In her “other” life Ingrid Carbone is a mathematician and teaches Analysis at the University of Calabria; in her artistic curriculum, however, there are well exhibited a diploma with full marks in piano at the age of 19, international competitions and masterclasses with pianists of the caliber of Lazar Berman. And it is with a program entirely dedicated to the music of Franz Liszt (1811-1886) – which she considered “the arrival point of a pianist: a goal from a technical and interpretative point of view” – that the Calabrian artist celebrates her recording beginnings; the album entitled Les harmonies de I’esprit ctually combines some famous pages of the Hungarian composer with lesser known works of great value. It starts with the most virtuosic piece of the album, the famous Fantasia, quasi Sonata Après une lecture du Dante, the last piece of the second volume of the Années de Pèlerinage; it is “visual” music, which intends to transport the imaginary world of the Divine Comedy to the pentagram through a sort of musical fresco that Carbone paints at the tip of a brush between continuous expressive chiaroscuro, diluting the agogics in times perhaps a little too much restrained. Embedded in the diadem of the six Consolations is the Third one, which represents one of the greatest poetic and intimistic peaks of Liszt, and which is coupled with the following Liebestraum n. 3, the famous “love dream”, initially conceived as a vocal lied but then left speechless and with the only seal of a sublime music. Finally, the record closes with a page that is rarely heard, Légende n. 2: St. François de Paule “marchant sur les flots”, in which the miracle performed by the holy hermit Francesco da Paola is described, when he crossed the Strait of Messina walking on the waters after having spread his cloak; among fine motions of notes, resounding sounds and intense chord progressions, the worthy crowning of those “harmonies of the spirit” that entitle the disc.
CD Review by Andrea Milanesi in Avvenire September 20th, 2019 – “Liszt: Les harmonies de l’esprit”
September 20, 2019