Igor Stravinski (1882-1971)
Quatre études, op. 7, K 009
Les cinq doigts, K 037
Piano-Rag-Music, K 032
Sonate pour piano, K 043
Fragment des Symphonies pour instruments à vent
Sérénade en la majeur, K 044
Circus Polka, K 064
Tango, K 062

Emanuele Delucchi, piano

Sa grande longévité a permis à Stravinski d’explorer plusieurs esthétiques musicales allant d’un romantisme « russe » hérité de Rimski-Korsakov à une phase sérielle à partir de 1950, en passant dans les années 1920 par une période néoclassique. Emanuele Delucchi nous dresse un panorama passionnant de ce compositeur protéiforme en interprétant nombre d’œuvres brèves composées dans la première moitié du 20ème siècle. Respectant l’ordre chronologique il débute par les 4 Etudes de 1908, période où il forge son langage, où l’on entend déjà Petrouchka et l’Oiseau de Feu. Suivent des pièces composées autour des années 1920 : « Les cinq doigts » à vocation didactique, le Piano-Rag-Music qui surprend par ses ruptures abruptes (montrant son intérêt pour le Jazz), la brève sonate s’écartant du modèle viennois, le bref « fragment de symphonie » rendant hommage à Debussy à titre posthume et la sérénade rendant parodie de la musique Française du 18ème siècle. Le CD se termine en apothéose avec la Circus-Polka et le Tango plus tardifs et modèles dans le genre pastiche. Emanuele Delucchi joue ces œuvres souvent virtuoses avec aisance et goût, tout en attirant l’auditeur dans l’univers si varié et transgressif de Stravinski. (Jean-Noël Regnier)

‘Delucchi has done us a great service’, noted Fanfare magazine in January 2022 after the release of his Czerny album (PCL10204) on Piano Classics. This young Italian pianist continues to go from strength to strength and to broaden his already diverse catalogue of recordings for the label – spanning Bach, Godowsky and his own music – with this new album of Stravinsky’s works for the piano. The music of Stravinsky, like Beethoven, unmistakably bears the imprint of being composed at the piano – think of the pounding chords of The Rite of Spring or for that matter the delicate right-hand traceries in a later ballet such as Orpheus. However, the composer wrote relatively little dedicated to his own instrument. There are concertante works such as the Capriccio, composed as much as anything to give him something to play, to tour with and earn valuable income from in his appearances with orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic. The solo music is more niche, but no less characteristic, every note a Stravinsky note as Elliott Carter remarked. The Cinq doigts (Five Fingers) of 1921 were composed for a recording – probably the first-ever piece of music specifically written for that purpose – though the recording itself was lost until recently. Much of Stravinsky’s piano style is influenced by the records of ragtime which were brought back for him from New York around that time, including the rippling pianola textures and cross rhythms of the Sonata from three years later. Nearly all of these pieces belong to the Stravinsky of the 1920s – a figure of coruscating brilliance who could draw all music from the past to himself and make it his own. Counterpoint, hymn and a spirit of relaxed nonchalance all pervade the Serenade of 1925, while the brief Etudes encapsulate the glittering virtuoso tradition of Liszt and his successors within a few minutes. The rarity here is a transcription of the chorale from the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, which Stravinsky expeditiously made for a magazine tribute to the memory of Debussy.