Glyn Pursglove reviews Ingrid Carbone’s “Schubert: L’enchantement retrouvé”.
These two sets of klavierstücke by Schubert have several things in common. One is that each set bears a title which was probably invented by a publisher, rather than chosen by Schubert; and each of these titles is inappropriate. In the 1820s the word impromptu would have set up expectations of, in the words of John Daverio, something “along the lines of the fashionable salon pieces for piano produced in sizable quantities during the initial decades of the nineteenth century by the Czech composer Václav Jan Tomášek and his pupil Jan Václav Voříšek […] these were tailor made for amateur pianists who could negotiate a certain amount of flashy but not very difficult passagework. Schubert’s impromptus are of an entirely different order; cast for the most part in larger forms, they posed far greater challenges to players and listeners than the charming character pieces of Tomášek and Voříšek” (‘“One More Beautiful Memory of Schubert”: Schumann’s Critique of the Impromptus D.935’, The Musical Quarterly, 84:4, 2000, pp. 604-18). It is no surprise that Schumann (in a review in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (December 14, 1838) should have observed (with reference to D.835, though the comment is equally apt where D.899 is concerned) “I can hardly believe that Schubert really called these movements ‘impromptus’”.
The recorded sound is excellent throughout (the sound engineer is Marcello Malatesta) and captures very well the timbral nuances of the Bechstein Model D played by Ms. Carbone.
Over the years there have been quite a few distinguished recordings of these ten remarkable pieces – names like Schiff and Brendel, Pires and Orkis or, further back, Schnabel and Fischer – come to mind. This new recording doesn’t quite merit a place in that exalted company. But it is certainly a very fine recording – among the very best new recordings of these works that I have heard in recent years; and, it should be remembered, this is only Ingrid Carbone’s second CD. Her first, Franz Liszt: Les harmonies de l’esprit (Da Vinci Classics, DVC 00144) I have heard only on a streaming service through my computer’s speakers, but that too sounds impressive. The very least one can – should – say is that Carbone is already a very accomplished pianist of real insight, and that she shows promising signs of becoming an even more remarkable and important artist. Carbone is an impressive young artist – and her abilities are clearly not limited to the piano. At the age of 21 she graduated summa cum laude in Mathematics from the University of Calabria. Since then she has taught mathematics at universities in Italy, given papers at mathematics conferences, and is Assistant Professor of Mathematics back at the University of Calabria. A quick Library search has revealed articles by her in well-regarded international journals such as Applied Mathematics and Computation, Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications and Journal of Approximation Theory. Carbone brings to her performances at the piano a mind which ranges beyond music. I suspect that her future career (as a pianist!) will be very much worth watching.