Louise Bessette - Giacinto Scelsi - The Piano Works 1

Label: Mode, Abeille Musique Distribution | Catalog Number: Mode 92

Tracklist:

Sonata No. 2 (1939)
1. Con estremo impeto, agitatissimo (5:21)
2. Lento meditativo (8:21)
3. Vivace tempestoso (4:24)

Sonata No. 4 (1941)
1. Con moto (4:59)
2. Lento (7:22)
3. Con impeto estremo, violento (3:40)

Suite No. 9 "Ttai" (1953)
1. Calmo, senza espressione (3:56)
2. Lentissimo (5:05)
3. Uguale, senza espressione (2:51)
4. Non molto legato, ma sempre appoggiando profondamente (5:14)
5. Uguale, scorrevole (3:09)
6. Lento (3:14)
7. Uguale, inespressivo (3:48)
8. Lento (5:45)
9. Molto p eguale, non troppo legato (3:18)


Louise Bessette, piano


Review taken from moderecords.com site : "This is a most welcome release which shows clearly that Giacinto Scelsi di Ayala Valva (1905-88) didn't just beam down to planet Earth from Saturn like Sun Ra (who didn't either, as it turns out) but in fact grew organically from the compositional soil of late nineteenth-century Romanticism like so many others. Scelsi was in the habit of recording his own improvisations and subsequently having them transcribed by assistants (though to what extent this practice was already the case back in the late 30s and early 40s when the first Piano Sonatas were written is not clear). In describing himself as a mere "vessel" through which music passed, he also aligns himself with that quintessentially Romantic concept, inspiration (a much-maligned word nowadays, sadly) - late Liszt comes to mind (compare Scelsi's sonata slow movements with the Abbé's "Nuages Gris"..), but also Beethoven. The second movement ("Lentissimo") from the Suite no. 9 "Ttai" with its resonating major chords recalls in no uncertain terms the finale of Beethoven's Op.110, though whereas Beethoven incorporated such moments of "Ur-Musik" (in the sense of the term as employed by Busoni) into a rigorous formal scheme including two extended fugues, Scelsi tends to let his imagination run wild, thereby blowing the form wide open and anticipating the intense meditative style of his later works. It remains open to question whether a more conventionally disciplined "composer" would have fashioned this magma into a cool marble sculpture, but as this is just Volume One of a projected Scelsi cycle on Mode, I await further elucidation with great interest. Strongly recommended listening for fans of Scelsi and Beethoven alike.
–- Dan Warburton, www.paristransatlantic.com/,
February 2001"

http://rapidshare.com/files/292161691/scelsi_bessette.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/292164372/scelsi_bessette.part2.rar