Born in 1975, the Italian pianist Robert Prosseda is without equal when it comes to discovering rare works, like previously unseen pieces by Mendelssohn; or compositions for piano by Salieri, Rossini or Caetani. And here he is with Charles Gounod's works for keyboards, after having exhumed the composer's Concerto pour piano-pédalier et orchestre, which he first performed in concert in 2011.
Gounod's music for keyboards makes up about fifty pages, or rather uneven importance. He wasn't very interested in the piano, and many compositions are sketches or short pieces for his own use. For this album, Prosseda has selected the most substantial part of this corpus, with a charming Veneziana to open, followed by the equally famous Marche funèbre pour une marionnette in its excellent original version.
The six Romances sans paroles are a welcome discovery, as are the Préludes et fugues which served as preliminary studies for Bach's Clavier bien tempéré and in which Gounod used "a clear writing for two voices, lifted by a chromatism that pushes the artist onward", as Gérard Condé put it in his monumental biography of Gounod (Fayard). The Sonate pour piano à 4 mains (with Enrico Pompili) in a Schubertian style is a pleasant youthful work, probably written in 1839 at the age of 21, during his stay in Rome in the Villa Medici. © François Hudry/Qobuz