Francesco Filidei (1973-)
Preludio e Filastrocca

Ennio Morricone (1828-2020)
Mordenti
Neumi

Maurilio Cacciatore (1981-)
Toccatina

Leonardo Marino (1992-)
Quando il passato era ancore presente

Ivan Fedele (1953-)
Suite Francese

Carlo Galante (1959-)
Petit Ordre

Alessandro Solbiati (1956-)
Undici Variationi per Ruggero

Luca Francesconi (1956-)
Mambo

Silvia Colasanti (1975-)
Rumbling gears

Fabio Vacchi (1949-)
Ricercar pour clavecin
Post per Scarlatti

Francesco Antonioni (1971-)
Blues

Giorgio Colombo Taccani (1961-)
Gianizzeri e Gendarmi

Mauro Lanza (1975-)
Chop Suey

Vito Palumbo (1972-)
Speaking

Fabio Massimo Capogrosso (1984-)
Techno Scene

Vittorio Mantalbi (1984-)
Short Stories

Stefano Gervasoni (1962-)
Suite préliminaire

Jacopo Baboni Schillingi (1971-)
Scarlet, K 141

Luca Quintavalle, clavecin

A banquet of first recordings, highly original works and composers little known outside their native Italy in a new recording by one of today’s most adventurous harpsichordists. The neoclassical composers of 20s Paris were among the first to revive the harpsichord as a ‘modern’ instrument, inspired by the stirrings of the ‘early music’ movement in the hands of musicians such as Nadia Boulanger and Wanda Landowska. However, the postwar modernists found little use for it and only in the last few decades, not least thanks to the skill and imagination of virtuosos such as Elisabeth Chojnacka, Mahan Esfahani and Luca Quintavalle, has the harpsichord become once more as viable and respectable an instrument for new music as it was in the days of d’Anglebert and Couperin. Indeed the earliest pieces on this survey of modern Italian music for the harpsichord date back to 1988: Mordenti and Neumi by Ennio Morricone, doyen of film and specifically spaghetti Western composers but whose training was thoroughly Classical. Formed of two interlocking chromatic canons, Mordenti in particular deserves wider attention. Plenty of other works here make play with the history of the instrument as well as its sonorities, such as Rumbling Gears, a hyperkinetic toccata by Sylvia Colasanti, and a Ricercare by Fabio Vacchi. Scarlatti is the inspiration for another piece of Vacchi’s as well as an ornate elaboration of the same idiom by Jacopo Baboni Schilingi in Scarlet K141. The Petit Ordre by Carlo Galante explicitly returns to the world of Couperin but now tinged with modern Quando il passato era ancora presente by harmonies to evoke a lost world. There are several pieces from the last two years that inevitably reflect on the experience of solitude enforced by the pandemic, such as Short Stories by Vittorio Montalti and Leonardo Marino. With a full introduction to all the works and composers on the album by Luca Quintavalle, the album makes an arresting introduction to the music of many composers otherwise hardly represented in the current catalogue, and a significant new volume in the library of harpsichord music.