We continue our collaboration with Simone Stella, now with the monumental edition (in six albums) of the complete organ works by Dietrich Buxtehude. Simone is definitely at home with both this incredible variety of music and the king of the instruments, the organ. His rich choice of colours gives extra value to the just unexceptionable rendition which is also fresh, rhythmic, solar...

The recording is 100% natural, with no additional effect added, nor equalisation. The sound gives the right detail and balance to the instrument without being too dry. In a word: a great collection!

È online il bando del concorso pianistico organizzato dal pianista Gianluca Luisi che si svolgerà dal 29 agosto al 2 settembre nella cittadina di Osimo (Ancona).

Il concorso è aperto a molteplici categorie dai bambini agli adulti; il bando è consultabile qui. Da quest'anno la partecipazione sarà internazionale con varie giurie a seconda delle categorie.

I premi sono interessanti e avrò l'onore di essere ospitato fra la giuria.

I pianoforti saranno offerti dalla ditta Fabbrini di Pesaro.

Ecco il recente articolo a cura di Franco Fayenz apparso sulla rivista Amadeus (Marzo 2012 N. 268). Ne riportiamo un breve estratto.

Territori inesplorati

"Ogni tanto fa bene tornare alle origini (del jazz, in questo caso). L'opportunità ci viene offerta da Fumo [...]. Alla musica afro-americana e al ragtime è pervenuto all'inizio degli anni Ottanta, riuscendo a dimenticare [...] le reminiscenze concertistiche che possono alterare il tocco e il ritmo particolari che il ragtime richiede. Adesso, dopo trent'anni di esperienza fra i rags, Fumo è approdato a maturità e disinvoltura rarissime [...]. Qui aggiunge quattro chicche storiche ormai di raro ascolto, magicamente sospese fra il jazz tradizionale e la musica contemporanea europea, cioè le composizioni per pianoforte solo di Bix Beiderbecke. Basterebbe questa impresa per ringraziarlo."

The Early Ragtime
Marco Fumo
OnClassical OC41RT

Il disco può essere acquistato ora anche fisicamente facendone richiesta direttamente alla pagina facebook di Marco Fumo: https://www.facebook.com/marco.fumo (copia e incolla il link sulla barra degli indirizzi).

Yes, you may now find our prods of Bustijn and Buxtehude (harpsichord works) on physical support thanks to the international label Brilliant Classics.

They are well known worldwide for applying very low prices on very good musical products. Their vast catalogue (see now Buxtehude) is massively distributed everywhere in shops and internet, both on CD and as "liquid". Now the choice of whether to download the album here or buy it from them is only yours!

We are proud that such an important label has decided to publish our recordings and hopefully this is a good indicator for you to trust our efforts.

The recording of Bustijn, a world first release in a original performance by our founder Alessandro Simonetto, has been recently published at onclassical.com.

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The recording attracted the immediate interest of international label Brilliant Classics who acquired the rights in co-exclusive with OnClassical. Since April 2011, in fact, the recording is also part of their catalogue.

In the meantime a first review compares at musicweb-international.com, the prestigious UK review. Musicologist Byzantion Sardegno describes the recording by Alessandro Simonetto as the one to get in spite of (non complete) recordings by Bob van Asperen (Sony Classical Vivarte 46349, 1991), and by Jacques Ogg (Globe 5101, 1993)!
He continues: "Listening to eighty minutes of solo harpsichord is not always recommendable, but many will surely find themselves unwilling to press the Stop button - either that, or time will fly past unnoticed. Only one movement of the 53 in total is three minutes long, and many come in at well under a minute - there is no time to lose interest! Instead the listener is swept along on the tide of Bustijn's imagination.

The disc has been nominated as "Bargain of the month" and also obtained the 'Classic' award from the original reviewer's website). We are very proud of it!

The disc may also be downloaded in high quality here.

We are moving the site into a new server. The modifications should be terminated within hours. We regret for any inconvenience.

Dear customers,

(ZIP files) - OnClassical is currently working to ensure faster album downloads by uploading zip files on our servers. Each file will include all the tracks of an album, so that you will have one file to download rather than many files. Only a few days and our team will be done!

(HD tracks) - Many of our customers are asking to make our master recordings available, rather than CD-quality files. This would be possible, and it was OnClassical's original intention. OnClassical was the first label in Italy to make .wav files available online, so why not be the first label to sell HD tracks? Our current server would allow us to do so, and in the very near future our customers will have some of our hi-fi recordings in 88.2 kHz x 24 bit to download as well.

(Hi-res covers) - Once more, we regret not to have published the cover art-work, but our limited production time only allows us to produce the cover image. However, all covers are made with care by using high quality images purchased within the public domain resources (high resolution images have a cost nonetheless, even when the images are free). For our customer's greater satisfaction, all our covers will soon be available in 1440 x 1440 pixels x 300 dpi (print quality), and will be available as you access each recording's profile.

The team at OnClassical will be away for a few days, April 24-27. For assistance, please contact studio@(ourdomain) or call +39 339 3162931.

We at OnClassical hope that you will enjoy the improvements we have made to our website!

Alessandro Simonetto, founder

We continue our collaboration with the organist and harpsichordist Simone Stella, this time with the harpsichord works by Dietrich Buxtehude in four releases. These works, recorded only a few times in the history of music, include the vast majority of the Suites for harpsichord and the six Arias with Variations, plus some minor works and five "manualiter" organ works.

Simone Stella enriches his interpretation with a refined and charming phrasing and a gentle touch. The harpsichord is exploited in all its combinations of registers for a more coloristic variety.

We start from the 4th album. Coming soon Nos. 1, 3, 2.

Starting April 2011 all productions signed OnClassical will be distributed in more than an hundred online stores like iTunes, Amazon, Virgin, real, last.fm, emusic, Mondadori, fnacmusic, musicload, MediaMarkt, 7digital, mp3.de, vodafone, AOL, Spiral Frog, InProdicon, beatport, MTunes, Telefonica, Cellfish, Nokia, Deejay store, DR, musicnet, musicmatch, mobiVillage, Napster, Telecom, Rhapsody and many other.

This will be possibile thanks to the partnership signed with one of the largest distributors worldwide.

Latest news!

We are happy to announce that an agreement has just been signed for the licensing of the Complete Opera by Chopin performed by Roberto Poli. The twelve-volume opera will be published and physically distributed by a newborn English label which comes under the artistic direction of the international label, Brilliant Classics.

The first release is scheduled for next April.

Soon new details.

A disc entirely devoted to the legend of ragtime and its birth; includes the first ever published ragtime signed by Tom Turpin, the most famous rags by Scott Joplin and James Scott, the one of George Gershwin and the development towards jazz by Bix Beiderbecke.

The pianist we present is one of the leading experts in this field, the Italian Marco Fumo, who for over thirty years has dedicated himself to researching the interpretation of Afro-American music and ragtime in particular.

The recording was made on a 1952 Bluethner grand piano and captured by Neumann mics (Tube M 147 + TLM 103).

The result is something fascinating!

We have just launched a new different version of onclassical.com with some variations. The first one regards the new player (see on the pages dedicated to the album, here); this is entirely programmed in Flash, Javascript and HTML5. All recent versions of Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Explorer have been tested for it, so, keep your browser up-to-date!

The previews, unlike before, are no longer 64 kbps full-track, but of 35 seconds and high quality (192 kbps MP3) to test the recording quality (which is our main goal). I hope you'll understand the reasons behind this choice: in fact, other than an economic reason, we hope that by hearing such a great sound you will then want to download the entire album. Remember that artists earn 50%, with the only exception of a couple of albums; on the purchase page it will be specified when you are donating half to the artist and when not.

Another implementation is about the art look of our site, which we have "modernized". We have always kept the site very simple so that neither you (nor us) are distracted by anything other than our recordings.

We have further expanded the database adding some useful data for better understanding how the recordings have been made. In fact, on the same table as for the player, there are two other windows: "Album Introduction" and "Info"; in the latter you will find some technical detail about the recordings, including credits and recording location and instruments used.

The third release of Chopin's omnia has now been published. It includes Mazurkas Op. 50, Impromptu No. 3 in G-flat major, Op. 51, Ballade No. 1, 2, 4 and Polonaise Op. 53 'Eroic'.

Roberto Poli's third performance is even more sweet, tragic, thrilling. Enjoy!

Tomorrow, Tuesday 23rd November 2010, at 9.30 am, on the program Primo Movimento, at RadioTre, Valentina Lo Surdo will present Jacopo Salvatori's disc dedicated to Claude Debussy.

This is the second time we've been on RadioTre; so it's a double victory, especially considering that liquid music labels, like us, suffer a certain discrimination since CD's aren't available in shops, but only online.

Hoping in an ever brighter future!

Amadeus Press, United States' leading music publisher, releases OnClassical artist Roberto Poli's first book.

Every music student learns conventions of musical notation that are generally taken for granted—for example, that an expanding hairpin indicates an increase in volume, or that a sforzando is a sharp accent. But can we be sure that such instructions meant the same in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as they do today?

Based on years of research and performance, The Secret Life of Musical Notation: Defying Interpretive Traditions presents original discoveries that have generated groundbreaking insights into music on the printed page. Acclaimed pianist Roberto Poli argues that longstanding interpretations of certain commonly encountered musical signs and symbols, in works from as early as the 1770s and through the nineteenth century, may fail to reveal the composers’ intended meanings. According to Poli, these misconstrued readings are due to interpretive traditions that have rested largely upon received knowledge, which can change over time, rather than historical accuracy. A greater awareness of the intended meanings, he says, can only bring us closer to the interpretive freedom necessary for artistic creation.

With the instincts of an accomplished musician and with a high level of scholarly understanding, the author builds his case on evidence from contemporary published editions, handwritten engraver’s copies, and letters and other writings of the time. What emerges is a powerful challenge to conventional wisdom about how classical music should be played. It is a must-read for scholars, performers, and teachers of music and for anyone interested in exploring the history and meaning of musical notation.

For more information, please visit: musicdispatch.com.

For news and updates, join the facebook page.

Here is another attempt at video editing, this time with a very popular and legendary piece: 'La Campanella' by Nicolò Paganini in the most famous piano transcription by Franz Liszt. The interpreter is our featured artist Gianluca Luisi.

Enjoy.

The recording of Pieter Bustijn's 9 Suites (the complete known works) made by the founder of onclassical.com and harpsichordist, Alessandro Simonetto, was completed last week. The disc will soon be available at a major international record company (we'll keep you updated).

Though Pieter Bustijn is not well known, he is a fascinating Baroque composer whose music is of great interest, and indeed he was known to J.S. Bach, Walther and other composers of the time.

Good information about Bustijn can be found at wikipedia.

And I hope you'll like the video that onclassical.com has prepared for its forthcoming release. Enjoy!

More good news: we have just signed an agreement with Brilliant Classics, the international label, for the publication of our recording of Mozart's Oratorio, Betulia Liberata, on 2 CD's.

Detailed information soon.

It is believed that the major Polish composer was born on 1st March 1810, even though parish records say February 22.

Daguerreotype by Frederich Chopin (1948)

OnClassical celebrates Chopin's 200th birthday event with the release of the Opus Omnia by pianist Roberto Poli, along with previously released albums by Giampaolo Stuani (Preludes Op. 28) and Gianluca Luisi (4 Scherzos and Polonaise Op 53).

Happy listening!

We are happy to publish a new album by great guitarist Pablo Lentini Riva, accompanied this time by the splendid soprano voice of Laura Catrani.

This first album is a re-edition of a previous album: Le Tombeau De Mousieur Blancrocher. This new version, more ample, contains new tracks devoted to French lutenist Charles Fleury de Blancrocher (c.1605–1652), including the only composition we know of this composer: the Allemande, L’Offrande. The other new tracks are of music by Robert De Visée (Suite No. 9 in d minor and La Plainte, Tombeau des Mesdemoiselles de Visée); the last new piece is the Courante Dixiesme by renaissance composer Robert Ballard.

This renovated album is an exhaustive collection of Tombeau's dedicated to Mr. Blancrocher: an amateur musician well known by the best composers of his time: Couperin, Froberger, Gaultier and many others. So don't miss it!

Also don't forget to download the new cover!

The second album, Las Flores No Valen Nada, contains masterpieces by some of the greatest Spanish composers, and includes songs for soprano and guitar by Federico Garcia Lorca: very rare pieces of music written by a very well known poet and dramatist! Many of the tracks are played by Lentini Riva on an antique guitar which was built in Madrid by Santos-Hernandez in 1925. The sound and phrasing of this interpreter are extremely refined and richly expressive, perfectly echoing the poetry of these wonderful works

The title of the album is taken from the words of a beautiful love song called "Zorongo" (tr. 11).

La luna es un pozo chico
La luna es un pozo chico
las flores no valen nada;
lo que valen son tus brazos
cuando de noche me abrazas.

The moon is a tiny well,
the flowers are worthless;
the only things that matter are your arms
when they embrace me at night.

We hope you thoroughly enjoy listening to these splendid albums. And don't forget that by purchasing the albums you help our musicians directly, since they earn 50%!