughout the piece.

TRACKLIST
01. Diario di un poeta for Cello and Piano: I.
02. Diario di un poeta for Cello and Piano: II.
03. Diario di un poeta for Cello and Piano: III.
04. Diario di un poeta for Cello and Piano: IV.
05. Diario di un poeta for Cello and Piano: V.
06. Klaviertrio for Violin, Cello and Piano
07. Klavierquartett for Violin, Viola, Cello and Piano
08. Klavierquintett for Violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass and Piano