Enrico Pieranunzi Plays J.S. Bach G. F. Handel D. Scarlatti 1685

The Piano Series

1685: the year that gave birth to Bach, Handel and Scarlatti...

Following the global success of the album «Pieranunzi plays Scarlatti» the Italian pianist returns to confront the Baroque repertoire, again through his own sensibility and uniqueness. With «1685» Pieranunzi widens his horizons by adding to his love for Scarlatti, the music of Bach and Händel, three contemporaries, three of the greatest geniuses history has given us. “Perhaps one day”, says the pianist, “astrologists or numerologists, scholars of those symbols that seem mysteriously to link the most distant of deeds, will be able to explain it to us... we, on the other hand, can only marvel at the appearance one after another of three new planets in the musical heavens that fateful year of 1685 (February, March and October to be exact) or, if you prefer, three new stars: Händel, Bach and Scarlatti. Three stars whose orbits at times intersected but that, for the most part, followed independent trajectories whose trails can still be observed streaking across the universal firmament.” Pieranunzi masterfully rereads the pages of these three composers with the practicality and skill of someone who has adopted the language of classical music and knows how to merge it with improvisation. Once again through a authenticity that makes this work unique in its genre. Writing and improvising, in fact, does not represent two distinct moments—where one gives way to the other in an alternation of genres—but arise from the fusion of the materials that are treated as if “suddenly composed”, just as Pieranunzi had shown us in his work dedicated to Scarlatti.

Recorded in Ludwigsburg on 17, 18, 19 March 2010 at Bauer Studios  Recording engineer Johannes Wohlleben