Alessandro Stella: Minuetto
Kha Records

Over a two-year period, Italian classical pianist Alessandro Stella examined hundreds of scores and manuscripts to select the twenty-one pieces featured on this theme-based collection. Certainly one thing the recording reveals has to do with the ubiquity of the minuet form, with everyone from Purcell and Schubert to Ravel and Barber having taken a stab at it. As a result, works by composers from many different countries and time periods appear on Minuetto, which Stella recorded in June 2017 in Rome. Major figures are present (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, et al.) alongside ones rather less familiar, such as Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812) and Domenico Zipoli (1688-1726); regardless of name recognition, all sound very much like they belong. Most pieces are short, in the one- to two-minute range, which makes for a rapidly changing presentation; only three push past four minutes, the longest on the release a six-minute setting by Dvorák.

The form is amenable to many moods, from lightheartedness to melancholy. Handel's ruminative “Minuet in G minor," two versions of which appear on the release, exudes dignity yet melancholy, too. By comparison, the melding of Brahms' “Menuetto I in G major” and “Menuetto II in G minor” sounds carefree, enlivened by youthful spirit. Much the same might be said of Ricardo Viñes' “Menuet spectrale, à la memoire de Maurice Ravel,” a wistful reverie that casts an endearing gaze in the latter's direction, and Isaac Albéniz's “Minuetto del gallo," as playful as it is dramatic.

Among the better-known pieces is Beethoven's “Minuet in G major, WoO 10 No. 2,” its lighthearted romp handled wonderfully by Stella, whereas one of the most memorable is Dvorák's “Minuet in A-flat major, Op. 28 No. 1,” as endearing a salon setting as could be imagined. Immediately identifiable as a composition by Ravel, his “Menuet sur le nom d'Haydn” possesses all of the refinement we associate with his work.

Stella renders the material with charm and affection, his touch delicate, his modulations in dynamics gracefully handled, and his trills executed with elegance (consider as examples Couperin's “Menuet et Double in G minor” and Johann Krieger's “Minuet in A minor”). One could do a whole lot worse than spend forty-seven minutes in the pianist's company as he gives voice to these charming miniatures. Packaged with the physical release, by the way, is a mini-booklet featuring Guy de Maupassant's titular short story (the 1882 original in French plus Italian and English translations) in which one character, described by the narrator as a “strange, little old man,” succinctly captures the regal character of the minuet in describing it as “the queen of dances and the dance of queens.”

February 2019