Reinecke, Franck, Schumann: Chamber Music for Flute and Piano

Paola Girardi studied with Lucia Romanini Marzorati at Milan’s Civica Scuola di Musica and graduated with honours from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan in 1978, at the age of seventeen. She won several competitions for young musicians, including the National Young Pianists Competition in Bari and the International Competition in Senigallia.

She continued her studies with Maria Tipo and Konstantin Bogino, and also studied with Paul Badura-Skoda at the Ottorino Respighi Academy in Assisi and the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, where she received a diploma with honours. Her interest in chamber music led her to study with the Tchaikovsky Trio, the Quartetto Academica, the Fine Arts Quartet and the Trio di Trieste.

She has collaborated with musicians including Maxence Larrieu and Ilya Grubert, also serving as pianist for their advanced courses in Italy and abroad. From 1990 to 2008, she was an official pianist, alongside Phillip Moll, at James Galway’s international summer courses in Weggis, Switzerland, and Dublin.

Her longstanding duo partnership with Raffaele Trevisani has taken her to concert venues in Europe, the United States and Japan, and has resulted in several recordings for Delos International. Her teaching appointments have included piano at the International Academy of Music of the Fondazione Milano Scuole Civiche.

Raffaele Trevisani’s virtuoso technique and distinctive musical personality have earned him recognition from audiences and critics. He studied privately with Sir James Galway before receiving his diploma from the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan. Galway has praised his singing tone, technique and dedication to music; Jean-Pierre Rampal, Maxence Larrieu and Julius Baker have also expressed their appreciation of his playing.

From 1984 to 1988, he collaborated with the orchestra of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. His international solo career began with I Solisti Veneti, with whom he appeared in leading concert series in Italy and abroad. He has also performed as a soloist with the Orchestra da Camera di Padova e del Veneto, I Pomeriggi Musicali di Milano, I Cameristi della Scala, I Solisti della Scala, the Orchestra del Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, the Arcata chamber orchestra in Stuttgart, the Bielefelder Philharmoniker and other ensembles.

His concert appearances have included the Teatro alla Scala, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, and Tokyo’s Bunka Kaikan and Suntory Hall. He has participated in the Settimane Musicali di Stresa, Settembre Musica in Turin, the Rheingau Music Festival and South Africa’s MIAGI festival, as well as the celebrations marking ten years of freedom in South Africa.

He has given concerts and masterclasses in Europe, Japan, the United States and South Africa, and has appeared at flute festivals in Boston, Frankfurt, Detroit, Chicago, Rome, Las Vegas, Milan and New York.

A recording artist for Delos, Trevisani has also recorded for Italy’s RAI, Germany’s SDR, Japan’s NHK, the BBC, Russian television and Brazilian television. Brazil’s Globo and RAI Corporation in New York have devoted programmes to him featuring interviews and live performances, including the programme Italiani in America. He has also performed duo concerts with Maxence Larrieu and Sir James Galway for Italian television.

His instruments include a fourteen-carat gold Muramatsu flute formerly owned by Sir James Galway and a fourteen-carat gold Powell flute.

Carl Reinecke: (b Altona, 23 June 1824; d Leipzig, 10 March 1910). German composer, teacher, administrator, pianist and conductor. He was given a thorough musical education by his father, J.P. Rudolf Reinecke (b Hamburg, 22 Nov 1795; d Segeberg, 14 Aug 1883), a respected music theoretician and author of several textbooks. From 1845 Reinecke travelled through Europe, from Danzig to Riga; in Copenhagen he was appointed court pianist in 1846, where his duties included accompanying the violinist H.W. Ernst as well as giving solo recitals. He was given a particularly friendly reception in Leipzig by Mendelssohn and the Schumanns, and Liszt, whose daughter was later taught by Reinecke in Paris, spoke of his ‘beautiful, gentle, legato and lyrical touch’. In 1851 he moved to Cologne, where he taught counterpoint and the piano at Hiller’s conservatory. He also gave concerts with Hiller, who recommended him to Barmen. There as musical director and the conductor of several musical societies between 1854 and 1859, he significantly raised the standard of the town’s musical life. He then spent ten months in Breslau as director of music at the university and conductor of the Singakademie.
By 1860 his growing reputation brought him an appointment to teach at the Leipzig Conservatory, where he became the director in 1897. By selecting capable teachers who shared his conservative views and by improving the facilities and the syllabus, Reinecke transformed the conservatory into one of the most renowned in Europe. Grieg, Kretzschmar, Kwast, Muck, Riemann, Sinding, Svendsen, Sullivan and Weingartner were all pupils there; and to this distinguished list could be added many other names of equal repute, showing how exaggerated was the reproach, made particularly in north Germany, that Leipzig was a hotbed of reaction (although this criticism had some justification after 1880). But it cannot be denied that Reinecke considered it his responsibility as director to perpetuate the example of the Classical composers; he was very conscious of his position as a representative and guardian of tradition, and also made it his business to foster the music of the pre-Classical composers, particularly Bach, even exploring as far back as Palestrina. He was a sympathetic teacher who firmly believed in the necessity of a thorough grounding. In Leipzig, he was also the conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra until 1895 (when Nikisch succeeded him); a stern disciplinarian, he achieved a high standard of virtuosity from his players by his insistence on clarity of execution. Reinecke became a member of the Berlin Academy in 1875, received the honorary doctorate in 1884 and became a professor in 1885. He retired in 1902, though his creative work continued until the end of his life.
As a composer Reinecke was best known for his numerous piano compositions, representing virtually every musical form of the time and, despite being influenced by Mendelssohn’s melodic style, was stylistically nearer to Schumann. The exercises for young pianists and the piano sonatinas have become classics because of their charming melodies, as have the canons and nursery rhymes which are highly inventive and totally free from bourgeois sentimentality. Reinecke was a master of the so-called ‘Hausmusik’ and of the simpler forms popular at the time. His chamber music is distinguished and, in the later works in particular, attains a Brahmsian majesty and warmth within a variety of forms. His sonata for flute and piano, Undine, is his most frequently performed work. His most successful concertos are those for flute and for harp, and the first and third for piano, which well display his pleasant melodic sense and his admirable ear for orchestration; the piano concertos avoid grand soloistic mannerisms, and his own style of playing, with hands still and fingers curved, reflected his belief in classical practice. Of his three symphonies, the first employs small forces, while the second is a cyclically organized work on a grand scale. His operas, despite their Wagnerian trappings, were not successful; his better-known musical fairy tales, based in part on his own texts (written under the name Heinrich Carsten), were composed in a tasteful folk-style. Gifted in many fields, he was also a talented painter and poet. His lucidly written books and essays contain many observations still of interest.

César Franck: (b Liège, 10 Dec 1822; d Paris, 8 Nov 1890). French composer, teacher and organist of Belgian birth. He was one of the leading figures of French musical life during the second half of the 19th century.

Robert Schumann: (b Zwickau, Saxony, 8 June 1810; d Endenich, nr Bonn, 29 July 1856). German composer and music critic. While best remembered for his piano music and songs, and some of his symphonic and chamber works, Schumann made significant contributions to all the musical genres of his day and cultivated a number of new ones as well. His dual interest in music and literature led him to develop a historically informed music criticism and a compositional style deeply indebted to literary models. A leading exponent of musical Romanticism, he had a powerful impact on succeeding generations of European composers.