Roberto Franca Plays Corea’s Piano Works

Cover designed by Gianmario Masala, courtesy of Naxos of America

A little less than a month ago, Urania Records, which is based in New Jersey, released an album of three solo piano compositions by Chick Corea, referred to on the back cover as “Armando Anthony Corea.” Two of the selections are receiving their world premiere recordings, “Piano Fantasy,” which was composed in 1978, and five short pieces composed between 1976 and 1985, collected under the title Piano Music. The album begins with another collection of short pieces, this time twenty of them, given the title Children’s Songs. The pianist for this album is Roberto Franca, who recorded the selections in Italy.

The back cover of the album describes the content as follows:

This album gathers some world premiere recordings by a composer who for too long has been considered an expression of solely jazz music. This is the homage to an artist able to merge different genres in his compositions and to combine the experiences of giants of the classical repertoire such as Bach and Debussy, with those of Bartok and Ligeti.

The brevity of the selections brings Béla Bartók's Mikrokosmos to mind. However, I would say that Corea’s “voice” across all three of the compositions tends to be as unique as his inventiveness in the jazz genre. If there were any influences in play, they were not blatantly apparent, although, while listening to the Piano Music set, I thought I encountered a concluding cadential gesture that reminded me of Sergei Prokofiev. In that setting I would imagine that it would have been unlikely that Corea was unaware of Prokofiev’s piano compositions, including those that captured his capacity for brevity.

From a personal point of view, I would say that, now that I have “made the acquaintance” of this side of Corea’s repertoire, I look forward to a recital by a pianist that finds these short pieces as appealing as I do!