Riccardo Castagnetti - Michelangelo Rossi: Music for Organ & Harpsichord (2015)

The ""Toccate e Correnti dintavolatura dorgano e cimbalo"", probably published around 1634, are the only surviving publication of keyboard music by Michelangelo Rossi (c.1601-1656). Rossis frequent use of unexpected harmonic turns, expressive chromaticism, dissonances with unusual resolutions, and abrupt changes of texture, is an evident sign of Gesualdos influence on his musical language. Rossi was also a Genovese contemporary of Girolamo Frescobaldi, who exercised a strong underlying influence on Bach. In their toccatas Frescobaldi and Rossi tried to create what might be called a keyboard madrigal, which are not transcriptions of texts but share with that genre a powerfully expressive appeal far distant from contemporary, dryly functional dances and toccatas. The toccatas are highly elaborated and developed fantasias, whereas the correnti, as their name implies, are simple, pacy little numbers, most of them barely more than a minute long. All the pieces in the Toccate e Correnti are playable both on the harpsichord and on the organ. On this new recording, Riccardo Castagnetti plays a harpsichord made by Alberto Vanini in 1992, a copy of an instrument built in 1697 by Carlo Grimaldi. The organ is that of the Basilica di Santa Barbara in Mantua, built in 1565 by GraziadioAntegnati and restored by Giorgio Carli in 1995-2006. In order to show the different expressive resources of each instrument, Castagnetti includes a double version of two works, each recorded on both organ and harpsichord: the differences make for fascinating comparative listening.