DA VINCI PUBLISHINGNinnenanne: A Book of Piano Lullabies

Additional information

Artist(s)	Stefania Redaelli
Composer(s)	Albert Chandelier, Aleksander Michalowski, Alexander Spendiarow, Bolesław Maszynski, Cécile Chaminade, Claude Debussy, Federico Zaltron, Frank Bridge, Georges de Castera, Giuseppe Frugatta, Johannes Brahms, Jāzeps Vītols, Leevi Madetoja, Mily Alekseyevich Balakirev, Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky, Reinhold Glière, Robert Schumann, Sergey Ljapunov, Stanisław Lipski
Edition	Da Vinci Classics
Format	1 Cd
Genre	Instrumental
Instrumentation	Piano
Period	Contemporary, Modern, Romantic
Publication year	2025

Description

The evocative power of the lullaby moves us, leading both young and old to that dreamlike, serene age, often lost. My thought is dedicated to all children and serves as a small contribution to help rediscover, when needed, a place—the place of childhood, with its magic, fears, and comforts, where monsters and angels, fairies and demons dwell without shame. It aims to be a bridge, reaching that hidden drop of honey in the depths of one’s past, where hope is nourished.
Stefania Redaelli © 2025

Thus does Stefania Redaelli introduce her recording project, now released in this Da Vinci Classics album. The idea of recording an entire CD of lullabies is doubtlessly original, and it also allows the listener to experience an ample palette of different, yet complementary, ways to understand the “lullaby”.
There are probably few things, and few musical genres, as universal as the lullaby. Contemporary studies about prenatal life reveal that the child in the mother’s womb “listens” very carefully to what comes from the outside world – even though this is filtered by the mother’s body. What constitutes a long and constant drone during the nine months before birth is the mother’s heartbeat, which accompanies the baby’s development throughout the adventure of pregnancy. The child also learns to distinguish the mother’s voice, and reacts to it; furthermore, if the mother is a keen listener of a specific musical work, or of a given musical style, the fetus will also be familiarized with this. Evidence demonstrates that these pieces constitute almost a “mother-by-proxy” for the baby. When children are born, the mother’s voice, the feeling of her body (and therefore of her heartbeat), but also her favourite music, are all elements easily recognized by the newborn, and they all have a calming, reassuring, comforting, and quieting effect on him or her.
If this all has been demonstrated by recent scientific studies, mothers have known this for ages. It is not by chance, as said, that all cultures know some form of lullaby; and that singing to a child is one of the most basic, commonest, and almost inescapable forms of musicianship.
Lullabies are transmitted from a generation to another. Mothers sing to their babies, regardless of how beautiful or in tune their voice may be. The child is no musical critic: babies only want to feel the presence of their mother through her voice and body (especially in the very early weeks of postnatal life, when the mother’s face is still seen rather unclearly by the baby). Lullabies are extremely simple, generally speaking. Their main qualities are repetitiveness (for this is another reassuring element for a child’s tranquility), subdued tone (for the baby should be lulled to sleep), a limited pitch range (for the mother’s voice must be entirely at ease, never strained, lest the calming effect be lost), and mainly evoking with the music the rocking movement of the mother’s arms on which the baby lies.
Frequently, there is no need for words. Often, mothers simply sing repeated syllables; one of the most frequently found is precisely la-la. Not by chance, this sound is one of the earliest that the baby will later learn to articulate. Not by chance, this is the Latin name of one of the notes – of the note which gives the pitch to the whole orchestra, indeed. Not by chance, the child’s first attempts at speaking are called lallation (musicians and music-lovers might recall the beautiful chorus Herrscher des Himmels, erhöre das Lallen from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, where the faithful’s maladroit but enthusiastic speech about the mystery of Incarnation is likened to a child’s repetition of senseless syllables). Not by chance, the very word lullaby evokes this sound. And not by chance, finally, many refrains of popular or folk songs are based on repeated la-la-la (this is found also in many Renaissance compositions, such as A lieta vita by Gian Giacomo Gastaldi, or So ben mi c’ha bon tempo by Orazio Vecchi).
The experience of motherhood and the tenderness evoked by the image of a mother rocking her baby, and singing a lullaby to make him or her sleep, are therefore universal. They arise feelings of nostalgia, sweetness, and familiarity when they are suggested to a listener. For this reason, many composers (and several males among them!) throughout music history have transformed the style, idea, and musical gestures of spontaneous lullabies into proper musical “works”. The very fact that the text of lullabies is normally rather superfluous – if it exists at all – makes instrumental lullabies very common.
But there is also another face of the coin. If a lullaby rocks a baby to sleep, sleep can also be a symbol for another reality, i.e. that of death. Particularly in the past, when child mortality was, alas, extremely common, it was possible to “play” on the ambiguity of this sleep to suggest other, much sadder, viewpoints. Visual art reinforced this perspective. The sculptural and pictorial “topos” of the Pietà (the Virgin Mary receiving the dead body of her Son) is powerfully evocative of a mother’s lulling of her newborn in her arms and by her womb. This and similar images are also suggested in several songs, especially in the past: for instance, Bach’s Bist du bei mir is a wonderful meditation on the “slumber of death”, sung with extreme serenity and almost with joy. Another famous and magnificent example is William Byrd’s Lullaby my sweet little babe, through which the composer, a staunch Catholic during the persecutions of the early seventeenth century, gave voice to the toll of death which Catholics had to undergo at his time. Indeed, there is also a deep connection between faith, religiosity, and lullabies. Most children used to receive the first rudiments of their religious education from their mothers; conversely, lullabies frequently mentioned God, or the Virgin Mary, or guardian angels, invoked as protectors of the child.
But, given the universality of lullaby-singing, another interesting phenomenon was that of young girls “playing mothers”, and singing lullabies to their younger siblings, or even to their dolls. In this Da Vinci Classics album, indeed, there are some pieces which suggest this tender and “educational” practice. For instance, Lyapunov’s Berceuse d’une poupée is a description of one such situation: another similar piece is found in Claude Debussy’s Children’s Corner, written for, and dedicated to, the composer’s daughter, Chouchou. And another composer and father, Robert Schumann, wrote many pieces for his children and for young pianists in general. His Album for the Young op. 68 is a masterpiece both under the profile of musical education, and of musical quality in general. There are no lullabies in it, but there is one in his Kinderszenen op. 15 (Kind im Einschlummern, just before the last piece), and there are two among his Albumblätter (“Album leaves”), op. 124, recorded here. Certainly, Schumann’s own experience as a father of a numerous family and the role of his beloved Clara – an exceptional musician herself – as a mother of his children will have encouraged him to portray these nursery scenes with particular tenderness.
Other works come from Eastern Europe: works by Russian composers such as Balakirev and Tchaikovsky are especially interesting since these two musicians represent the two competing sides of late-nineteenth-century Russian music. On the one side, Balakirev was a representative (the founder, indeed) of the Mighty Five, who were keenly focused on the national heritage of folk music; on the other, Tchaikovsky looked with particular interest to the West and to the forms of German music (here represented, among others, by Johannes Brahms, whose lullaby is one of the best known pieces he penned). Still other works come from other countries of Eastern Europe, such as the two Berceuses by Aleksandr Michałowski – whose Polish origins and his own reputation as an excellent interpreter of Chopin allow for a few references to Chopin’s own masterful Berceuse to resurface. Other similar suggestions are found also in the works by Maszynski, a pupil of Aleksandr Michałowski: his berceuse is delightfully simple in its colours and nuances, and manages to recreate a nursery-rhyme atmosphere.
The French world is also represented, for instance with two of the most important names found in this collection, i.e. Debussy and Cécile Chaminade. The latter, a female composer, one of the most important and appreciated of her time, conjures an innocent and yet touching portrayal of infantile heroism. The “little wounded soldier” may be a child who slightly injured himself during his games with his fellows; he recurs to his mother’s tender care, and the passing moment of drama (described with unexpected modulations) is the occasion for a new wave of cuddling to be represented by Chaminade’s music.
True, dramatic heroism is instead depicted and paid homage to in Debussy’s Berceuse héroïque. Debussy contributed this piece for an album titled King Albert’s Book: A Tribute to the Belgian King and People from Representative Men and Woman Throughout the World and intended to honour and appreciate the Belgians’ neutrality, which had been brutally attacked by the Germans. This precious document included works by Edward Elgar, Jack London, Maurice Maeterlinck and many others. The composer’s intention was, as he declared, to write a work which had no pretensions other than to offer an homage to so much patient suffering”.
Together, therefore, these pieces – and the many others which constitute this fascinating compilation – are a witness to the most universal feeling of all humankind, i.e. that of motherhood and of the protective care mothers provide to their children. It is a care which extends itself far beyond the age and time of lullabies, and which even adults recall frequently and with unique tenderness; it is an experience which music both represents and transfigures.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2025

Artist(s)

Stefania Redaelli is one of Italy’s most esteemed figures in chamber music. She has collaborated with internationally renowned musicians, including Salvatore Accardo, Mario Brunello, Massimo Quarta, Rocco Filippini, Sergej Krilov, Lucas Hagen, Bruno Giuranna, Victor Tretiakov, Sonig Tchakerian, Domenico Nordio, Marco Rizzi, Edoardo Zosi, Fabrizio Meloni, Maria Grazia Bellocchio, Gabriele Dal Santo, Danilo Stagni, Antony Pay, and Alain Meunier.
She has performed at many of the world’s most prestigious venues, including Teatro alla Scala in Milan, the Schauspielhaus in Berlin, Teatro San Carlo in Naples, Teatro Regio in Parma, Teatro Ponchielli in Cremona, Teatro Bibiena in Mantua, Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, as well as at the Stresa Festival, Unione Musicale in Turin, Serate Musicali in Milan, La Biennale di Venezia, the MITO Festival, and on Radio3’s concert series (Concerti al Quirinale, Radio3 Suite, Piazza Verdi). Her international appearances include the Istituzione Universitaria dei Concerti (IUC) in Rome, the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, the Giovine Orchestra Genovese (GOG) in Genoa, Wigmore Hall in London, Boston Symphony Hall, the Glinka Museum in Moscow, Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall in Istanbul, and the National University of Singapore.
For four decades, she has been a sought-after collaborator in the masterclasses of leading musicians, including Salvatore Accardo, Rocco Filippini, Franco Gulli, Yo-Yo Ma, Victor Tretiakov, Lucas Hagen, Asier Polo, Ilya Gringolts, and Boris Belkin, working with institutions such as the Accademia Chigiana, the Fondazione Stauffer, and the Garda Lake Music Festival.
As a soloist, she has performed with the RAI Orchestra, the Pomeriggi Musicali Orchestra, the Angelicum Orchestra of Milan, the Sanremo Symphony Orchestra, and the Padua Chamber Orchestra.
Her extensive discography includes recordings for Warner, Warner-Fonit Cetra, Foné, Dynamic, Brilliant Classics, Stradivarius, Ricordi, Aulics Classics, and Bottega Discantica.
She is Professor of Chamber Music at the Milan Conservatoire and teaches Piano at the Accademia di Alto Perfezionamento in Sacile.
Stefania Redaelli studied with Ernesto Esposito, Bruno Canino, Murray Perahia, Paolo Borciani (Quartetto Italiano), Dario De Rosa, Norbert Brainin (Amadeus Quartet), and Corrado Romano.

Composer(s)

Aleksander Michalowski
(b Kamieniec Podolski, 5 May 1851; d Warsaw, 17 Oct 1938). Polish pianist, composer and teacher. He studied with Reinecke and Moscheles at the Leipzig Conservatory and with Tausig in Berlin. He made his début in Leipzig in 1869 and lived in Warsaw from 1874, giving concerts mainly in Poland and Russia. Though possessing a vast repertory, he concentrated on Chopin and was notable for his delicacy of touch. Between 1891 and 1917 he held piano classes at the Warsaw Music Institute and then at the school of the Warsaw Music Society, establishing a school of his own in the Polish piano tradition. His pupils included Wanda Landowska. Michałowski composed a few dozen piano miniatures; they are influenced by Chopin and not unlike works by Moszkowski and Anton Rubinstein. He also made some virtuoso arrangements of works by Chopin, and prepared for publication a collected edition of Chopin’s works; the études, waltzes, ballades and impromptus were published by Gebethner & Wolff, Warsaw.

Alexander Spendiarow
(Armenian: Ալեքսանդր Ստեփանոսի Սպենդիարյան, November 1, 1871, Kakhovka, Russian Empire – May 7, 1928, Yerevan, Armenia)
Russian composer and conductor of Armenian descent, founder of Armenian national symphonic music.

Cecile Chaminade: (b Paris, 8 Aug 1857; d Monte Carlo, 13 April 1944). French composer and pianist. While it is striking that nearly all of Chaminade’s approximately 400 compositions were published, even more striking is the sharp decline in her reputation as the 20th century progressed. This is partly attributable to modernism and a general disparagement of late Romantic French music, but it is also due to the socio-aesthetic conditions affecting women and their music.

The third of four surviving children, Chaminade received her earliest musical instruction from her mother, a pianist and singer; her first pieces date from the mid-1860s. Because of paternal opposition to her enrolling at the Paris Conservatoire, she studied privately with members of its faculty: Félix Le Couppey, A.-F. Marmontel, M.-G.-A. Savard and Benjamin Godard. In the early 1880s Chaminade began to compose in earnest, and works such as the first piano trio op.11 (1880) and the Suite d’orchestre op.20 (1881) were well received. She essayed an opéra comique, La Sévillane, which had a private performance (23 February 1882). Other major works of the decade were the ballet symphonique Callirhoë op.37, performed at Marseilles on 16 March 1888; the popular Concertstück op.40 for piano and orchestra, which was given its première at Antwerp on 18 April 1888; and Les amazones, a symphonie dramatique, given on the same day. After 1890, with the notable exception of the Concertino op.107, commissioned by the Conservatoire (1902), and her only Piano Sonata (op.21, 1895), Chaminade composed mainly character pieces and mélodies. Though the narrower focus may have been due to financial, aesthetic or discriminatory considerations, this music became very popular, especially in England and the USA; and Chaminade helped to promote sales through extensive concert tours. From 1892 she performed regularly in England and became a welcome guest of Queen Victoria and others.

Meanwhile, enthusiasm grew in the USA, largely through the many Chaminade clubs formed around 1900, and in autumn 1908 she finally agreed to make the arduous journey there. She appeared in 12 cities, from Boston to St Louis. With the exception of the concert at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music in early November, which featured the Concertstück, the programme consisted of piano pieces and mélodies. The tour was a financial success; critical evaluation, however, was mixed. Many reviews practised a form of sexual aesthetics that was common in Chaminade’s career and that of many women composers in the 19th and 20th centuries (see Citron, 1988). Pieces deemed sweet and charming, especially the lyrical character pieces and songs, were criticized for being too feminine, while works that emphasize thematic development, such as the Concertstück, were considered too virile or masculine and hence unsuited to the womanly nature of the composer. Based also on assumptions about the relative value of large and small works, complex and simple style, and public and domestic music-making, this critical framework was largely responsible for the decline in Chaminade’s compositional reputation in the 20th century.

Prestigious awards began to come her way, culminating in admission to the Légion d’Honneur in 1913 – the first time it was granted to a female composer. Nonetheless, the award was belated and ironic considering that she had been largely ignored in France for some 20 years. In August 1901 Chaminade married Louis-Mathieu Carbonel, an elderly Marseilles music publisher, in what may have been a platonic arrangement; he died in 1907 and she never remarried. While her compositional activity eventually subsided because of World War I and deteriorating health, Chaminade made several recordings, many of them piano rolls, between 1901 and 1914. Aeolian produced additional piano rolls of her works after the war, now with the improved technology of the Duo-Art system. In later years, by which time she was feeling obsolete, she was tended by her niece, Antoinette Lorel, who attempted to promote Chaminade’s music after her death in 1944.

Chaminade was well aware of the social and personal difficulties facing a woman composer, and she suggested that perseverance and special circumstances were needed to overcome them. Her output is noteworthy among women composers for its quantity, its high percentage of published works and for the fact that a large portion – notably piano works and mélodies – was apparently composed expressly for publication and its attendant sales (Enoch was the main publisher). Chaminade composed almost 200 piano works, most of them character pieces (e.g. Scarf Dance, 1888), and more than 125 mélodies (e.g. L’anneau d’argent, 1891); these two genres formed the basis of her popularity. Stylistically, her music is tuneful and accessible, with memorable melodies, clear textures and mildly chromatic harmonies. Its emphasis on wit and colour is typically French. Many works seem inspired by dance, for example Scarf Dance and La lisonjera. Of her larger works, the one-movement Concertstück recalls aspects of Wagner and Liszt, while the three-movement Piano Sonata shows the formal and expressive experimentation that was typical of the genre by the late 19th century (see Citron, 1993, for a feminist analysis of the first movement). The mélodies are idiomatic for the voice and well-suited expressively and poetically to the ambience of the salon or the recital hall, the likely sites for such works. The Concertino has remained a staple of the flute repertory; while it is a large-scale work and thus represents a relatively small part of her output, the piece still provides a sense of the elegance and attractiveness of Chaminade’s music.

Claude Debussy: (b St Germain-en-Laye, 22 Aug 1862; d Paris, 25 March 1918). French composer. One of the most important musicians of his time, his harmonic innovations had a profound influence on generations of composers. He made a decisive move away from Wagnerism in his only complete opera Pelléas et Mélisande, and in his works for piano and for orchestra he created new genres and revealed a range of timbre and colour which indicated a highly original musical aesthetic.

Violinist, violist, music teacher, arranger and composer

Federico Zaltron graduated in Violin and Jazz at the Arrigo Pedrollo conservatory in Vicenza with honors.
He studied with Massimo Quarta, Carlo Feige, Pietro Tonolo and Paolo Birro.
He attended masterclasses with Lukas Ligeti, Tim Berne, Robert Bonisolo, Peter Erskine and Gil Goldstein.
Since 2020 he has been teaching Music Improvisation Techniques at the Civica Scuola di Musica Claudio Abbado in Milan.
Since 2014 he has been collaborating with Riccardo Zegna in projects ranging from duo to Big Band.
From 2014 to 2019 he was first violin in the Orchestra Nazionale Giovani Talenti Jazz.
He plays Swing and Hot Jazz in the groups Swing Job and The Hot Teapots.
He arranges music of Duke Ellington for the group Selfie Jungle.
From 2019 he is developing a solo violin/viola project on the music of Thelonious Monk.
In 2018/2019 he attends the free improvisation workshop "Forme Sonore" by Roberto Dani.

Johannes Brahms: (b Hamburg, 7 May 1833; d Vienna, 3 April 1897). German composer. The successor to Beethoven and Schubert in the larger forms of chamber and orchestral music, to Schubert and Schumann in the miniature forms of piano pieces and songs, and to the Renaissance and Baroque polyphonists in choral music, Brahms creatively synthesized the practices of three centuries with folk and dance idioms and with the language of mid- and late 19th-century art music. His works of controlled passion, deemed reactionary and epigonal by some, progressive by others, became well accepted in his lifetime.

Jāzeps Vītols
(b Valmiera, 26 July 1863; d Lübeck, 24 April 1948). Latvian composer and teacher. Born into a musical family, he studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory with Rimsky-Korsakov. He graduated in 1886 and took over a composition class at the conservatory, where he was a professor from 1901 to 1918. Among his pupils were Prokofiev and Myaskovsky. Vītols was a close friend of Glazunov and Lyadov, and a regular participant at the ‘Belyayev Fridays’, meetings of distinguished Russian composers at the home of the well-known publisher and patron; Belyayev was Vītols’s main publisher at the time, though works were published under the name Joseph Wihtol. From 1897 to 1914 Vītols was music critic of the St Petersburger Zeitung, but after the revolution he moved to Riga and for 25 years he dominated the musical life of independent Latvia. He became director of the Latvian Opera in 1918 (renamed the Latvian National Opera in 1919), and in 1919 he established the Latvian State Conservatory, working there as professor until 1944 and rector during the years 1919–35 and 1937–44. There he taught most of the musicians who formed the Latvian national school, as well as some leading Lithuanian composers. In 1944 he fled before the Soviet army; he ended his life in exile and deep depression.

Vītols was the composer of the first Latvian symphony (1888), string quartet (1899) and piano sonata (1885). His music is academic in the best sense of the term: in style and form it is restrained, clear and confident however attractively coloured. Synthesizing west European and Russian musical influences of the late 19th century, the music also retains elements of Latvian folklore. His ballads and songs for chorus as well as chamber and piano pieces have attracted particular interest.

Leevi Madetoja

(b Oulu, 17 Feb 1887; d Helsinki, 6 Oct 1947). Finnish composer. He matriculated in Oulu in 1906 and then studied in Helsinki at the university (MA 1910) and at the music institute under Sibelius (1906–10); his studies were continued with d’Indy in Paris (1910–11), with Fuchs in Vienna, and in Berlin (1911–12). He conducted the orchestra of the Helsinki Philharmonic Society (1912–14) and the orchestra of Viipuri (1914–16), where he was also director of the orchestra school. In Helsinki he taught at the music institute (later academy) (1916–39) and was music critic of the Helsingin sanomat (1916–32). During the 1920s and 30s he spent some time in France. Madetoja was a leading member of the Finnish national Romantic school which followed Sibelius. He made use of the folktunes of Ostrobothnia, dark and heavy melodies tinged by church modes; at the same time he was influenced by contemporary French music. His orchestration was particularly skilful, approaching the clarity and balance of chamber music. In harmony and rhythm his means were more limited. His opera Pohjalaisia (‘The Ostrobothnians’) kept its status as the ‘national’ opera until the arrival of Joonas Kokkonen’s The Last Temptations in 1975.

Mily Alekseyevich Balakirev (b Nizhniy Novgorod, 21 Dec 1836/2 Jan 1837; d St Petersburg, 16/29 May 1910). Russian composer, conductor, teacher and pianist.

Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky: (b Kamsko-Votkinsk, Vyatka province, 25 April/7 May 1840; d St Petersburg, 25 Oct/6 Nov 1893). Russian composer. He was the first composer of a new Russian type, fully professional, who firmly assimilated traditions of Western European symphonic mastery; in a deeply original, personal and national style he united the symphonic thought of Beethoven and Schumann with the work of Glinka, and transformed Liszt’s and Berlioz’s achievements in depictive-programmatic music into matters of Shakespearian elevation and psychological import (Boris Asaf’yev).

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.

(b Yaroslavl, 18/30 Nov 1859; d Paris, 8 Nov 1924)