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.
Rob Challinor reviews Ingrid Carbone’s double CD dedicated to Ruggiero Leoncavallo.
