Bizet: The Piano Works Roberto Prosseda

• Georges Bizet (1838 - 1875): Variations chromatiques, WD 54:
• 1 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Theme. Moderato maestoso 01:02
• 2 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Var. 1. Un pochissimo più allegretto 00:39
• 3 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Var. 2. A tempo rubato 00:34
• 4 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Var. 3. A tempo risoluto 00:42
• 5 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Var. 4. Con fuoco 00:33
• 6 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Var. 5 00:45
• 7 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Var. 6. Agitato 00:48
• 8 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Var. 7 01:00
• 9 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Var. 8. Con espressione 00:49
• 10 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Var. 9. Un peu plus vite 00:32
• 11 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Var. 10. Alla polacca 00:32
• 12 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Var. 11. Andante 01:02
• 13 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Var. 12. Plus animé 00:47
• 14 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Var. 13. Mouvement des premières variations 00:51
• 15 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Var. 14. Appassionato, espressivo assai 00:45
• 16 Bizet: Variations chromatiques, WD 54: Coda. Semplice – Un peu plus lent, malinconico 02:39
• Chants du Rhin, WD 52:
• 17 Bizet: Chants du Rhin, WD 52: I. L'aurore 03:47
• 18 Bizet: Chants du Rhin, WD 52: II. Le départ 02:36
• 19 Bizet: Chants du Rhin, WD 52: III. Les rêves 03:30
• 20 Bizet: Chants du Rhin, WD 52: IV. La bohémienne 03:36
• 21 Bizet: Chants du Rhin, WD 52: V. Les confidences 04:49
• 22 Bizet: Chants du Rhin, WD 52: VI. Le retour 02:43
• 1er Nocturne in D Major, WD 55:
• 23 Bizet: 1er Nocturne in D Major, WD 55 04:10
• Marine, WD 53:
• 24 Bizet: Marine, WD 53 03:56
• Grande valse de concert, WD 48:
• 25 Bizet: Grande valse de concert, WD 48 06:52
• 1er Nocturne in F Major, WD 49:
• 26 Bizet: 1er Nocturne in F Major, WD 49 07:45
• Chasse fantastique, WD 51:
• 27 Bizet: Chasse fantastique, WD 51 05:57
• Romance sans paroles, WD 46:
• 28 Bizet: Romance sans paroles, WD 46 03:56
• Caprice original:
• 29 Bizet: Caprice original No. 1 in C‑Sharp Minor, WD 45 02:57
• 30 Bizet: Caprice original No. 2 in C Major, WD 47 01:31
• 31 Bizet: Valse in C Major, WD 43 02:06
• 4 Preludes, WD 42:
• 32 Bizet: 4 Preludes, WD 42: No. 1 in C Major. Allegretto 00:47
• 33 Bizet: 4 Preludes, WD 42: No. 2 in A Minor. Andante espressivo 01:11
• 34 Bizet: 4 Preludes, WD 42: No. 3 in G Major. Andantino 00:40
• 35 Bizet: 4 Preludes, WD 42: No. 4 in E Minor. Allegretto 00:36
• Thème brillant in C Major, WD 44:
• 36 Bizet: Thème brillant in C Major, WD 44 02:18
• Méditation religieuse, HM 144:
• 37 Bizet: Méditation religieuse, HM 144 04:21
• Romance sans paroles, HM 133:
• 38 Bizet: Romance sans paroles, HM 133 04:26
• Casilda (Polka Mazurka), HM 134:
• 39 Bizet: Casilda (Polka Mazurka), HM 134 02:45
• Total Runtime 01:31:15

Info for Bizet: The Piano Works

Roberto Prosseda presents a collection of works by one of the most famous of all nineteenth-century composers and yet which remains paradoxically unknown. Bizet, a child prodigy, could have been a virtuoso pianist, had he not devoted most of his short life to opera. The stylistic variety of the music recorded here extends from two Caprices written in 1851 (the work of a twelve-year-old composer) to the much more challenging Variations chromatiques of 1868, with its startlingly severe theme.

Bizet played the piano with extraordinary facility and could have been a famous virtuoso touring the capitals of Europe if he had wished. His friend Saint-Saëns, equally facile on the piano, was just such a virtuoso, playing concertos up to and beyond the age of eighty, but Bizet had no taste for such a path, perhaps because he hated practising or because he disliked the virtuoso repertoire. He never wrote any concertos. He felt the theatre to be his spiritual home.

Admitted to the Paris Conservatoire at the age of nine, he won prizes for his piano playing at the ages of twelve and thirteen. He studied sets of variations and long concerto movements, and his teacher Antoine François Marmontel liked him from the start. Being an exceptional sight-reader he was much in demand throughout his short career as an accompanist and rehearsal pianist. He could play fluently from orchestral scores and he could improvise. He was adept at arranging piano reductions of operas, mostly by other composers. He occasionally played the Chants du Rhin in public, sometimes accompanied singers and had some piano pupils, but he lacked the social graces to be taken up in fashionable salons and he greatly preferred to be composing music than playing it or teaching it. When composing for the piano he was always thinking as a composer, not as a pianist, which explains the far-flung spreads and unusual resonances to be found in all his piano music. ...

Nonetheless he left an important body of piano works, extending from the two Caprices written at the age of twelve to the extraordinary Variations chromatiques of 1868, which in its range and variety gives us a much broader picture of his originality than what can be gleaned from Carmen alone.

Roberto Prosseda, piano

Roberto Prosseda
born in Latina, Lazio, in 1975, is one of the most active and versatile Italian musicians on the current international scene. He gained international fame following his recordings of the complete Mendelssohn piano music (Decca, 2005-14), published in a box set in 2017.

Over the past twenty years Roberto has performed with some of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors. With the Gewandhausorchester and Riccardo Chailly, he recorded Mendelssohn’s then-unpublished E minor piano concerto. In Italy he is a regular guest at the major concert venues, including the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Teatro alla Scala, Unione Musicale in Turin, Teatro La Fenice, Accademia Chigiana (Siena) and Teatro Comunale (Bologna).

Roberto is particularly acclaimed for his interpretations of Mozart, Schubert, Schumann and Chopin. His six albums of Mozart piano sonatas for Decca have received considerable international acclaim. In 2022 Roberto completed a project to record the complete Mozart piano works. 2025 saw the release on Hyperion of War Silence, a collection of rare Italian piano concertos by Guido Alberto Fano, Luigi Dallapiccola, Silvio Omizzolo and Cristian Carrara, described in Gramophone magazine as ‘an absorbing listen’.

Since 2011 Roberto has also played the pedal piano in public, having re-discovered and presented in modern premieres various pieces by Alkan and Gounod’s Concerto for pedal piano and orchestra with Parma’s Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini. He has performed the latter also with the Berliner Symphoniker, Staatskapelle Weimar, Lahti Symphony and Netherlands Symphony orchestras, and for Hyperion recorded Gounod’s four pieces for pedal piano and orchestra with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana and Howard Shelley. Roberto has performed on the piano pedal in over 100 concerts, contributing to the revitalization of the instrument and its repertoire.

Roberto Prosseda is equally active as a music writer and author of radio and TV projects, as well as a creator of innovative musical programmes of international scope. He conceived three television documentaries, about Mendelssohn, Chopin and Liszt, directed by Angelo Bozzolini, produced by RAI and globally distributed by EuroArts. His book Il Pianoforte, a listening guide to piano repertoire, was published by Edizioni Curci in 2013.

Booklet for Bizet: The Piano Works