Giacomo Coletti - Zappa: 6 Duets for Violin & Cello (2021)

The world premiere recording of Francesco Zappa's 6 Duets for Violin and Cello.

Little is known about Francesco Zappa, Milanese composer and cellist of the mid-eighteenth century. This recording allows us, for the first time in modern times, to appreciate the qualities of a musician who, in his lifetime, was welcomed with general, broad esteem. His six Duets for violin and cello, published in Paris and presented here, sound like a polite parlour conversation. If Zappa chooses a classical gallant style, his music is never superficial, and he clearly proves a first-rate composer whose unmistakable trait is his Italian melodiousness.

The most recent and unusual revival of the composer is precisely that which occurred in 1984, by Frank Zappa, whose musical genius was beginning to be recognized even among lovers and scholars of cultivated music, thanks to his increasingly emboldened and convincing move into contemporary and experimental classical music, and who reworked the movements of Opus I and London Opus IV in an electronic version, making possible the digital debut of Francesco Zappa about 200 years after the composition of his work.