Con Grazia: A Century of Italian Piano Music
- R.A.G.
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
A beautiful new set of performances from Shannon Wettstein brings together a series of pieces exploring classic Italian piano works that span from the 1930s up to 2018, and these pieces are performed with such grace and a wonderfully innovative but warm approach that you can hear the love for the craft of performance and the instrument itself in every single one.
Con Grazia: A Century of Italian Piano Music consists of nine different works from composers who have set the standard for decades.
Just the fact that Shannon took the time to recreate and perform these pieces that span such a wide range of time is incredible.
As you listen through the album, you get the sense of the different times and how the evolution of pieces like this comes into play in such a unique fashion.
These pieces of music are somewhat timeless and represent the culture of Italian piano in classical music incredibly well.
The performances throughout the entire record are incredible, and if you listen to the full album from start to finish, it is such a great experience and a very unique and beautiful escape
Shannon Wettstien has been a professor of piano at several universities and has performed on four continents.
Or her pure love for the genre, the instrument, and that craft is all super evident, and her existence in general, and this release is like a love letter to those composers and pieces of music she has fallen in love with over the years.
The composers throughout the record include Luigi Dallapiccola, Luciano Berio, Franco Donatoni, and Salvatore Sciarrino, Sonia Bo, Silvia Bianchera, Ivan Fedele, and Giuliano Bracci.
This was an engulfing and beautiful release that pulls you into a theatrical and brilliant world in which you can hold on to these performances, feel the emotion in certain tracks, listen to the depth in others, and enjoy the naturally beautiful and flowing soundscapes of these outstanding contemporary classical pieces of music.
There is indeed plenty of emotion involved, but there's also beautiful technicalities and intricacies that some of these pieces include, and the way they are performed on this record are still graceful, never losing the love or the passion for the piece itself or the sentiment underneath it.
After all, all these pieces of music come from emotion. They're built from an emotional platform, and it's something almost outlandish to hear so many of them put together on such a huge release.
Listen to this release with headphones on. Lie back, close your eyes, and just soak all of this in because it is a very unique experience that you don't want to miss out on.
It is a musical lesson in the culture of Italian music in this specific facet, and there's nothing like it.
Have a listen to this one and see what it does to you.