Enrico Bissolo (harpsichord)

- This recording presents two composers whose birthplace was Naples, but whose careers took them beyond national borders and whose keyboard styles developed in different directions: Francesco Araja and Ferdinando Pellegrini. The former became maestro di cappella and court composer to Tsarina Anna, in St. Petersburg; the latter lived and worked in Lyon, London and Paris.

- Francesco Araja gathered fame through his operas and sacred works, however he also wrote instrumental music for the keyboard. The Capricci are extremely free compositions with a varied character, full of brilliant virtuosity, showing in frequent leaps, sometimes very wide, and crossings of hands, which immediately bring to mind the sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti, even though they share little in common with them from the standpoint of form.

- Pellegrini composed a series of sonatas for solo harpsichord and for violin with an obbligato harpsichord accompaniment in the Style Galante, demonstrated by the elegance in phrasing and melodic invention. The music is pleasant to listen to and offers the performer great possibilities to enrich what is written in the score with variations and diminutions.

- Enrico Bissolo graduated in organ and harpsichord at the Conservatorio of Verona and Conservatorio of Piacenza; he also graduated in musicology at the University of Musicology in Cremona. He attended masterclasses in early music with M. Radulescu, E. Bellotti, T. Koopman, P. Peretti and he graduated in Historic Organ at the University of Music in Trossingen. He plays a harpsichord after Petrus Bull (Antwerp, 1769), built in 1984 by Keith Hill, Michigan.