Carlo Alessandro Landini

Carlo Alessandro Landini

Terza Sonata

Terza Sonata
for piano - 32'27"

Massimiliano Damerini, piano

"Terza Sonata (frammento)" (Demo .mp3 - 30 sec. - 320 Kb)

Edipan Edition
CD PAN 3066 - price 15.00 Euro -

CD info

"My Third Sonata for piano is dedicated to the pianist Massimiliano Damerini, who performed it for the first time in Rome in November 1990, at the seventh "Nuova Musica Italiana" festival organised by the "La Musica" Cooperative. He showed an extraordinary, prodigious ability, for which he is universally recognised. Massimiliano, who is a Sciarrino interpreter par excellence, performed absolutely perfectly my Third Sonata with its brusque passages that move from bright to shade to dark, with its sudden descents towards the lower register of the instrument, with its prodigious leaps towards the upper areas, where the tinkle of angelic harps and the peal of a thousand bells in unison can be heard (perhaps an involuntary homage to Niccolo Castiglioni's reizvolle Ahnung?).
The "wave" form of the Sonata with fulls and voids chasing each other at intervals of a few beats, dissonances giving way to unexpected consonances, like a hilly Giotto landscape emerging from a flat, two-dimensional background of absence, as in Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Effects of Good Government, with its very high peaks and profound valleys. By "consonance" I actually mean a certain chord that continually returns, that generates the morphotype of the entire Sonata and brings it to a close. All the harsh combinations of sounds and the whirlpool-like swirl of the hands on the keyboard invariably end up here, in the dark region of the spectrum, where everything seems to be sucked into a vortex, into a black hole that opens up onto a different galaxy, a parallel universe.
The chord I am talking of (often appearing in the form of an arpeggio) is the fusion of an augmented sixth and superimposed fourths. Although this typically Skrjabin-like chord, which uses the upper region of the natural harmonic series, is not unusual, it is rarely used to create a formal archetype, a generating element forming the "soul" of a piece. I believe that Hindemith's teaching has not been fully understood or accepted, the concept of the Grundton (generating tone) and that of the Auflosungsakkord (resolution chord) are nearer to our sensibility than we realize. The accumulation process can be seen in my Third Sonata, the climax ascending from the isolated sound of the cluster of harmonically "dated" sounds. Various, contrasting levels of listening (front, intermediate network, background) are highlighted in a combination akin to learning theory and the physical principies of perception. I believe that, if they are appropriately understood and used, harmony, melody and rhythm are elements which are capable of affecting the activity of the C.N.S., but they should not be limited to this. Rather they should involve equally, and in the same way, (with the Sorcerer carefully balancing, like an apothecarywith his scales, the forces set in motion) the brain, heart, and senses of those who make the music and those who listen to the music".
C.A.L.

Carlo Alessandro Landini was born in Milan. He began studying at the "G.Verdi" Conservatory at a very young age, and graduated in 1978 with full marks in Composition and the Piano. After being awarded two consecutive scholarships by the French government, he was able to perfect his composition style between 1979 and 1981 in Paris.
He attended the renowned Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique, and was unanimously awarded the Premier Prix. In 1981 the US Education Department granted him the prestigious Fulbright Award, which enabled him to attend graduate courses at the University of California in San Diego.
He lived there between 1981 and 1983, and, as an Assistant, taught Introduction to Music, Harmony and Ear Training. Since then he has lived in Milan, Italy. He holds the teaching chair in Composition at the "G. Nicolini" Conservatory in Piacenza.
He has won numerous competitions such as the "Ennio Porrino" in Cagliari with his ... et d'etranges reves for harp and string quartet; the "Valentino Bucchi" with his Deuxieme Extrait for contrabass; "Citta di Mestre" with Changes for string quartet, and he is a regular guest composer at the "Feriekursefiir Neue Musik" in Darmstadt. His interests also extend to musicological research and criticism, as he works for a number of newspapers and magazines. He was responsible for writing some of the entries for Bompiani's Dizionario degli Autori.
He provided the musical commentary to Mondadori's CD ROM version of Vittorio Messori's bookinterview with the Pope Varcare la soglia della speranza ("Crossing the Threshold of Hope") (1996). Landini has a degree in Modern Letters and has published a number of works; he has always taken an active part in debates related to the major issues in contemporary aesthetics, particularly on the oppositional function performed by the artistic avant-gardes.
Together with some colleagues he organised "Manifesto Musica '94" in which he stated that today "the dilemma is not between neo-structuralists and neo-romantics, but between music with a depth of motivation and therefore music that is successful, that convinces, and formalistic music" (" Giornale della Musica" no. 89, Dec. 1993).

Massimiliano Damerini, born in Genoa, he studied with Alfredo They and Martha Del Vecchio graduating in piano and composition with First Class Honours.
He is considered one of the foremost pianists in his generation. He has played in some of the most famous concert halls throughout the world,i.e., the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Salle Gaveau in Paris, the Teatro Alia Scala in Milan, the Barbican Hall in London, the Herkules Saal in Munich, the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid. Among the many orchestras he has worked with: the London Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony, the Dutch Radio Orchestra, the Budapest Symphony, the WDR Symphony Cologne, the WDR Symphony Hamburg, the SWF Symphony Baden-Baden, the SDF Symphony Stuttgart, the Bayerischer Rundfunk Orchestra, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia Orchestra in Rome, etc. He is a regular guest at many international festivals: the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Venice Biennale, the Berliner Festwochen, the Holland Festival, the Wien Modern, the Zagreb Biennale, the Festival d'Automne in Paris,the Donaueschingen Festival. Besides cuntless radio and television recordings with several European and American networks, he has recorded for many labels: EMI, Etcetera, Arts, Accord, Col Legno, BMG, Dynamic, Koch, Musikstrasse, etc. Of the many composers who have written especially for him: Ambrosini, Di Bari, Donatoni, Fellegara, Ferneyhough, Gentilucci, Landini, Porena, Sciarrino, Sotelo, Vacchi, etc.
He is often invited as a member of jury to many important International Piano Competitions. Nicholas Kenyon, in a review in "The Times", wrote of his "complete command of keyboard and sound". Elliott Carter in New York in 1990 said: "To hear a concert by Damerini is an unforgettable experience."
The "Suddeutsche Zeitung", after his recital in Munich in 1997, wrote: "Damerini is one of three greatest italian pianist of our time, together with Benedetti Michelangeli and Pollini". In 1992 he was awarded the prestigious "Abbiati Prize" by the Italian Critics Association as "Soloist of the Year".