Brilliant Classics has already published all 88 of Domenico Cimarosa's keyboard sonatas in their commonly encountered appearance as harpsichord pieces (BC95027), as well as an album of 30 sonatas in arrangements for guitar (BC94172). He may still be better known as a composer of comic opera, for masterpiece such as Il matrimonio segreto, but this new album of the sonatas in versions for organ celebrates the variety and adaptability of Cimarosa's idiom and demonstrates why he was so lionized in his own time. The painter Delacroix preferred Cimarosa's music to Mozart's. Stendhal wrote that he would rather be hanged than be forced to state which of the two he preferred. Even the notoriously partial Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick lavished praise on Cimarosa's wonderful facility, inventive compositional strokes and refined taste, and Goethe, no less, directed several productions of his operas. Perhaps Cimarosa's sheer fluency has told against his posthumous reputation: where to begin with 88 attractive sonatas? In his own booklet introduction, Andrea Chezzi explains that he has reviewed all of them and chosen 21 which seem particularly suitable for performance on the organ. He has ordered them to alternate slow and fast pieces, made marginal adjustments such as a few pedal doublings, and recorded them here on a historically appropriate instrument by Andrea Boschini (before 1755) and Giovanni Cavalletti (1814), located in the Sanctuary of the Beata Vergine dello Spino, Brugneto di Reggiolo, in the Italian province of Reggio Emilia. Andrea Chezzi's previous recordings for Brilliant Classics have attracted glowing reviews, such as the Op.1 harpsichord sonatas by Baldassare Galuppi: 'The performance by Chezzi is bold and decisive... with music that can excite the imagination, performed with grace and style by Chezzi. It also shows that Galuppi is more than just a pretty operatic face.' (Fanfare)

Tracklist:

Organ Sonata In C Major - Allegro, C54, F54
Organ Sonata In A Minor - Largo, C55, F55
Organ Sonata In C Major - Allegro, C50, F50
Organ Sonata In G Minor - Andantino, C33, F33
Organ Sonata In G Major - Allegro, C32, F32
Organ Sonata In D Minor - Andante Con Moto, C79, F79
Organ Sonata In D Major - Allegretto, C30, F30
Organ Sonata In A Major - Allegro, C19, F19
Organ Sonata In A Minor - Andantino Grazioso, C58, F58
Organ Sonata In A Major - Allegro, C21, F21
Organ Sonata In D Minor - Andantino, C42, F42
Organ Sonata In F Major - Allegro, C51, F51
Organ Sonata In B-Flat Minor/Major - Andantino, Allegro Assai, C70, F70
Organ Sonata In G Minor - Largo, C61, F61
Organ Sonata In B-Flat Major - Allegro, C1, F1
Organ Sonata In G Minor - Andantino, C52, F52
Organ Sonata In G Major - Allegro, C53, F53
Organ Sonata In C Minor - Larghetto, C49, F49
Organ Sonata In C Minor - Allegro, C28, F28
Organ Sonata In E-Flat Major - Andantino, C37, F37
Organ Sonata In C Minor - Allegro, C68, F68

UPC: 5028421957814
Label: Brilliant Classics
Release Date: 2.7.20
Format: CD

Cimarosa / Chezzi - 21 Organ Sonatas (CD)