Dark Night, Bright Stars

For the Romantik Night was the black shroud enveloping torments and passions, moments at times poignant, anguished, passionate, tormented, or pathetic. There was no need to add exemplary titles. For the Romantics, the nocturnes were travel companions towards a psychic place different from that of the day. It is not by accident that the piece by Chopin, the only composer from the Romantic period with Glinka, bears only the number of the work. Even for Tchaikovsky and Bartók there is no need to give a title; the nocturnal music is expressive in itself. The formulation changes with Poulenc (the French Night is less menacing than the German) and still more with the recent and Italian composers (the Italian Night is Mediterranean). Besides the more or less explicit references to Chopin (Montalbetti) and Britten (De Rossi Re), Night becomes aleatory (for Deraco), connecting itself to the Fates, then baroque with an entranced Bach (by Venturi), crepuscular (Gottardo), silent (Coluccino), starry and restless (Galante), in a variety of concepts of Night, referring to the stylistic multiplicity of this album.

The anthology is intentionally heterogeneous, a voyage through history and geography following one of the fundamental universal themes of all cultures, presented here in a variety of Western interpretations. Ilaria Baldaccini’s musical projects are always precise and each of her cds is related to a wide-ranging project, such as her rediscovery of composers who either came from or worked in Florence, principally at the Cherubini Conservatory. Too often we still find cds edited without any criteria except for choosing pieces that the performer knows best. Fortunately, Baldaccini always gives us programmes with compositions that are well connected to each other. The historical interconnections, stylistic crossroads, and thematic interlacing that we hear in this beautiful cd provide us with a map of the creativity that the Night has always evoked.

Baldaccini has already, frequently, given us proof of her bravura, often in recordings for Vinci Records. This is not only because of her performance skill, though this is fundamental, but also because of her intelligence in selecting and organizing the pieces and for the sensitivity of her interpretation. And in this case considerable sensitivity has been called for, considering that the composers are diverse historically, culturally, and stylistically, each with their strong personality. Baldaccini is excellent at tying together all the phases of her voyage; tout se tient (it all fits together). The delicacy of her touch predominates, albeit moments of excitability are not lacking, giving us the sentiment of the Night, differing in its transformations but uniform in the totality of emotions that Baldaccini offers us through her participation, entering into it and piercing the expressive heart of each piece that she interprets.