The Piano Music of Radamés Gnattali

"The Brazilian of Italian descent had already entered the Porto Alegre Conservatory at the age of 14 and seemed to be heading for a great career as a classical pianist. Instead, however, he advanced to become one of the leading arrangers of popular Brazilian music. In the silent film era, Radamés Gnattali led a cinema orchestra, later he worked for radio, television and film. He also created serious works almost only on the side: he is said to have written almost 30 soloist concertos, including no less than twelve piano concertos.

Of course, he never stopped composing solo pieces for his instrument, the piano. Many of them are based on popular dance forms (chôro and waltz), in which witty jazz rhythms are also mixed. Whether romantically tinted or harmonically freer: they all demand a stupendous playing technique. From about 1945 onwards, Gnattali's piano music became more objective and sparse, but also more personal and unwieldy. The waltz cycle Valsas para piano is a good example of this – there are ten miniatures of about one minute between fragile and motoric. The Exercicios para piano (1965) date from a later period – one would like to hear more in the style of these modernist etudes. Preferably played again by Martin Jones, the Myra Hess Prize winner (1968) and specialist in rarely heard piano music." Hans-Juergen Schaal, Fidelity Online