Alessandro Stella

Alessandro Stella – piano

Programme:

Matteo Sommacal - Exile Upon Earth Suite, The Rising Call Suite, In a Silent Crowd Suite

Giya Kancheli - Selection from Simple Music for Piano (Themes from the Songbook)

Arvo Pärt - Für Alina, Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka

P?teris Vasks - Balt? Ainava - White Scenery (Winter)

Italian concert pianist Alessandro Stella presents a concert of contemporary music for solo piano which draws on elements of minimalism and new simplicity styles, including music by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, Georgian Giya Kancheli, Latvian P?teris Vasks, and Italian Matteo Sommacal, from his last two albums Midwinter Spring and The Chain Rules. The concert will be also the occasion for celebrating Pärt's and Kancheli's 80th birthdays.

Alessandro Stella’s concert appearances have brought him to numerous European cities including Rome, Paris, Nice, Aix-en-Provence, Berlin, Köln, Salzburg, Athens, Valencia, Bern and Lugano. In June 2014 he also toured South America, presenting concerts in Buenos Aires, Rosario and Cordoba.

Since 2008 he has been regularly invited to perform at the Martha Argerich Project in Lugano, Switzerland, and several of these performances have been included in the yearly compilation series of box sets that WARNER Classics dedicated to the Project. Many of these releases have won important critics prizes like the ECHO Klassik Award and the Gramophone Editor’s Choice.

His discography includes performances of works for pianos and multiple pianos by Ravel, Grieg, Chopin, Liszt, and Debussy (amongst others). In Autumn 2014 he released a new CD for KHA Records, The Chain Rules , dedicated to the piano music of the Italian composer Matteo Sommacal, and in Autumn 2015, as well for KHA, the new project Midwinter Spring, dedicated to the piano music of Giya Kancheli, Arvo Pärt and P?teris Vasks.

Since 2005 he has been engaged with the Isabella Scelsi Foundation in the task of "rediscovering" composer Giacinto Scelsi's earliest compositions. Supported by the Foundation, he has presented to European audiences several new programmes of Scelsi's music for piano solo, for piano and voice and chamber ensemble.

To his activities as a solo artist he adds his intense involvement with chamber music, regularly playing with Giorgia Tomassi and Carlo Maria Griguoli as a three pianos ensemble (The Pianos Trio).

Notable contemporary composers such as Carlo Boccadoro, Sergio Calligaris, Daniel Matrone and Matteo Sommacal have written and dedicated important new works to him.