RUGGIERO LEONCAVALLO: POUR PIANO [COMPLETE WORKS] | DaVinci Publishing
In “Ruggiero Leoncavallo: pour piano [Opere complete]” edito da DaVinci Publishing, Ingrid Carbone rende omaggio a Ruggiero Leoncavallo in un viaggio attraverso il “suo” pianoforte. La varietà e l’abilità compositiva che dimostrano, i soggetti che oggi possono apparire inconsueti e un po’ antiquati, la forza espressiva di alcune opere che contrasta con la (raffinata) ingenuità di altre, l’allegria della danza (venata di malinconia) e la l’evocazione di terre lontane costituiscono il quadro originale di questo compositore.
TRACKLIST:
CD 1
- Notturno
- Papillon (Scherzo)
- Spanish Album: III. Playeras ancienne
- Nights of Italy (Intermezzo)
- Au bord du lac (Rêverie)
- Barcarola veneziana
- Bohémienne
- Dolce notte (Romance)
- Flirt-Walzer (Valse passionnée)
- Cortège de Pulcinella (Petite marche humoristique)
- Menuet d’Arlequin
- Primo bacio
- Valse à la lune (Sérénade française)
- Valse mélancolique
- Chanson d’amour
- Tema di Marcia Trionfale per l’eroica armata italiana di Tripoli
- Marche Yankée (Viva l’America)
- Brise de mer (Impromptu)
CD 2
- Pantins vivants (Danse de caractère)
- Invocation à la Muse
- Sérénade-Valse (Sérénade napolitaine)
- Marcia nuziale
- Sous les palmiers (Rêverie arabe)
- Menuet
- Romanesca (Un Morceau de style ancien)
- Sarabande (Danse ancienne)
- Gavotte
- Gagliarda (Danse ancienne)
- Gondola
- Tarantella
- Spanish Album: I. Sevillana
- Spanish Album: II. Gitano-Tango
- Spanish Album: IV. Granadinas
- Valse coquette
- Valse mignonne
- Sérénade
RECENSIONI
Enrico Stinchelli (La Barcaccia), Agosto 2023
Recensione CD – Enrico Stinchelli
“Abbiamo poi l’integrale delle composizioni pianistiche di Ruggiero Leoncavallo su 2 CD, eseguite con grande entusiasmo e delicatezza da Ingrid Carbone, illustre allieva del Conservatorio di Cosenza e pluripremiata negli ultimi anni in Italia e nel mondo.”
Classic Voice n. 287, Aprile 2023
Recensione CD – Luca Chierici
Recensione a quattro stelle per il doppio CD “Ruggiero Leoncavallo: Pour Piano [opera completa]”.
Audiophile Sound n. 187 – 2023
Recensione CD – Carlo Centemeri
“La ottima Ingrid Carbone, che abbiamo già avuto modo di recensire più volte in passato sulle pagine di questa rivista, fa una bella scommessa su questo doppio disco. […] Il risultato è di una freschezza impressionante, grazie anche alla visione illuminata di Ingrid Carbone che conferma di essere, in primo luogo, una pianista di grande intelligenza […]. Un disco che merita di essere comprato sicuramente di più dell’ennesima sinfonia di Beethoven.”
Giudizio artistico OTTIMO
Musicweb International, Gennaio 2023
Recensione CD – Rob Challinor
Ingrid Carbone plays these pieces competently and cleanly with little extrovert passion and for the most part this is effective – these are rarely works of great passions – but I would have liked a bit more vim in the more extrovert works such as the Yankee Doodle variations. Along with the essentially restrained salon nature of the works it is probably better to dip in rather than taking in the whole CD at a time but it is nonetheless interesting to become acquainted with this very little known side of Leoncavallo’s art especially as many of these pieces would be very hard to find in print. The booklet, in English and Italian, includes several colour picture postcards showing Calabria, Leoncavallo’s birth town, Montalto Uffugo where he grew up and other scenes as well as a photo of him at the piano with several, un-named individuals standing around the instrument.
Bresciaoggi, Gennaio 2023
Recensione CD – Luigi Fertonani
“Carbone rende giustizia all’estro di Leoncavallo”
Musicvoice, Ottobre 2022
Recensione CD – Andrea Bedetti
Artistic judgement 4,5/5
Technical judgement 4,5/5
Ruggiero Leoncavallo and the piano: a sound diary
“Quando un compositore viene ricordato nel tempo e dalla storia per via di una sola sua opera, e ciò accade sovente, quell’opera diviene inevitabilmente un’arma a doppio taglio: da una parte permette al suo autore gloria e fama imperiture, dall’altra offusca, cancella il resto della sua produzione, soprattutto se quest’ultima raggiunge la sufficienza o poco più.E se in tale “madamina, il catalogo è questo” ho voluto tenere per ultimo il compositore partenopeo, è per il fatto che, una volta tanto, un recentissimo progetto discografico non ha voluto proporre per l’ennesima volta l’ennesimo Pagliacci, ma qualcosa di più particolare, ossia l’integrale delle sue composizioni per pianoforte solo, presentata in due dischi dalla Da Vinci Classics e interpretata dalla pianista calabrese Ingrid Carbone. In un certo senso, si tratta di un dovuto tributo “geomusicale”, se si tiene conto che Leoncavallo trascorse un periodo importante della sua vita, quello della giovinezza, proprio in terra calabrese, per la precisione a Montalto Uffugo, in provincia di Cosenza, località nella quale visse momenti formativi felici, suddivisi tra studi musicali e letterari, e un altro, a dir poco terribile e che lo traumatizzò per il resto degli anni, quello riguardante un suo domestico e amico, tale Gaetano Scavello, che fu ucciso sotto i suoi occhi la sera del 4 marzo 1865, all’uscita del convento domenicano.”
Musica Magazine, Ottobre 2022
★★★★
CD Review – Luca Segalla
“This double CD represents an important document and is configured as a sort of sound archeology operation which opens a large glimpse into the musical everyday life of Italian salons between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”
Corrierebit, Settembre 2022
Recensione CD – Cesare Guzzardella
“Un raro Ruggiero Leoncavallo al pianoforte di Ingrid Carbone”
Opus Klassiek, Settembre 2022
CD Review – Aart van der Wal
“These piano pieces [by Leoncavallo] […] are definitely worth listening to carefully, […] played in a technically flawless and committed manner by Ingrid Carbone.”
Pizzicato, Settembre 2022
★★★★
CD Review – Norbert Tischer
“Ingrid Carbone has recorded Leoncavallo’s piano works with a sure feeling for this music”
RADIO
Primo Movimento, Rai Radio 3, November 22, 2022
Venice Classic Radio, Podcast, 15 Settembre 2022
Piazza Verdi, Rai Radio 3, 8 Ottobre 2022
Radio Romania, 3 Ottobre 2022
Ruggiero Leoncavallo is one of the Italian composers from the second part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century who remained known for their lyrical creations. These composers, however, had a lot to say in the music of that time and were extraordinarily successful during their lifetime as creators of operettas, symphonic poems and chamber music. Ruggiero Leoncavallo, the initiator of verism in music, wrote the opera “Pagliacci” in Milan in 1892 on his own libretto, an opera that brought him fame, being included in today’s repertoire of the great opera theaters in the world. In addition, he composed several operettas and piano pieces. Moreover, the keyboard instrument has been part of Leoncavallo’s life and concerns since childhood, when he studied with his mother. Later he studied piano at the Naples Conservatory with Professor Beniamino Cesi. Attached, therefore, to the sonorities of the piano, the composer created at different stages of his career scores for this instrument, which are almost unknown nowadays, constituting an interesting repertoire for performers to explore for the public.
The piano pieces by Ruggiero Leoncavallo were recorded in their entirety in May 2022, in the Classica Viva studios in Italy, by Ingrid Carbone, an acclaimed pianist and president of the Clara Schumann association, initiator of the Calabria International Piano Festival. Ingrid Carbone studied at the Conservatory of Cosenza, her hometown, then trained at prestigious academies in Italy with the pianists Sergio Cafaro, Hector Pell, Ronan O’Hora and Lazar Berman. She gave recitals and concerts in Europe and Asia both as a soloist and as a chamber music performer, she was also part of the juries of the international competitions Città di Barletta and Mauro Paolo Monopoli Award. In 2018, she founded the musical association Clara Schumann, and from 2020 she became an artist in residence at maison Bechstein. Ingrid Carbone has a wide repertoire, particularly focused on romantic compositions, and has so far released four albums – all with the Da Vinci Classics record label: two CDs with music by Franz Liszt and one with works by Franz Schubert, the most recent being the album that includes the complete pieces for piano by Ruggiero Leoncavallo, released on June 27, 2022.
Ruggiero Leoncavallo composed about 40 opuses for piano – serenades, nocturnes, minuets, scores inspired by Italian and Spanish folklore, works in baroque style, waltzes and other miniatures that share the romantic essence, a nostalgic and dancing atmosphere specific to salons aristocratic musicals from the end of the 19th century. These scores are difficult to find and study because they were not published in their entirety. All the more praiseworthy are the initiatives of the pianists who recorded them: a version published in 2019 belongs to Marco Sollini, before the release this year of the pianist Ingrid Carbone’s album, which offers us a convincing, lyrical and elegant interpretation, in tone with the spirit of Ruggiero Leoncavallo’s music.