The twelve Capricci op. 25 by the cello virtuoso and composer Alfredo Piatti, who performed with the likes of Liszt and Mendelssohn Bartholdy, are a must for all advanced cello players. Sir Yehudi Menuhin compared them to the Cello Suites by J. S. Bach, referring to these two works as the 'Old and New Testament? of cello literature. Our Urtext edition of the Capricci (HN 746) - the first ever of i…

The first modern edition of Sivori's Capricci - the most important violin piece after Paganini's own Capricci - by Fulvio Luciani, who first played them. This revised edition provides all the indications needed for its performance. The notes analyse Sivori's extraordinary modernity - he was Paganini's only student and also a world-famous violinist - and track the evolutions in taste and technical …

Par BARTOK BELA. Bartók?s Second String Quartet was composed ? with several long interruptions ? between 1915 and 1918, after he had spent several years almost solely devoted to collecting folk music. The melody and rhythms of the riotous middle movement ?Allegro, molto capriccioso? provide impressive testimony of how his research trips had taken him as far as North Africa. The first edition of th…

Par LISZT FRANZ. Franz Liszt dedicated the Grandes Etudes De Paganini to Clara Schumann, whose pianistic genius he revered. Two of the Etudes in the collection deserve particular notice: no. 3 La Campanella (The Bell) enjoyed great celebrity for the extraordinary character of its sonorities. And in the closing a-minor Etude, Liszt took his place next to many other composers with his variations on …

Par PUCCINI GIACOMO. With his Capriccio Sinfonico, SC 55, Giacomo Puccini completed his studies in 1883 at the Milan Conservatory. It is the most extensive of his three orchestral works and also his last. Apart from occasional smaller works, thereafter he dedicated himself only to opera. Nonetheless, the Capriccio Sinfonico plays an important role in Puccini’s oeuvre, not only as a source of motiv…

Par JANACEK LEOS. One of Leos Janàcek 's last chamber music works was written in the autumn of 1926 at the suggestion of the pianist Otakar Hollmann (1894& 1967), an invalid from the First World War. Like his contemporary Paul Wittgenstein, Hollmann urged composers to write something for Piano left hand; he succeeded in winning over Bohuslav Martinu, Erwin Schulhoff and Janàcek to do this. Janàcek…

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