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"Four Stars ... a clever and largely engaging collection of 20th and 21st century works that look back to earlier times played by the Duo Gazzana with wit, poise and graceful affection." - BBC Music Magazine "Four Stars ... a celebration of neoclassicism in modern music ... (the) interpretation is both potently emotive yet endowed with a sophisticated maturity ... stimulating and captivating ... engaging and delightful ... a superb addition to the label's uniformly excellent New Music series." - All About Jazz Violinist Natascia Gazzana and her sister, pianist Raffaella present their second album for ECM's New Series, uniting works from the 20th and 21st centuries with striking narrative character and retrospective glances at music history. Composers from France, Great Britain, Italy, Russia and Ukraine present earlier musical forms: toccata, suites, canons and variations, in the light of new developmental techniques, thereby revealing similarities and relations across centuries, geographical boundaries and contrasting forms of expression. William Walton's rarely heard Toccata virtually overflows with structural ideas related to the virtuosic demands of traditional toccata form. The cadenzas for both the violin and the piano call for quasi-improvisational skills that draw rhythmic impetus from jazz. Vitality and vehemence inform also Francis Poulenc's dramatic Sonate, here representing the evolution, on a structural and formal basis, of the simplest and earliest musical forms used in the compositions of this album.