Alessandro Viale: Minimal Works
Kha Records

A rival selling-point to Alessandro Viale's sensitive piano performances are the works featured on this latest Kha Records release. In fact, while it's not necessarily its raison d'être, Minimal Works presents in a single volume an impressive overview of the modern composer landscape. Sixteen pieces appear, including ones by Cage, Ligeti, Maxwell Davies, and Pärt alongside miniatures by Glass, Richter, Lang, Tiersen, Mertens, Arnalds, Frahm, and even Richard D James (aka Aphex Twin). Stylistically, there's contrast, but differences in mood, tempo, and dynamics also add variety. Listening to the forty-eight-minute release is a bit like ingesting one delectable morsel after another, each piece an exquisite confection.

Viale is more than equipped to handle whatever challenges the material poses. A pianist, harpsichordist, composer, and conductor, he plays in a number of ensembles, including the Ardorè Duo, Avant Piano Trio, the Rest Ensemble, the Imago Sonora Ensemble, and the Il Quadro Animato Ensemble. While Minimal Works is primarily a solo piano recording, he's joined on three pieces by fellow pianist Assunta Cavallari and on four violinist Rebecca Raimondi, Viale's Ardorè Duo partner. Their presence does much to distinguish the recording, not just for the calibre of their musicianship but for how much their instruments enhance the presentation.

Many pieces live up to the album title's billing, with ones by Max Richter (“The Twins (Prague)”) and Nils Frahm (“Familiar”) as haunting as a prototypical Glass setting. Speaking of which, the opening “Truman Sleeps” is two lyrical minutes that couldn't have been written by anyone but him. Yann Tiersen devotees won't be disappointed by the graceful lilt of his “Comptine d'un autre eté. L'après-Midi,” while Viale's tender reading of Ólafur Arnalds' “Tomorrow's Song” is one of the recording's more memorable treatments. First featured on the 2001 Aphex Twin album Drukqs, “Avril 14th” sounds as pretty here as it did when it was first heard, and the album's gentler side also surfaces in Alessandra Celletti's “The Golden Fly Four,” a lovely exercise in dignified melancholy.

The four pieces featuring Viale and Raimondi are, of course, essentially Ardorè Duo performances. Certainly the renderings of David Lang's “Light Moving,” Lera Auerbach's “24 Preludes for Violin and Piano, Op. 46: Prelude No 15, Adagio Sognando,” and Arvo Pärt's “Spiegel Im Spiegel” argue strongly on behalf of the group project; the latter in particular stands out for the sensitivity with which the two give voice to the quietly poignant material. When Cavallari joins Viale for Wim Mertens' “4 Mains” and Matteo Sommacal's “The Forgotten Strains,” the results are denser, so much so that the two-piano performances start to lose a bit of their minimal character.

January 2020