Ivan Fedele
complete works for piano

ÉTUDES BORÉALES (1990) & ÉTUDES AUSTRALES (2002-03)
CADENZE (1993 & 2005)
TOCCATA (1983) NACHTMUSIK (2008)
Ivan Fedele interview with C. Fertonani and V.B. Sala

Ciro Longobardi

Limen CDVD 004C004 [Milan, 2010]

Études for piano have continued to proliferate in the new Century as in the last; primarily thay are intended to foster virtuoso piano playing and its appreciation, but a few are more focused on musical explorations as upon developing technical skills. These from Ivan Fedele are an important addition to that category, though they demand highly equipped pianists for their presentation.

Fedele was a pianist from early childhood, as he explains in the interview on this DVD, experimenting to find combinations "that work", before his professional training first in philosophy, then with distinguished pianists (Bruno Canino, who recorded Fedele's piano concerto, is the best known to us) and composition with Donatoni.

A prolific composer in most genres, he is the subject of a book Ivan Fedele – Les cahiers de l'IRCAM/Compositeurs d'aujourd'hui no. 9 (1996). His collected piano works are an intermittent relaxation between major works, spanning the last thirty years. They are of many types, and most can be thought of as Études in the succession of, say, Chopin's, Debussy's and Ligeti's (you may have other pianist/composers for your own sequence) - see wiki/List_of_etude_composers. Longobardi says "there is an underlying link between keyboard, hand-movement, touch, timbre, virtuosity which is the core of “etude-thinking”", all of those exemplified in the Fedele collection.

This production is unusual, well annotated [Claudio Proietti] and including a normal CD plus a DVD of the whole programme, which is well organised for easy access to preferred items. Sample perhaps Cadenze VII-IX to get the flavour of his active, always exploring mind and of Longobardi's dextrous fingers.

Several items are available to download, and videos can be previewed on Limen's website*.

I do strongly recommend the modestly priced CD/DVD version for its comprehensiveness, with immaculate studio filming, plus a lengthy interview with the composer.

Peter Grahame Woolf

*

See also Musical Pointers reviews of Ciro Longobardi in Ives, Ravel & Sciarrino