THE GODOWSKY EDITION, VOL. I Carlo Grante, piano
CD-984(1)
THE GODOWSKY EDITION, VOL. I Carlo Grante, piano
CD-984(1)
With this CD, Music & Arts proudly initiates its definitive Godowsky series,
planned to include all of Godowsky's piano compositions in twelve volumes. Prepared
under the artistic direction of Leopold Godowsky III, this series features the
young Italian pianist Carlo Grante. Rapidly becoming known to US audiences,
Grante performed the world premiere of the complete 53 Godowsky Studies on Chopin
Etudes at the Newport Festival, and has recently given a series of highly acclaimed
concerts in New York's Merkin Hall. Carlo Grante graduated from the Santa Cecilia
Conservatory in Rome, and later studied with Rudolf Firkusny at New York's Juilliard
School of Music and with Alice Kezeradze-Pogorelich in London. In 1982, he won
first prize at the International Rachmaninov Competition in Italy and since
then has been performing regularly throughout his native Italy, along with other
European countries, and in both North and South America.
Reviewing Grante's recording of the Chopin/Godowsky Etudes, Gramophone
said, "Few pianists would or could take on this assignment. The difficulties
are outlandish and immense, yet Carlo Grante's surpassing ease and aristocratic
musicianship remain unruffled and superb... These records seem ripe for selection
among the most outstanding of the year."
The periodical Classical Piano hailed Grante as "One of the two
main pianistic discoveries of 1993..."; while CD Review said in
1994 "He copes with the unspeakably demanding technical requirements of
Godowsky's writing as if its difficulties didn't exist (as for him they obviously
don't." And Fanfare called Grante in 1994, "A pianistic superman...
and certainly, an artist one is avid to become more acquainted with."
"In the seventeen-minute-long 1928 Passacaglia, a massive set of variations
on the opening theme of Schubert's Unfinished, I particularly appreciated the
stormy manner in which Grante treated the variation that so much resembles Der
Erlkonig."
Fi: February 1998: Igor Kipnis
"Enthusiastically recommended…"
Fanfare: January/February 1998: Adrian Corleonis
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© 1998 Music & Arts Programs of America. All rights reserved.