Recordings
Summer Dreams: American Piano Duets by MacDowell, Beach & Barber
Brilliant Classics 2024
Emma Abbate and Julian Perkins bring together the complete works for piano duet by three major American composers: Edward MacDowell (1860-1908), Amy Beach (1867-1944) and Samuel Barber (1910-1981).
MacDowell wrote his Moon-Pictures Op.21 in the winter of 1884-5, and subtitled them ‘after H.C. Andersen’s Picture-Book without Pictures’, referring to an 1848 collection of short bedtime stories. They show MacDowell’s great talent for evoking atmosphere and small-scale drama.
Summer Dreams Op.47 by Amy Beach are delightful and picturesque miniatures, evoking fairy tales and children’s stories.
Six dances make up Samuel Barber's suite Souvenirs Op.28: Waltz, Schottische, Pas de Deux, Two Step, Hesitation-Tango, and Galop. They are coloured by post-Stravinskian melodic intervals and harmonies even while the dance rhythms are those of an earlier century.
Album of the Week at Radio 3 Berlin-Brandenburg
"This is an attractive recital – generous, sensitively and well-played – of less familiar American music for piano four hands. ... it all receives performances of genuine insight and considerable musical and technical skill."
MusicWeb International
Listen to samples here
Franco Alfano: Songs
Resonus Classics 2023
Franco Alfano was a major musician and teacher who enjoyed considerable success with his operas during his lifetime, but who has been overlooked for decades. Generally regarded as the regenerator of the Italian art song, the works featured in this album offer a generous overview of Alfano’s vocal output, from his Opus 1 Cinq mélodies, written in 1896 when he was a twenty-one-year-old student at Leipzig, to Due liriche per canto, violoncello e pianoforte from 1949, five years before his death.
Emma is joined here by Anna Pirozzi who has established herself as the leading Italian dramatic soprano of today, performing on the most prestigious international opera stages, and also by the renowned cellist Bozidar Vukotic.
Watch Anna and Emma talking about this recording project here.
"Abbate is a fine partner, negotiating some tricky scores with finesse."
Gramophone
"The excellent pianist Emma Abbate combines great precision with a beautiful touch in the demanding piano parts."
Musica: rivista di cultura musicale e discografica
"Emma Abbate is an accomplished accompanist who completely masters the very sophisticated piano parts."
Scherzo: Revista de música clásica
"The performances from Anna Pirozzi and Emma Abbate are richly affecting and the performers were clearly full engaged by this music. Pirozzi and Abbate make each song into a mini-drama, mining Alfano's complex sound world to the ultimate."
Listen to samples here
Tournament for Twenty Fingers
BIS Records 2022
An unusual genesis... Read about this project in Classical Music Magazine here.
Initially enjoying popularity first in Germany-speaking lands and then in France, the genre of the piano duet (four hands, one piano) went on to blossom in England during the 20th century. On this album Emma Abbate and Julian Perkins present the complete works for piano duet by each of the composers selected. Palm Court Waltz, the Sonatina and Theme and Variations from Lennox Berkeley display Gallic traits, the consequence no doubt of his studies in France and his keen interest in the music of Satie, Ravel and Poulenc. While showing an evolution in the composer’s approach to tonality, every hint of seriousness is constantly balanced by elegant playfulness and diaphanous textures.
Less well-known than Berkeley, Richard Arnell and Stephen Dodgson nevertheless contribute to the general atmosphere with their unabashedly tonal music that shows the neoclassical influence of Hindemith, Prokofiev and Stravinsky. Dodgson’s suite Tournament for Twenty Fingers, which gives its title to this disc, is especially full of fun while ending with a homage to the Czech composers Dvořák and Janáček. An outstanding talent, Constant Lambert held jazz in high esteem and his Trois Pièces – written to be played entirely on the piano’s white keys – form a high-spirited and heartfelt tribute to its rhythmical vitality and inventiveness.
"Captured in beguilingly immediate sound that creates the impression of Emma Abbate and Julian Perkins playing in your living room, this is a recording I have already returned to several times simply for the pleasure of hearing two players at the top of their game."
BBC Music Magazine ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Performance
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Recording
"This is a fabulous compilation of twentieth century British piano duets performed brilliantly by Emma Abbate & Julian Perkins. ... A very welcome release of little heard repertoire."
Lark Reviews
"Twenty fingers on one keyboard? This requires a ballet for phalanges choreographed with microscopic precision. The trend to get behind the keys with two blew over from Germany via France to England, where the repertoire experienced a real boom in the middle of the last century. Excellent premise for a record, Emma Abbate and Julian Perkins found and swung a sublime selection into the ether with Tournament.
The most famous name on the tracklist is Sir Lennox Berkeley, who with his refined and playful style creates sardonic smart fun à la Poulenc. The neoclassical of Richard Arnell and Stephen Dodgson reminds of Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith, while constant Lambert's jazz seeps between the staves of Trois pièces (only for white keys!). The Italian-British piano pair surprises with an inspired, yet down-to-earth interpretation that highlights the elegance and eloquence of four hands playing."
Sofie Taes, Het Nieuwsblad ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"The performances by Emma Abbate and Julian Perkins are thoroughly enjoyable, committed, and technically sound. The BIS recording is excellent."
MusicWeb International
''The four-hands piano duo Emma Abbate and Julian Perkins have taken the trouble to understand this repertoire; they are able to tell a totally convincing story with every piece. ... Stephen Johnson's excellent programme note sums up one of the Berkeley works with the sentence "seriousness is constantly balanced with playfulness.” Abbate and Perkins always find ways to strike that balance, and do so exquisitely.''
Sebastian Scotney - The Arts Desk
"Emma Abbate and Julian Perkins are a marvellous duo ... Throughout, the duo plays with infectious verve, arresting synchronicity, lovely tone, and supple phrasing. This is duo playing that provides the best of both worlds; the sonic richness of piano four hands, executed with a precision that creates the aural illusion of but a single player at the keyboard. All of the performances are captured in an acoustic both rich in color and marvellously detailed. Arnell’s Sonatina, and both Dodgson works receive their world premiere recordings here. This is a most pleasurable disc, one I’m delighted to recommend."
Ken Meltzer - Fanfare
"Seventy minutes well-spent in the company of Emma Abbate & Julian Perkins ... Throughout, Emma Abbate & Julian Perkins play as-one, with dedication and shared pleasure."
Classical Source
"Emma Abbate and Julian Perkins propose here an ideally united crew, whose elegant playing, technically impeccable, suits the most graceful pages."
Christopher Steyne - Crescendo Magazine
"Emma Abbate and Julian Perkins make excellent use of Berkeley's phrasing and dynamism and are able to evoke even more chromatism values from the music."
Dr. Jürgen Schaarwächter - Magazin klassik.com
Listen to samples here.
Carl Maria von Weber: Complete Keyboard Duets
Deux-Elles 2020
Today Carl Maria von Weber is often remembered solely for his fantastical opera, Der Freischütz. This collection of his complete keyboard duets gives us a different window onto this early Romantic personality.
Music for piano four hands, involving two players at a single keyboard, was a 19th-century way to bring the grandeur of the symphony or the opera into one’s own living room. Performed here on period instruments by Julian Perkins and Emma Abbate, these pieces perfectly capture the genre’s cheerful intimacy and operatic flair.
"Impressive playing"
BBC Music Magazine
"The use of a fortepiano brings a whole range of colour and timbres to the music, and as ever with Weber, his music responds to the clarity and sparkle which period instruments and style brings. And in the Allegro of the Opus 60 pieces, we even get to hear the Graf piano's delightful bassoon stop (I kid you not!)... Sitting two abreast at a fortepiano is a very intimate experience and here Julian Perkins and Emma Abbate sound as if they are enjoying themselves. They play the music with real affection, and with a lovely sense of friendship and connection with the music."
Listen to samples here
W. A. Mozart: Piano Duets, Volume 2
Resonus Classics 2018
Following on their earlier volume of piano works for four hands by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Julian Perkins and Emma Abbate here complete their survey.
This recording is performed on two period instruments from the Richard Burnett Collection of Historical Keyboard Instruments – a grand fortepiano by Michael Rosenberger from c. 1800 and a square piano from the 1820s by London’s Clementi & Co.
Alongside the Sonatas in F major K497 and C major K19d, Robert D. Levin's completion of the fragmentary Allegro and Andante (Sonata) in G major K357 receives its first known recording. Also included is the Sonata in E-flat major by Mozart’s close contemporary Muzio Clementi.
"One incomplete (finished by Robert Levin), two complete Mozart Sonatas and one by Clementi, all stylishly played on a Rosenberger fortepiano and Clementi & Co square piano."
BBC Music Magazine
"Emma Abbate and Julian Perkins play with an excellent sense of consort, making it difficult to believe that there are two people playing."
Andrew Benson-Wilson, Early Music Reviews
"The stylish, fluent performances maintain the high level attained in the first disc ... Such thoroughly rewarding and sympathetic playing."
Brian Robins, Early Music Review
"A feature that I am particularly glad to observe is the inclusion, in each programme, of a well-integrated cadenza from Clementi's Musical Characteristics... This is very fine duet-playing, which demonstrates how well-crafted Mozart's four-hand sonatas are: they are worthy to be considered alongside his solo piano sonatas."
The Consort – The Dolmetsch Foundation
"Julian Perkins and Emma Abbate perfectly master all the technical and mechanical characteristics of the historical pianos used for these recordings, so that they are capable of achiving those peculiar suggestive tones and that peculiar warmth and softness and delicacy of sound ... The Mozartian interpretation given by the duo Perkins-Abbate can well be seen within that glorious tradition of a few great Mozart interpreters such as Edwin Fischer and Alicia de Larrocha ... This beautiful Series of CD Albums will make you appreciate, one more time, some beautiful masterpieces by Mozart, J.C. Bach and Clementi, from their very special convivial or Geselligkeit repertoire, and probably, thanks to the two brilliant interpreters and their fine choices, in the most authentic soirée atmosphere possible."
Listen to samples here.
Sera d'inverno: Songs by Ildebrando Pizzetti
Resonus Classics 2018
Following on from her recording of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Shakespeare Sonnets, Emma continues her series of landmark recordings dedicated to Italian twentieth-century vocal chamber music with this remarkable collection of songs by Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968). Emma is joined in this fascinating journey through Pizzetti’s unique sound world by star mezzo-soprano Hanna Hipp in a programme covering half of his output for the genre. At times dark and intense, and with many moments of real beauty, these songs show a composer at the peak of his powers. The disc has featured on BBC Radio 3.
"Many of the songs are notably bleak or stark in mood: Hipp and Abbate deliver them with considerable intensity. Hipp's gleaming sound and declamatory fire impress in the anguished La madre al figlio lontano from Cinque Liriche, in which a mother waits in vain for her absent son's return. One admires her lyrical restraint in the sexually ambigous Passeggiata, which closes the same set, and the suggestive, but sparing way she uses her chest register in Scuote amore il mio cuore, a turbulent yet ravishing setting of Sappho. Abbate, meanwhile, breathes life into piano-writing that is frequently sparse but in which every shift of rhythm or colour speaks volumes."
Gramophone
"Polish mezzo Hanna Hipp proves as comfortable in Italian song as she is in French opera (pace her excellent Anna to Joyce DiDonato's Dido in Les Troyens) while pianist Emma Abbate is a true partner, wonderfully flexible and entirely inside Pizzetti's tricky, densely populated accompaniments."
Editor's Choice in Limelight - Australia's Classical Music & Arts Magazine
"Hanna Hipp sings with a lovely bright tone and a real radiance in the more passionate passages... Emma Abbate is a fine accompanist and partner, making Pizzetti's complex and sometimes dense piano parts work well... Here Hipp and Abbate make real music, the songs flow fluidly and have moments of great beauty and real radiance."
Planet Hugill
"If the compositions are enhanced by their creator’s attention to detail, their interpretations are strengthened by the pianist’s assured command of his idiom. Abbate never puts a foot or finger wrong in her support of Hipp and Pizzetti."
Classical Source
Listen to samples here.
Stephen Dodgson: Chamber Music, Volume Two: Three Quintets
Toccata Classics 2017
These three quintets by the London-born Stephen Dodgson (1924–2013) continue the exploration of his chamber music on Toccata Classics. Dodgson’s musical language inherited something of Shostakovich’s irony, Janáček’s spiky energy and Britten’s polished clarity, occasionally reaching further into the past in passages of Purcellian dignity, all animated with a gentle harmonic warmth of Dodgson’s own. The result, in a typically English paradox, manages to be both elusive and direct. The disc has been named a MusicWeb International Recording Of The Year 2017.
"The performances by the Tippett Quartet and the nimble-fingered Emma Abbate in the Piano Quintets and Susan Monks as the additional cellist in the String Quintet are a model of chamber ensemble playing. Their understanding is palpable and the ensemble flawless, the effect one of total refiniment - just like Dodgson's music. The sound is superb, the recordings having been made in the church of St Silas the Martyr in Kentish Town. A truly wonderful disc and another winner from Toccata Classics."
Musical Opinion
"...The performances are uniformly splendid... Let's hope there are many more such excellent discs before the centenary of Dodgson's birth in 2024."
Jonathan Woolf, British Music Society
"...all the performances are absolutely splendid and quite beautifully recorded and balanced, with a pleasingly wide sound stage. The piano sound in particular is exemplary... Toccata can be proud of this generously-filled offering which is a very worthwhile and welcome addition to the discography of an unjustly neglected composer."
MusicWeb International
"...I found it to be fun and adventurous listening. Much credit for the success of this must go to the performers. The Tippett Quartet, along with pianist Emma Abbate and second cellist Susan Monks, have delivered nigh unto perfect performances of this difficult music. The recorded sound is also exemplary in the CD-resolution download that I listened to. It is close-up and every musical texture is exposed without sacrificing ensemble blend. The church acoustic never obscures the instrumental details, but allows the ensemble just enough breathing room..."
Fanfare
Listen to this recording at www.toccataclassics.com
Stephen Dodgson: Chamber Music, Volume One: Complete music for cello and piano
Toccata Classics 2016
The cello works of the London-born Stephen Dodgson (1924–2013) present his musical personality in a nutshell. The style is direct but rich in allusion, from Purcell to Janáček, with a lively, sometimes brittle, sense of humour adding a Shostakovichian irony, all fused together in an elegant, individual voice. And the remarkable clarity of the instrumental textures underlines a strong sense of narrative, with the cello almost as a human voice, unfolding its story with understated passion.
Tough yet lyrical, complex yet approachable, Dodgson's music for cello and piano
"...The performances from Evva Mizerska and Emma Abbate are excellent, with the two demonstrating the sort of balanced partnership which the music presupposes. (A testament to their duo partnership Evva&Emma Duo which they formed in 2003). And both bring out the lyricism, fascination and challenge of Dodgson's music."
Planet Hugill
"Since Stephen Dodgson was fond of the medium of chamber music and as he wrote so well for the voice it’s not surprising that his cello works should be so infused with lyric-vocal qualities. The Cello Sonata of 1969 shows a fine conception of equals in a clearly structured three-movement work that reveals echoes of Bartókian Nocturne and a spare call-and-response between the instruments. There’s a certain refined introspection to Dodgson’s writing and an element of allusion but he doesn’t skimp the cello sonata’s voyage to a hard won (but not triumphalist) victory.
The Five Occasional Pieces followed in 1970 and the composer himself instructed that they are for cello “with piano” and not therefore duo works. The second piece owes an acknowledged debt to Debussy whilst the fourth piece, an Aria, has long-breathed lyricism at its core – but with a colour-conscious role for the piano too – and hints of Eastern European keening in the cello’s song (not for nothing did Dodgson so much admire Janáček). His gift for vitality can be savoured in the Alla polka, here an ingenious and infectious swaying dance. There are four Romantic Pieces, divided into two sets of two through the disc, that expertly reveal the playful, lyric, and quintessentially Dodgsonian long romantic lines that mirror his gifts as a melodist of resourcefulness and warmth. The performances reflect those qualities too in the slightly enveloping acoustic of the Church of St John the Evangelist in Oxford. The booklet notes by John Warrack are in Toccata’s best tradition."
Jonathan Woolf, British Music Society
"...The performances are more than good enough to suggest that Five Occasional Pieces, like the other works on the album, are the products of an original, highly distinctive, consistently surprising voice, making what is now the only collection devoted entirely to Dodgson’s music long overdue.
Fanfare
Listen to this recording at www.toccataclassics.com
W. A. Mozart: Piano Duets, Volume 1
Resonus Classics 2016
Emma Abbate and Julian Perkins have come together to record the first of two volumes of Mozart's complete piano duets on original fortepianos.
Some of Mozart’s lesser-known works, his keyboard duets span most of his active life, with the earliest written at the age of nine. Often delightful and lyrical as well as humorous and exciting, these works are given an authentic air on period instruments. Included on this first volume are duets in D major K 381, C major K 521 and B-flat major, K 358. Also included is a duet by Johann Christian Bach, with whom the infant Mozart is alleged to have played keyboard duets whilst sitting on the older composer's lap.
The two original instruments used on this recording form part of the Richard Burnett Collection of Historical Keyboard Instruments: a grand fortepiano by Johann Fritz (Vienna, c1815) and a travelling piano by Anton Walter (Vienna, c1805). This album represents the final recording made at Finchcocks Musical Museum, and has also featured on BBC Radio 3.
"Julian Perkins & Emma Abbate play with a delightful sense of the often playful quality of these pieces, reveling in the power and vitality of the faster Italianate movements as well as the gentler central slow movements, notably in the beautifully lyrical Adagio from the concluding Sonata in B-flat, played with impressive sensitivity. Their ability to play in perfect time together is exemplary – apart from the much richer sound of the pianos, it is difficult to appreciate that two people are playing, rather than just one. For an insight into the lesser-known side of Mozart’s playing and compositional life, this is thoroughly recommended. It is also a timely recognition of the work of Richard and Katrina Burnett over the past 45 years in creating such an important musical instrument museum at Finchcocks."
Andrew Benson-Wilson, Early Music Reviews
"Successful piano duet playing places particular demands on the performers and here the two pianists are working very welll together. This is a programme of more substantive works written for this particular genre. As well as the Sonatas in C major, D major and B flat major, the programme also includes Johann Christoph Bach's two movements Sonata in A major. A second volume, also on period instruments, is to follow."
Lark Reviews
"...excellent in all respects. The Fritz piano has full and gracious tonal qualities generously exploited by Julian Perkins (who plays primo throughout) and Emma Abbate, who especially relish exploiting the colours produced by the many imitative exchanges Mozart gives the players. Cantabile Mozartian lines are also beautifully drawn; listen for example to Perkins’ playing of the principal theme of the exquisitely lovely Adagio of K358, the kind of writing that would soon be finding its way into the central movements of the piano concertos. Both players are also untroubled by greater technical demands of K521, the big episode of the central Andante opening out to glorious blossom under the hands of Perkins and Abbate. The square piano on which the little J. C. Bach sonata is played is obviously a more modest instrument, but it has an attractively wheezy bass and the two-movement sonata, consisting of an Allegretto in the fashionable sentimental style and a breezy minuet, is ideal for this repertoire.
It is worth adding that all repeats are taken, allowing the performers ample opportunity to add ornamentation, which is always tastefully and not infrequently wittily added. The sound is a little close, but very much in line with what I remember as ‘the Finchcocks sound’. I await volume 2 with considerable anticipation."
Brian Robins, Early Music Review
"Julian Perkins and Emma Abbate perfectly master all the technical and mechanical characteristics of the historical pianos used for these recordings, so that they are capable of achiving those peculiar suggestive tones and that peculiar warmth and softness and delicacy of sound ... The Mozartian interpretation given by the duo Perkins-Abbate can well be seen within that glorious tradition of a few great Mozart interpreters such as Edwin Fischer and Alicia de Larrocha ... This beautiful Series of CD Albums will make you appreciate, one more time, some beautiful masterpieces by Mozart, J.C. Bach and Clementi, from their very special convivial or Geselligkeit repertoire, and probably, thanks to the two brilliant interpreters and their fine choices, in the most authentic soirée atmosphere possible."
Listen to samples here.
BBC Radio 3: In Tune
Live performance with baritone Ashley Riches: Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed from Shakespeare Sonnets by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Shakespeare Sonnets
Resonus Classics 2014
Emma performs a ravishing selection of previously unrecorded Shakespeare Sonnets by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco with the BBC New Generation Artist Ashley Riches. Composed after Castelnuovo-Tedesco's migration to the USA in 1939, these songs contain both the wistful atmosphere and obvious warmth for his native Florence combined with his life-long obsession with William Shakespeare.
"This fine collection of Shakespeare Sonnets is doubly welcome ... Baritone Ashley Riches is an ideal interpreter of this music, with a richness of timbre and a clarity of enunciation that is absolutely essential. He is sensitively accompanied by Emma Abbate. The recording, too, made in the church of St John the Evangelist in Oxford by Michael Ponder, is excellent, avoiding both excessive resonance and dryness."
International Record Review
"... Superb performances ... Riches produces a lovely flexible yet firm line with gorgeous dark hints in the tone quality. He shapes Castelnuovo-Tedesco's sometimes diffuse vocal lines into things of really expressive beauty. Abbate is equally impressive, highly supportive of Riches in the richly chromatic piano part. [These pieces] are certainly well worth investigation, especially in such fine performances from a talented pair of young artists and this is a fine disc to dip into."
Planet Hugill
"There is a very good partnership between singer and pianist in these performances, creating an easy and enjoyable listening experience."
Lark Reviews
Listen to samples at here.
Algernon Ashton: Music for Cello and Piano, Volume One
Toccata Classics 2012
Emma's second CD with Toccata Classics is the world-première recording of works by Algernon Ashton with the cellist Evva Mizerska.
Algernon Ashton, born in Durham in 1859, is one of British music's best-kept secrets, with a generous output of piano music, chamber works and songs. Rutland Boughton wrote that he 'seems to pour out great musical thought as easily as the lark trills its delight in cloudland'. Although Ashton’s writing for both cello and piano is taxing, what strikes the ear is the quality of his melodic inspiration – the lyrical immediacy of his tunes suggests Schubert, set in a style of Brahmsian richness.
This CD is available from high street retailers and from Amazon, or directly from the Toccata Classics website.
Rated among the Best Finds of 2012:
"... Polish cellist Evva Mizerska and Italian pianist Emma Abbate, known collectively as the Evva&Emma Duo, make a strong case for Ashton's music. [Ashton] was an accomplished pianist himself, and it shows in these challenging scores, which our artists handle with great aplomb. They have technical ability to spare, and their playing ranges from sensitively shaded in more melodic passages to virtuosically supercharged when the notes start flying thick and fast. Made at the Challow Park Studios in Oxfordshire, England, the recordings project a narrowly focused soundstage in a pleasing acoustic. ... both instruments are beautifully captured. The cello tone is rich and natural across its entire range. The piano is well rounded with no sign of any digital nasties ... this disc easily qualifies as an audiophile release."
Classical Lost and Found - AUDIOPHILE BEST FIND
"... The two fine artists... the Polish born Evva Mizerska and the Naples born Emma Abbate play all of this music with great finesse. Ashton’s music is a revelation. It deserves a much wider audience than it has had so far. The sound on the disc is clear with each instrument given equal presence. I enjoyed getting to know Ashton’s story and his music and think this disc should have a place in many recording libraries."
Fanfare
"... the positives with this disc are several. As one has grown to expect the production of this Toccata Classics disc is first rate. Excellent musical and technical values backed up by a liner of superb interest written by the ever insightful and dependable Malcolm MacDonald. [Evva Mizerska and Emma Abbate] ... are an established duo and play with great technical address and skill – indeed I cannot imagine a more convincing case being made for this music. ... the sound is rich and full with Ashton’s complex writing registering clearly and with maximum impact."
L’Infinito: 20th Century Italian Songs for Mezzo-soprano and Piano
Urania Records 2012
A musical journey through 20th century Italian songs with the mezzo-soprano Kamelia Kader, including works by Respighi, Casella, Alfano, Malipiero, Pizzetti and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, many of which are world-première recordings. L’Infinito is available in downloadable MP3 format on Amazon and as a CD through the website of Urania Records.
This disc explores an important era of Italian music that falls approximately between the two World Wars. It features liriche with texts by poets such as Petrarca, Leopardi and Carducci. Is this Italy’s answer to German lieder?
"A carefully planned treasure-trove of fascinating repertoire, warmly recorded and sympathetically performed. ... [Kader] is a persuasive advocate for this very welcome project. Highlights include Casella’s ecstatic Pianto antico, a memorable masterpiece not unlike early Britten."
Classical Music
"... Ascoltiamo nel disco Urania una pianista di strepitosa bravura, Emma Abbate ... Particolarmente prezioso appare ... il disco della Urania Leonardo per la scelta dei brani, con secidi prime incisioni assolute su ventiquattro brani: e si tratta quasi sempre di pagine di grande valore."
["... In the disc from Urania, we hear the amazingly talented pianist Emma Abbate... The Urania Leonardo disc is especially impressive owing to its choice of pieces: sixteen of the twenty-four songs are world-premiere recordings. Most of these works are of high artistic value."]
Musica: rivista di cultura musicale e discografica
Krzysztof Meyer: Complete Works for Cello and Piano
Toccata Classics 2009
Emma’s first commercial CD was the world-première recording of complete works for cello and piano by the contemporary Polish composer Krzysztof Meyer, featuring Polish cellist Evva Mizerska and pianist Katarzyna Glensk.
It was recorded in Warsaw in collaboration with the composer himself, and includes the première recording of his 2nd Sonata. The CD has been praised by The Strad magazine for its "great expressive range and impressive authority". It is available from high street retailers and Amazon, or directly from the Toccata Classics website.
Of his two cello sonatas (1983 and 2004) and Canzona (1981), Meyer writes: “I wanted the melody to be predominant – not a post-Romantic cantilena but absolutely contemporary. And the cello, like no other instrument, is perfect for that.”
William Zagorski, one of the regular critics of American magazine Fanfare, has placed this CD in his “Top 5” list of all the CDs published worldwide in 2009.
"The cellist, Evva Mizerska, seems to me, in my dotage, a mere child. She is, however, in possession of a fine, large-scaled, and infinitely plastic sound, able to encompass the challenging demands of Krzysztof Meyer’s thoughts with ease. Her two accompanists, Emma Abbate and Katarzyna Glensk, also quite young, navigate this difficult music with both utter commitment and facility. The sound is spotlessly clean in all registers, dynamically vast, and satisfying... These are stunning performances of stunning music.!"
Fanfare
"These three young performers play these works as if they owned them, with complete assurance and clear dedication. Evva Mizerska produces a beautiful sound, no matter what Meyer asks of her, and Emma Abbate and Katarzyna Glensk leave a similarly attractive impression never mind that the piano parts are very challenging! ... This warmly yet transparently engineered CD whets one’s appetite for more."
International Record Review
"The performances are excellent, and all the performers go all out to make this music really speak to us. The notes in the booklet are excellent and the recording is superb. I’ve said it before, but I shall repeat myself: Meyer is a major composer and he cannot be ignored. There are now sufficient CDs of his music available for us to be able to really discover him and his work. For me this is essential listening, and I would urge everyone who is interested in contemporary music to join me in discovering one of the most elemental and exciting composers currently at work today."
"... great expressive range and impressive authority."
The Strad