PiCello Bros.
40 years after their first concert together, Francesco and Angelo Pepicelli are back in the spotlight with a new project, PiCello Bros. The duo has won important awards, above all the “Gui” in Florence, performed on the most prestigious stages worldwide, including Carnegie Hall in New York, Suntory Hall in Tokyo and Salle Gaveau in Paris, and produced a remarkable discography for labels such as DECCA and Naxos. Their constant research and inexhaustible desire to renew, and to renew themselves, pushes them today to present themselves in a new guise, proposing three programmes with a profound artistic and cultural breadth.
SECRET STRINGS
These are the ones that bind these four masterpieces, characterised by a central core enclosed between a prelude and a finale. Thus Petrassi’s all too rarely performed youthful composition is mirrored in one of Debussy’s three chamber works, while the Bachian heights exalted by Busoni are reflected in the new transcription of Franck’s jewel.
Goffredo Petrassi, Prelude, Aria and Finale (1933)
Ferruccio Benvenuto Busoni, Chromatische Fantasie und Fuge (1866-1924) (transcription from J. S. Bach, 1917)
César Franck, Prélude, Fugue et Variation (1860/62)
(transcription by the PiCello Bros from the composer’s version for harmonium and piano, 2023, FIRST PERFORMANCE)
Claude Debussy, Sonata (1915)
DEFORMING MIRRORS
The marvellous cantabile of Beethoven’s Romanza, also famous for its TV advertising function, finds its 20th-century alter ego in Schnittke’s unknown but immediate film music, elaborated by the imaginative Molinelli. At the centre of the programme, the German’s intense, revolutionary Second Sonata and the Russian’s chromatic, distressing Sonata are mirrored, deformed.
Ludwig van Beethoven, Romanza in F major op. 50 (1796)
(transcription for cello and piano by F. Grützmacher)
Ludwig van Beethoven, Sonata in G minor op. 5 No. 2 (1796)
Alfred Schnittke, Sonata No. 2 (1993/94)
(FIRST ITALIAN PERFORMANCE)
Roberto Molinelli, Presenze riflesse, Homage to Alfred Schnittke (2024)
(FIRST PERFORMANCE)
INVERSE CODES
From the lively spirit of Chopin’s youthful Polonaise we arrive at the end of the programme at his great spiritual testament, a true chamber poem, but only after passing through the post-war atmospheres of the evocative works of the other two Polish composers, so reminiscent of Šostakovič.
Fryderyk Chopin, Polonaise brillante in C major, op. 3 (1829-30)
Mieczysław Weinberg Sonata No. 2 op. 63 (1956)
(FIRST ITALIAN PERFORMANCE)
Krisztof Penderecki Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano (1953)
(transcription for cello and piano by Marcin Zdunik approved by the composer, 2020)
(FIRST ITALIAN PERFORMANCE)
Fryderyk Chopin, Sonata in G minor op. 65 (1846)