Within the extensive repertoire of the German composer Paul Hindemith (1895–1963), music for cello and piano occupies a considerable position in terms of both quantity and quality. Hindemith was primarily a violist and conductor, but his wide-ranging interests led him to experiment with a great variety of instruments both as composer and player, making him a de facto multi-instrumentalist. Among his favourite instruments, the cello always occupied a special place in his activities, among other things because of his collaboration with his brother Rudolf, an excellent cellist.

Sandro Fuga was born in 1906 in Mogliano Veneto in the province of Treviso, but was Torinese by adoption. He studied piano under the guidance of Luigi Gallino; studied organ with Ulisse Matthey; and studied composition with Luigi Perrachio, Franco Alfano, and Giorgio Federico Ghedini. A cultured, elegant, and lovable artistic figure from a subalpine aristocratic background, Fuga was a refined and sensitive pianist, as well as a teacher of the highest caliber. He was a musician who made his own aesthetic belief and remained unscathed within the barrenness of the sterile shadows of a certain avantgarde, destined to grow old within l’espace d’un matin. Umberto Aleandri and Filippo Farinelli here are introducing us to the work including the three sonatas for cello and piano (two of which are world premiere recordings), clear emblem of the compositional ability of the author, teeming with pleasant and various writing solutions always elaborated with consummate skill and filtered by a great knowledge of the past tradition.

The Cappella Musicale of the Basilica di San Francesco is several centuries old; its origin is very ancient and dates back to the first years of the thirteenth century, in direct connection with the particular stimulus given by St. Francis to singing the praise of God, an activity that was encouraged by a renovation of liturgical prayer, within the precepts of the Holy Roman Church.