ALAIN MARION, MARZIO CONTI, DANIELE ROI - SAMMARTINI (High Resolution Audio)

GIOVANNI BATTISTA SAMMARTINI (1700 - 1775)

Sonata Terza in do maggiore

Andante amoroso

Allegro assai

Adagio

Allegro

Sonata Sesta in si minore

Con spirito

Allegro

Andante

Allegro

GIOVANNI BENEDETTO PLATTI (ca. 1700 - 1763)

Trio in sol maggiore *

Adagio

Allegro

Adagio

Presto

PIETRO NARDINI (1722 - 1793)

Sonata Terza in re maggiore

Andante

Allegro

Allegro moderato

Sonata Quarta in fa maggiore

Andante

Allegro

Allegro

GIUSEPPE CAMBINI (1746 - 1825)

Trio n. 1 in do maggiore

Allegro

Rondò - Allegretto

*Marzio conti I° flauto, Alain Marion II° flauto

Durata: 01h 07’

ALAIN MARION 

At the age of 14, Alain Marion passes with flying colours the finals of the Conservatoire at Marseille, the town where he was born, and where he had been studying with Joseph Rampal. He comes to Paris to have lessons with Jean-Pierre Rampal, and in 1961 is a prise winner at the International Music competition at Geneva and gives several concerts for the J.M.F. (Musical Youth of France). In 1964, he is appointed first flute in the French radio Chamber Orchestra. As a founder-member of the Orchestre de Paris, then soloist in the OrchestreNational de France as well as the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Alain Marion has had the opportunity of working with such renowned conductors as Charles Munch, Bernstein, Martinon, Karajan, Celibidache, Boulez, Maazel, Ozawa, Giulini, Boehm, Klemperer, Solti, Mehta, etc. His concert tours have taken him not only across Europe but also into North Africa, Central and North America, the Near and the Far East. He performs both classical and modern works, and has played as soloist under Claudio Scimone, J. Marinon, J-F Paillard, K. Ristenpart, Karl Richter, and Berio, Ivo Malec, Marius Constant, Pierre Boulez and Michel Tabachnik. Alain Marion is a soloist for Radio France and many other foreign radios. He has been invited to take part in the festivals of Bordeaux, Menton, La Rochelle, Aix-en-Provence, Hong-Kong, Winegards, and others. Alain Marion also plays chamber music with Jessye Norman, YoYo Ma, Pascal Roge, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Alexandre Lagoya, etc. He teaches at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris and is a teacher at the International Summer School in Nice, as well as teaching at the Academy of the Mozarteum in Salzburg where he was invited by Rolf Liebermann. Shortly to appear: a video cassette produced by Frédéric Rossif and Télé Hachette, Mozart with the Polish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Jerzy Maksymiuk. (CBS - Sony). In 1986 he will give two recitals at the Carnegie Hall one of which will be at the invitation of Jean-Pierre Rampal. Alain Marion has been invited to be director of the "Nouvelle Académie International d'Eté de Nice" as of summer 1985.

MARZIO CONTI 

Born in Florence in 1960, Marzio Conti attended the Padua Conservatory, and under the guidance of Clementine HoogendoornScimone he graduated with the highest possible marks and with honors. In 1980, after only three years of study, he won the admission to the Conservatoire Superieur de Paris as a student of Alain Marion. He later enrolled in Winterthur Conservatory in Switzerland under Conrad Klemm and received his "Solistendiplom" in 1986. Mr. Conti has performed many times with "I Solisti Veneti" directed by Claudio Scimone and with other well-known groups, playing at major musical festivals and celebrated concert halls in Italy and throughout including Queen Elisabeth Halls in London, Theatre Chatelet in Paris, the Festivals of Salzburg and Munich, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, La Fenice in Venice and the RAI Auditorium in Turin. He also pursues an intense schedule of activities in chamber music with a repertoire that ranges from the music of Baroque era to more contemporary pieces: he was, among other places, invited by Luciano Berio to participate in the 47° Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 1984 and he collaborated several times with the CantiereInternazionaled'Arte di Montepulciano and the Garbarino Ensemble. He has recorded for the major European radio networks and has cut records on the Erato and Vergo labels. He alternates his concerts performances with teaching: he is an assistant for the specialization courses of Conrad Klemm and Alain Marion and is docent at the Lucca Conservatory and the School of Music of Fiesole. Mr. Conti together with Alain Marion recorded the Triosonatas of the sons of J.S. Bach and some pieces by Italian composers of the sixteenth century for the Fonè label. Marzio Conti was invited, as the only representative from Italy, to participate in the International Flautists Symposium which was held in Nice, France from the fourth to the seventh of July 1988.

DANIELE ROI

Daniele Roi studied with Micaela Mingardo Angeleri and then with Paul Badura-Skoda, Franco Gulli and Enrica Cavallo, Huguette Dreyfus. His musical activity has developed as soloist, with orchestras and above all in the field of chamber music, playing for national and foreign radio-television corporations and collaborating also with Riccardo Chailly, UtoUghi, Bruno Giuranna, Peter Lukas Graf, Kenneth Gilbert, Alain Marion, Jean Pierre Rampal. He also has activity as harpsichordist in many chamber orchestras with concerts in Europe, south America and Australia, and recordings about instrumental and vocal music. He has been the harpsichordist in the opera by Vivaldi "Orlando Furioso" in Paris, at the Theatre du Chatelet with Marilyn Horne. Daniele Roi was borne in Padova where he teaches piano.

SAMMARTINI, PIATTI, NARDINI, CAMBINI 

Some of the most important composers of Italian instrumental music of the eighteenth century are represented on this record. Together with others of their countrymen active in European musical centres of the day, Sammartini, Platti, Nardini, and Cambini made a decisive contribution to an affirmation of a new musical taste which, from the second half of the century, was spreading everywhere. Partly following the example of opera, (particularly that of Neopolitan Comic Opera), and partly independently, instrumental music was progressively abandoning what remained of Baroque "severity” and throwing itself into the role of satisfying the so called "materialistic" demands which an aesthetic of feeling was meanwhile attempting to justify theoretically. Composer/performers used two principal means to this end; instrumental virtuosity -the material demonstration of technical ability-, and immediate sentimental expression through cantabile and melancholic melodies. Nevertheless, in most cases, these musicians produced compositions which were free from excess and which, through the aim for a generic aural agree-ableness, were able to satisfy a general desire for pleasure. These musicians were sustained by a new awareness, and they knew how to use this simplified music as an expressive vehicle for a strongly felt new idealism which was to lead to the great coalescence of the end of the century. This process of musical simplification led to considerable adjustments of language, form, and instrumentation. Constricting compositional techniques (such as counter point), and methods of accompaniment (such as the figured bass), were gradually abandoned, these devices had been conceived in order to bind the composition as a whole, and now they seemed too heavy. Melodies were regularized on the example of operatic cantabile style; rhythmic "stressing" was de-fined; new formal structures were idealized which were largely influenced by (and thereafter themselves developed) dance music forms. Melody, rhythm, harmony, and the division of movements were, therefore, in the end intrinsically linked, and this constituted the true and fitting stylistic mark of the latter eighteenth century. Giovanni Battista Sammartini, (b. Milan, 1700; d. Milan, 1775), is regarded today as being a determinant figure in this very "picture", not only as one of the "inventors" of the symphony, but also as one of the composers who contributed most to the passage between Baroque and Galant styles. This is clear even in the two Sonatas presented on this record which, while being still constructed in the form of the old Church Sonatas, express a cantabile style, Vivaldian brilliance, and grace, while the imitative style still present in some movements is tempered by essential harmonies. Similar observations can be made concerning the Trio Sonata, or Trio, by Giovanni Benedetto (b. Venice, ca. 1700; d. Würzburg, 1763), but in this case, it is worth making a comparison between the originality of this Sonata, and the earlier Corellianmodel. This is true, not so much for the remarkable cantabile quality of the first and, particularly, the third movements, but rather for the anticipatory elements of the second movement -(Allegro)- which, while seeming to be antiquated in it's imitative guise, reveals a very modern structure with three distinct sections, and with two thematic passages which are distinct one from the other. The two Livornese composers, Pietro Nardini, (b. Livorno, 1722; d. Florence, 1793), and Giovanni Giuseppe Cambini (b. Livorno, 1746; d. Paris, 1825), come from the samestylisticambiance. In their music, the new trends are already well-established, even if some of their compositions, the antiquated bass continuo can still be found. In fact, an ideal harmonic plan, (around which musical ideas, in all parts, must revolve), and the taste for cantabile melodies was confirmed with thanks also due to their contribution. This is also true of the layout of form, now definitively orientated towards the Classical Sonata, as it is of the typical exceptions of Italian instrumentalism of the age. It could be said that in the two Sonatas on the record, Nardini is shown to be a little excessive in his "politeness" and in his over-simplification of the subject-matter, whereas Cambini, at least in the first movement (that is the Allegro; the Rondo is rather simplistic) of his Sonata, shows proof of a remarkable "Mozartian" dramatic energy. 

Federico Marri 

                                                                                                                                                 Translation by Nicola Swallow