Alessandro Deljavan / Daniela Cammarano / Luca Magariello HUMMEL Complete Piano Trios

Although hardly a household name today, Johann Nepomuk Hummel was a pupil of Mozart, and was considered in his time to be one of Europe’s greatest composers and pianists. Like his teacher, he was also a child prodigy, and he so impressed Mozart that the composer began to teach him free of charge. These piano trios were composed in the late 1700s, a time of Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, with great upheaval reverberating throughout the continent. This upheaval is clear to see in the experimentation in Hummel’s music; he started to abandon the usual threemovement form for one with four movements, a remarkable feature more common of the orchestral symphony than chamber music at the time. Despite the apparent simplicity of Hummel’s music, a closer listen reveals the tightly constructed complexity beneath: the Trio in E Op.83, for example, ironically marked ‘innocente’, starts in E major, only to move swiftly into the distant key of A flat. Hummel then leads the listener through some beautifully lyrical melodic writing, underpinned by unusual modulations and harmonic changes. The release features three young Italian performers, Alessandro Deljavan, Daniela Cammarano and Luca Magariello, who, despite their youth, all have established careers behind them. With Deljavan and Cammarano having studied in Milan, and Magariello in Turin, the three musicians have all worked variously as soloists and orchestral players both in Italy and abroad, counting several international prizes between them. They are delighted to be collaborating together for this project, being enthusiastic performers of Hummel’s music and committed to bringing his extensive oeuvre to new audiences. (Arkiv Music)

Duo Cammarano-Deljavan GRIEG Violin Sonatas

The 3 Violin Sonatas by Edvard Grieg are a mixture of German and Austrian traditions with the Nordic folk. The experience at the Leipzig Conservatory, where the strong influence of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Robert Schumann was felt, and the trips to Italy, especially Rome, where Grieg met Franz Liszt, contributed greatly to the formation of the style of the Norwegian composer. Similarly of crucial importance were the years he spent in Copenhagen where he completed his studies under the guidance of the Danish composer Niels W. Gade. 

The complete Sonatas for violin and piano are included in this album signed by the well-matched duo Cammarano-Deljavan.

"Cammarano and Deljavan have a very different vision. They offer Grieg on a grand scale. This is passionate music, played aggressively. They bring these sonatas into the world of Grieg’s String Quartet, with brooding, double-stopped romanticism." (Richard Kraus, Music-web International)

"Commendable, thoughtful readings, rising to the various challenges of the fast movements and responding well to the abundant lyricism in the slower ones. Their characterisation [and] expansive expressive range are especially admirable." (Robin Stowell, The Strad)