Artistic judgement 4,5/5
Technical judgement 4,5/5
Ruggiero Leoncavallo and the piano: a sound diary
“When a composer is remembered in time and by history because of just one of his works, and this often happens, that work inevitably becomes a double-edged sword: on the one hand it allows its author everlasting glory and fame, on the other it obscures, erases the rest of its production, especially if the latter reaches sufficiency or little more. […] for once, a very recent recording project did not want to propose yet another Pagliacci for the umpteenth time, but something more particular, namely the entirety of his compositions for solo piano, presented in two discs by Da Vinci Classics and interpreted by Calabrian pianist Ingrid Carbone. In a certain sense, it is a due “geomusical” tribute, if we take into account that Leoncavallo spent an important period of his life, that of his youth, precisely in Calabria, to be precise in Montalto Uffugo, in the province of Cosenza, place in which he experienced happy formative moments, divided between musical and literary studies, and another, terrible to say the least and which traumatized him for the rest of his years, the one concerning one of his servants and friends, a certain Gaetano Scavello, who was killed under the his eyes on the evening of March 4, 1865, as he left the Dominican convent.”
