Gounod: Piano Works Roberto Prosseda

• Charles Gounod (1818 - 1893):
• 1 La Veneziana (Barcarolle) In G Minor CG 593 03:23
• 2 Impromptu In G Major CG 580 WP 02:08
• 3 Souvenance (Nocturne) In E flat Major CG 590 WP 04:16
• 4 Funeral March Of A Marionette CG 583 05:19
• Six Romances Sans Paroles:
• 5 Six Romances Sans Paroles: No. 1: La pervence in B major CG585 02:54
• 6 Six Romances Sans Paroles: No. 2: Le ruisseau in G flat major CG 589 02:32
• 7 Six Romances Sans Paroles: No. 3: Le soir in E flat major CG 441a 03:10
• 8 Six Romances Sans Paroles: No. 4: Le calme (La nonne sanglante) in D flat major CG2e WP 04:08
• 9 Six Romances Sans Paroles: No. 5: Chanson de printemps in A flat major CG 359a 01:40
• 10 Six Romances Sans Paroles: No. 6: La lierre in B flat major CG 581 03:11
• 11 Méditation sur le 1er Prélude de piano de J.S. Bach 04:59
• Six Préludes et Fugues, CG 587:
• 12 Six Préludes et Fugues, CG 587: Prélude in G major, a1 01:01
• 13 Six Préludes et Fugues, CG 587: Fugue in G major, a2 01:31
• 14 Six Préludes et Fugues, CG 587: Choral in E minor, b1 00:51
• 15 Six Préludes et Fugues, CG 587: Fugue in E minor, b2 02:14
• 16 Six Préludes et Fugues, CG 587: Prélude in C major, c1 01:21
• 17 Six Préludes et Fugues, CG 587: Fugue in C major, c2 02:27
• 18 Six Préludes et Fugues, CG 587: Prélude in D major, d1 01:19
• 19 Six Préludes et Fugues, CG 587: Fugue in D major, d2 02:04
• 20 Six Préludes et Fugues, CG 587: Choral in F major, e1 01:01
• 21 Six Préludes et Fugues, CG 587: Fugue in F major, e2 02:10
• 22 Six Préludes et Fugues, CG 587: Choral in A minor, f1 00:52
• 23 Six Préludes et Fugues, CG 587: Fugue in A minor, f2 02:31
• Sonate in E flat major for Piano Four Hands CG 617:
• 24 Sonate in E flat major for Piano Four Hands CG 617: 1. Allegro 06:20
• 25 Sonate in E flat major for Piano Four Hands CG 617: 2. Adagio 06:09
• 26 Sonate in E flat major for Piano Four Hands CG 617: 3. Presto 04:17
• Total Runtime 01:13:48

Info for Gounod: Piano Works

Roberto Prosseda: I decided to explore Charles Gounod’s piano music as I feel that he is one of the most underrated Romantic composers. Famous for his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette, Gounod wrote about 40 pieces for piano, and some of them, like the ambitious Sonate pour piano à quatre mains (here recorded with Enrico Pompili), remained unpublished and unrecorded till today. After having recorded Gounod’s complete piano works for pedal piano and orchestra (the only concertante repertoire of his catalogue) it was a natural step for me to discover Gounod’s piano repertoire as well. Much of the pieces included in this CD are influenced by Mendelssohn: Gounod met Fanny Mendelssohn in Rome and she introduced him to Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier and to the Lieder ohne Worte by Felix Mendelssohn. It is not a coincidence, though, that also Gounod composed Six Preludes and Fugues (like Mendelssohn’s op. 35) and Six Romances sans Paroles, with their exquisite post-mendelssohnian lyricism. But the most famous piece is the Méditation sur le 1er Prélude de J. S. Bach (1852), that was originally written for piano solo: only later, in 1859, he added the words of Ave Maria to the melodic line, giving eternal fame to this music. Another world famous piece, originally written for piano solo, is the Marche funèbre d’une marionnette (1872), a grotesque musical portrait of the British music critic H. F. Chorney, which was used, in a later orchestral transcription, for Alfred Hitchcock's TV series.

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.

This album contains no booklet.