PROKOFIEV · PÄRT · SCHNITTKE Duo Gazzana | Deutsche Grammophon

“[The Gazzanas] have been making music together as sisters since early childhood. Yet that alone does not explain the particular intimacy of their playing. There is more here than mere familial familiarity; in their performance there is something extraordinarily unguarded, as if their task were to strip away everything non-essential.” – Christine Lemke-Matwey (Die Zeit, SWR) 

According to the French daily Le Monde, their last album, featuring works by Schumann, Grieg, and Tõnu Kõrvits, led the Gazzana sisters Natascia and Raffaella to “reach the highest levels of instinctive expression,” and one could argue that this is even more true of this new recording with music by Sergei Prokofiev, Arvo Pärt, and Alfred Schnittke. 

The duo’s interpretation of Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 1, Op. 80, opens the program with urgency, entirely in keeping with the composer’s intentions (Prokofiev famously remarked that a certain passage “should sound in such a way that people leap from their seats…”), while also conveying a lyrical serenity that casts the third movement of the work in a particularly enchanting light. Prokofiev’s Five Melodies, Op. 35a, are performed with the same conviction, while Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel, presented with calm and humility, serves as a contemplative breathing space. The program concludes with Schnittke’s Gratulationsrondo— a festive piece in which the composer eschews his otherwise characteristic polystylistic approach and instead shines through a more traditional handling of the classical idiom. 

The album, released on our partner label ECM New Series, was recorded in February 2025 at the Reitstadel in Neumarkt and produced by Manfred Eicher.