ALESSANDRA CELLETTI – PLAYS BALDASSARRE GALUPPI

Italian classical pianist/composer AND pop singer who previously released albums ranging from covers of Philip Glass (Metamorphosis”) and Scott Joplin’s ragtimes (“Black Baby”, 2001) to an album on LTD (2008) returns with an album of piano sonatas by Baldassarre Galuppi, the mid-1700s Italian opera composer. This is Alessandra’s first US release, and she will be playing her first US date in May at the Italian Cultural Ministry in NYC. “An album born from a strange bet whereby Alessandra Celletti returns to classical music after her celebrated interpretations of Satie, Glass, Ravel and Debussy. The Transparency label, famous as recent distributor of Sun Ra’s unpublished works, commissioned Alessandra to record the entirety of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s work for pianoforte, the famous Klavierstücke. It wasn’t difficult for the avant-garde American label to be convinced instead of this project proposed by the Roman pianist, apparently the polar opposite from the initial idea however via this little known composer, Baldassarre Galuppi (1706-1785), Celletti has once again produced an album that appears to stop time for the listener, suspending him/her in a universe where grace and the purest of intentions are the important elements. The music of Galuppi, known for the severity of its score, comes resuscitated by Alessandra in a game of emotional change-ups which already made her Satie the best on record. Originally the compositions by Galuppi were daring for their time and decidedly avant-garde even for the flourishing ambiance of eighteenth-century Venice, rendering the composer an outsider. In this new delicate and intriguing masterwork, personality and truly poetic charm will certainly beguile any fan of new music who doesn’t bother him/herself with labels and genres. File under: new music from the 18th Century. –Massimo Marchine, Rockerilla magazine, 9 out of 10