LUTOSŁAWSKI, WITOLD (1913–1994)

Giorgio Koukl is a Czech pianist/harpsichordist and composer. He studied at both the Conservatories of Zürich and Milan, where he took part in the masterclasses of Nikita Magaloff, Jacques Février and Stanislas Neuhaus, and with Rudolf Firkušný, friend and advocate of Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů. It was through Firkušný that Koukl first encountered Martinů’s music, prompting him to search out his compatriot’s solo piano works. Since then he has developed these into an important part of his concert repertoire and is now considered one of the world’s leading interpreters of Martinů’s piano music. As a logical continuation of this work, Koukl has recorded the complete solo piano works of Paul Le Flem, Alexander Tcherepnin, Arthur Lourié, Vítězslava Kaprálová, Witold Lutosławski, and more recently, Alexandre Tansman, Vittorio Rieti and Tibor Harsányi.

Virginia Rossetti began her piano studies with Massimiliano Ferrati, later attending the ‘Antonio Buzzolla’ Conservatory in Adria where she graduated with honours. In May 2013 she obtained her Master of Performing Arts with distinction at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel with Filippo Gamba, and in 2014 undertook studies at the Royal Flemish Conservatoire in Brussels with Aleksandar Madzar. She was also awarded a Master in Pedagogy at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana in the class of Anna Kravtchenko. She has participated in masterclasses with eminent artists and teachers including Konstantin Bogino and Elisabeth Leonskaja, and at the Sommerakademie Mozarteum in Salzburg with Sergio Perticaroli. Rossetti is a prize winner of several national and international piano competitions including the Premio Venezia 2009, reserved for the best graduates under the patronage of the Republic’s President, and the Premio Marizza in Trieste. She has performed across Europe in numerous concert halls, theatres and festivals such as the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Teatro Foce in Lugano, Volkshaus in Zurich, Rondo in Pontresina and the Portogruaro International Music Festival. Since 2011 she has been the pianist of the Lunaire Piano Trio with whom she has recorded live on I concerti del Quirinale for Rai Radio 3.

Although Lutosławski studied the piano in parallel with composition at the Warsaw Conservatoire, he wrote surprisingly few works for solo piano. His earliest surviving piece, dating from 1934, is the Piano Sonata, which he later deemed to be ‘over-Romantic’ because of its indebtedness to the music of both Szymanowski and Ravel. Nevertheless, he retained enough affection for it to play it in public from time to time and it garnered critical praise for its contemplative mood and sincerity of expression, not least from Szymanowski.