Various Artists - GIANNEO: Piano Works,Vol.1

Luis Gianneo (1897-1968)Piano Works, Vol. 1Luis Gianneo was born in Buenos Aires on 9th January 1897 into a musical family of Italian immigrants. Unsurprisingly he began his musical studies at an early age under the leading teachers of the time. He was a piano pupil of Luigi Romaniello and Ernesto Drangosch and studied composition with Constantino Gaito and Eduardo Fornarini. When Fornarini moved abroad, Gianneo relied on his own resources for further study. During his earlier years Gianneo formed a violin and piano duo with his brother Miguel and also accompanied distinguished visiting violinists, while there were performances of his own first chamber and piano compositions. In 1921 he married the pianist and singer Josefina Ghidoni, a member of the Gianneo musical circle, and in 1923 he moved with his family to the northern city of San Miguel de Tucumán, invited to teach there by his brother-in-law, a well-known cellist, working first as a teacher at the Tucumán Instituto Musical, of which he later became director. Over a period of twenty years he continued in Tucumán as a teacher, pianist and orchestral conductor, helped by his wife in stimulating local musical life. Here he introduced practically all his compositions and performed a great deal of contemporary music by composers such as Stravinsky, Debussy and Respighi. He founded and directed the Philharmonic Association, presided from 1935 over the prestigious Sociedad Sarmiento, and collaborated with the Review of the institution, contributing, in the first issue, in April 1936, a long article on his much admired Stravinsky, whose neo-classical principles he followed and whose influence is clearly reflected in his orchestral Obertura para una Comedia Infantil (Overture to a Children’s Play), first performed in 1937 under his direction in a concert of the Tucumán Asociación Sinfónica. In 1932 Gianneo joined the Grupo Renovación, founded in 1929 by the brothers Juan José and José Maria Castro, Jacobo Ficher and Juan Carlos Paz. Gianneo, however, was never able to identify himself completely with some of the principles of the group, especially with the ideas of Juan Carlos Paz, whose radical ideas and fixed absolutist attitudes he did not share. Their differences came to a head in 1952, when Paz published an article in the Buenos Aires Musical in which he denied the technical and creative ability of those who did not share his musical ideas, a proposition openly opposed by Gianneo. The fame of Gianneo had already spread further afield, with acclaim in Buenos Aires for works such as El Tarco en Flor, Pampeanas and Turay-Turay, and important performances of his works in Buenos Aires and major cities of the interior. In addition to participation in a large number of concerts as pianist, conductor or composer, he also served as organist at the Church of St Francis. In these fruitful years in Tucumán he was greatly