New Classics

Italian composer Carlotta Ferrari was born in 1975 and is currently professor of music composition at the European School of Economics in Florence. Educated at the Conservatory in Milan, she has composed in many genres, developing a personal language that is concerned with the blend of past and present. Her compositions have been performed frequently around the world and her music appears on several CD recordings, including four by Carson Cooman. The five compositions on this new album are inspired by the lives and works of five women from history, celebrating three religious figures, an artist and a writer. In Ferrari’s distinctive modal style, she creates expressive musical portraits of these women. The first four works employ the ‘Restarting Pitch Space’ (RPS) system of modal harmony first developed in 2005 by Carson Cooman, an American composer with a catalogue of hundreds of works in many forms, ranging from solo instrumental pieces to operas, and from orchestral works to hymn tunes. As an active concert organist, he specializes in the performance of contemporary music and over 300 new works have been composed for him by composers from around the world. On this this recording of the wonderful main organ of Laurenskerk, Rotterdam, Netherlands (Marcussen & Son) was made using the Hauptwerk remote digital access system. The Ferrari works he plays on this new CD are a wonderfully atmospheric Lady Frankenstein, the ethereal Maria Restituta, the lovely Historia Gullielmae, a Felliniesque Viva la vida and the dramatic Ecstasy (La transverberazione di Teresa d’Avila). Highly recommended.

—John Pitt