Respighi’s orchestral works are some of the most popular in the mainstream repertoire. His output of piano music, by contrast, is as good as unknown, and this new Toccata Classics series will be the first ever to present it all: original works and transcriptions alike, for solo piano, piano four hands and two pianos. This first instalment crowns his earliest keyboard compositions with the magisterial Three Preludes on Gregorian Melodies, miniature Lisztian tone-poems presented with Busonian grandeur.

Giovanna Gatto graduated in Piano Performance at the Conservatoire of Piacenza, where she studied with Maria Grazia Petrali, and obtained a first-class Master’s degree at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Como, with a further Master’s in Performance and Music Pedagogy with Patricia Pagny at the Berne University of the Arts. She was also awarded a Bachelor’s degree in the Economy of the Arts, Culture and Communication at the Bocconi University in Milan. She teaches piano and chamber music in music academies in Canton Solothurn in Switzerland and the Franco Vittadini and Giacomo Puccini Conservatoires in Pavia and Gallarate in Italy. She has performed for numerous organisations and festivals in Italy and further afield in Europe – chiefly Croatia, France, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland – both as soloist and in chamber ensembles. Her research into Respighi’s piano music won her sponsorship from the Iréne Dénéréaz Foundation in Lausanne. This Respighi project has allowed her to work closely with the Respighi authority Potito Pedarra.