Out of the blue one morning I received an email message from a young Italian classical music label that I had hitherto not heard about, asking me if I would be interested in listening to and reviewing their latest release. Now as you can probably imagine, I receive email messages like this on a weekly basis, either from individual musicians or record labels looking to disseminate their latest recording and extend its reach. Some are superfluous, but with this one, as soon as I heard the audio files, I knew this was something special.

The Italian classical music label in question, established in 2010, is NovAntiqua Records, and I urge you to visit their website if only to read their manifest, in which they stress the importance of the CD as the preferred format for classical music recordings, a view that coincides very much with the article The Bipolar Biped's iPod from my own blog. The recording features the complete Sonatas for Cello and Fortepiano by Ludwig van Beethoven performed on period instruments with Alessandro Andriani on cello, and Mario Sollazzo on fortepiano. In this case the period instruments definitely bring a sense of immediacy and authenticity to the music, as well as manifesting its intimacy. But Andriani and Sollazzo demonstrate that the instruments themselves are strictly a means to an end, and that only the musicians can well define Beethoven's creative genius. The musicianship is outstanding and avoids the pitfall of dragging Beethoven into the 21st century. The instruments used in this recording are a 1782 Ferdinando Gagliano cello, an 1805 Joseph Brodmann fortepiano, and an 1820 Johann Schanz fortepiano.

And as far as audio quality is concerned, rarely have I heard a recording with such well defined stereo separation and depth. The instruments sound at once well distanced, and yet close enough to touch. The loudspeakers vanish within the soundstage. Highly recommended!

Jean-Yves Duperron - June 2020