1 	Pianette 	3:29
2 	Doll 	5:13
3 	La Mariposa 	2:47
4 	Marionette 	3:18
5 	Paloma 	3:56
6 	Multicolor 	2:51
7 	Empty Circus 	2:39
8 	Tin Soldiers 	3:31
9 	Wooden Toys 	3:51
10 	Dreams Of An Elephant 	3:01
11 	ClarOscuro Solo Piano Version 	4:42
12 	Goodness 	3:54

Mastered By [Analog Mastered By] – Ian Hawgood
Producer, Recorded By, Written By – Bruno Sanfilippo
Score [Arranged By] – Chelo Alberti 

Bruno Sanfilippo’s piano-based music continues to oscillate around melodic or atmospheric moods and with his new album released on New Years Day called ‘Pianette’, he returns back to the more melodic side of his compositions.

‘Pianette’, as an album, is the most structured and melodic of Bruno’s work for some time. There is a music box and ballet-like quality to the majority of the tracks and that’s clear from the opening title track. This is because the album itself is inspired in part by mechanical toys. It sets the tone of lush but dampened melodies, quietly beavering away under the surface. It also sets the pattern for the chords and notes being used as often at points during each track the music veers into a slight dissonance of chord change that makes you feel like something is beautiful – but not quite right. It’s a gentle curious mark that draws you into so many of the pieces such as ‘Paloma’ which revels in that state.

As the album moves forward we also start to dive inside the piano with its intimate microphone set up. ‘DOLL’ feels percussive with its stops, hammers and dampeners alluding to that mechanical toy feel. ‘Marionette’ sounds like there is a guitar playing too but its all in the pianos internals. It’s not quite like a prepared piano, but the softness of the sound really helps craft the tracks where this type of audio production is used. The album refuses to build up or slow down too much – it has an intensity to it that reminds me of old Europe and that comes home in the closing track ‘Goodness’ which is as close to a dramatic finale as the album gets.

Bruno Sanfilippo has made my favourite work of his with ‘Pianette’. It’s unashamedly new-classical in its composition, eerie with its tense production and melodic dissonance and oh so subtle in how it uses the piano to create mechanical life. The piano is easily one of the most expressive instruments on Earth, so playing these two ideas off against each other has created an inspired album of muted greatness. ---higherplainmusic.com

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

yandex mediafire ulozto gett bayfiles

back

1 	The Poet 	3:35
2 	Before Nightfall 	3:40
3 	Silk Offering 	3:55
4 	Dead's Hope 	1:19
5 	The Legend Of The Sailor 	4:08
6 	An Omen 	4:29
7 	The Book Without Words 	4:55
8 	Seventy Seven Years Later 	5:17
9 	Iron Horse 	3:44
10 	The Four Keys 	2:52
11 	Abandoned Carousel 	2:03

Bruno Sanfilippo - piano
Pere Bardagi - violin
Julian Kancepolski - cello

Over the last several years, Bruno Sanfilippo has been making a focused move toward establishing himself in contemporary or modern classical composition. With The Poet, I feel he has found his current apex, and is rapidly becoming a composer who, although perhaps noted as a “New Age” artist, is breaking well beyond the borders of that delineation. The Poet is minimalist chamber music, with Sanfilippo joined by cellist Julián Kancepolski and violinist Pere Bardagí. Each piece feels delicate and flawlessly sculpted, the kind of thing you want to gingerly hold up to the light and turn over and over to see every facet. To me, the work here is lightly glazed with just a touch of sadness that never crosses into a less desirable tone of melancholy. It’s pensive and true. The title track, the moving “Before Nightfall,” and”Silk Offering” all pull the listener into that introspective cocoon while also giving us a feel for the easy chemistry between the players, the balance of the instruments’ tones. Bardagí’s lines reach straight for the heart on “Before Nightfall,” and Kancepolski’s counterpoint helps drive it home. “Silk Offering” is a beautiful blend where Sanfilippo’s patient phrasing lays down a bed for the pleading voice of the violin and the more stringent tone of the cello to work out their conversation. The pace is slow, underscored with drama, and the piece is vivid. The more minimalist side of the work comes out later, with “Dead’s Hope” and “The Four Keys” both opening with repeating arpeggios that speak of the influence of Glass and Reich. “Dead’s Hope” is short, more like an exercise in building intensity. It reaches constantly upward, then simply stops. “The Four Keys” is a true showcase for the strings and the potency that can come from repetition. We hear the same phrases, yet they seem to rise up in meaning with each new pass. It seems like Sanfilippo wanted to roll out as many different approaches as practical on The Poet. “Iron Horse” goes strong on theme with Sanfilippo playing alone on what I assume from the sound is a prepared piano. Its notes have a metallic ring and resonance to them, and the piece jerks along like rusted machinery, its awkward pauses creating very strong mind’s-eye imagery. “The Book Without Words” seems to grow beyond the small trio feel in places, reaching for something more symphonic with tympani rolls and layers of strings. Sanfilippo’s music-box playing keeps it anchored in a glistening simplicity. And if you’d like your heart broken, the short solo piano piece “Abandoned Carousel” will do it for you in exactly two minutes. It’s the closing piece, and whether Sanfilippo meant to do this or not, it dovetails seamlessly back into the first piece. It is about as perfect a continuation of feeling as I’ve ever heard. So if it’s on purpose, bravo.

The Poet is an exquisitely beautiful set of works. While minimalist in compositional approach, the pieces here are full in ways that utterly belie that tag. The effect on the listener is maximal, certainly. These are pieces that land with emotional impact and demand focused attention. They may be delicate, but they are strong. Sanfilippo grows almost exponentially as a composer with each new release. The Poet is amazing, it is a must-hear, and it has become a personal favorite of mine. Listen to this now. --hypnagogue.net

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

yandex mediafire uloz.to gett

back

1 	Spiral 	4:14
2 	One 	5:12
3 	Lux 	4:00
4 	Simple 	3:15
5 	Oneness 	4:48
6 	Entity 	5:34
7 	Cyclical 	5:49
8 	Unity 	10:54

Bruno Sanfilippo - piano, electronics
Pere Bardagí - violin
Alena Tryhubkina - cello

Bruno Sanfilippo’s newest album, Unity, is an emotionally evocative collection that moves the listener through moments that exalt the senses. Through cyclical and minimalist sound, the composer creates visceral experiences that are both ethereal and hauntingly beautiful.

Bruno Sanfilippo is a classically trained musician and composer. His focus alternates between the exploration of minimalist piano concepts and electroacoustic music. He is obsessed with the search for new and unique qualities in music - the amazing, the magical and the deep. In dreams, there's no imagined thing that's too absurd, too strange, and Bruno Sanfilippo's music comes from that inexhaustible and shameless source. ---dronarivm.bandcamp.com

'Unity' is the latest luxurious album from Argentinian-born Bruno Sanfilippo (now one of Barcelona's premier exponents of Minimalism). But hey, this isn't at all what I was expecting from Mr Sanfilippo -- whereas he was last heard tinkling and twinkling on moonlit piano, all the while a fully-fledged channeler of the departed Claude Debussy, he has added gorgeous acoustic, stringed and bowed timbres to his mix of neoclassical adventures in keyboards and electronics.

The album opens with the achingly choral-sounding yet earthly and profane textures of 'Spiral', before segueing into melancholic, slow 3/4 time duet for piano and cello ('One') and then some really lovely winding, gently undulating strings for more of the old acoustic feels; a lot like what Richter and Frahm have done for us at some time or other. Some beautiful, very moving cello and violin playing here, particularly on sixth track 'Entity' that would probably have brought a tear to my eye if I were a better human being and less of a robot (although it's probably part of the coping mechanisms we all need here to get through all the packing we do every day). Really, it's the (deceptive) simplicity in structure, in melody, and the sheer stark rawness of the musicians and their instrumentation playing off one another that provides for some substantive emotional punch.

I'm even reminded of Yo-Yo Ma's cello playing Saint-Saens' 'The Swan', at times. Powerful stuff that ticks all the right boxes, and then some. ---Jamie, normanrecords.com

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

yandex mediafire uloz.to gett

back