Tempietto Concert – Quinte Parallele
piano recital, Scarlatti Schubert and Liszt, Ingrid Carbone, Francesco Bianchi – Quinte Parallele
An evening at the mercy of the passion of music: the evening of July 10th of the “Concerti del Tempietto” was a complete experience, where the power of the program has been showed in all its majesty by a rare talented pianist: Ingrid Carbone.
The artist has not only performed scores, but was able to leave her ego, to fill up all the passion and rapture of Schubert’s and Liszt’s music, and to transfer it to the bewitched listeners. Even the familiar and poetic atmosphere of the Tempietto allowed the pianist to establish an intimate and authentic relationship with the public, who physically perceived all the emotional power that music was able to express. The program focused on two romantic authors, namely Schubert and Liszt with a first part on Scarlatti. The juxtaposition of this author of the early eighteenth century with the romantic pianism finds a key reading thread in the importance that the sonatas of Scarlatti had for the evolution of the piano technique that will have the maximum peak just in authors like Schubert and Liszt. In fact, in these sonatas we find a very advanced harmonic and technical boldness for the time. In fact, for example, the figures drawn by the arpeggios, the hands that cross over each other while playing, the use of octaves and repeated notes are techniques that will leave their mark in the history of this instrument. All this we can see in practice in the Sonata number 141 where Scarlatti uses all these techniques, creating complex and dissonant harmonies, which prelude to the type of musical writing that we meet in the second part of the concert.
In fact, the concert continued with two Impromptus by Schubert. The impromptu is a musical form that has great luck in the romantic period because it is very free. In this period the fundamental theme of art in general is the expression of the free inspiration of the artistic genius, through which the spirit speaks directly, so that every formalism is experienced as a rigidity and a constraint. In particular, Schubert’s Impromptus are among the most famous in the history of the piano for their extreme beauty of melodic lines, very cantabile and formally perfect. Their structure is very reminiscent of a Lied, genre of which Schubert was perhaps the greatest composer, because musical writing often holds distinct melody and accompaniment.
The second part, after a brief interval, was entirely dedicated to Liszt. As always, in front of the piano works of this author we listen to a use of the piano that goes beyond the classic possibilities of this instrument, because the complexity of the score create sounds and harmonies that exceed the limits imposed by the instrument itself. Among the songs played we find Funerailles, a piece Liszt wrote for the failure of the Hungarian revolution: peculiar to this piece is in fact the dark atmosphere of a funeral march. The melodic line is then colored by powerful passionate impulses that however never manage to find a sort of resolution or realization, but fall back on themselves and go out, in a sort of denied aspiration, just as the revolutionary motions have arisen but not they have been fulfilled. The talented Carbone performed the paraphrases and transcriptions from Verdi and Schubert. Liszt’s transcriptions are not a copy, a simple transposition, but the re-proposal of the same concept according to another style and another perspective. In this way the original meaning of the piece is enriched with new aspects that derive from artistic language in this case of Liszt. In the paraphrase on Rigoletto, the structure of Verdi’s vocal quartet gives Liszt the opportunity to use the entire piano register and let loose and bold and lush musical figures. In the transcription of the Lied Erlkonig the seductive voice of the Elkonig is underlined by a more dreamy and sensual accompaniment and harmonization, while in Gretchen am Spinnrade the passionality of Schubert’s melody expands to become a river full of passions expressed by great agreements and arpeggios played in fortissimo.
Finally, the pianist also gave us two encores, one from Villa-Lobos and another piece from Liszt, which did nothing but confirm the beautiful impression made previously by a performer who did not spare herself at all and who poured the whole its energy in expressing those overwhelming passions that animate romantic music.
In conclusion we can say that the concert of the Tempietto leaves a strong and beautiful impression, because it focuses on human contact, the warmth and charm of music, that is all those aspects that too often are missing in those big concert halls where the intimacy and authenticity are lost in the coughing crowd and the ringing phones.
