Ingrid Carbone has built a career that intertwines music, scientific research, and cultural dissemination. With the lecture-concert concept, she aims to reestablish the cultural value of classical music, fostering deep engagement and listening preparation that transform the audience’s perception. In this way, she counters the risk of superficial enjoyment and restores the authentic, in-depth dimension to the musical work.
These are the words of Yolande Dominuco, who has interviewed Mrs. Carbone for MusicaEst. You can read the full interview (in italian) here>>
Here’s a translated excerpt.
The Conversation–Concert serves as a preparation for listening, allowing the audience to experience music with a different level of awareness. The goal is to engage the audience and guide them through the musical experience, providing essential information in advance (like a “film trailer”) so that subsequent listening isn’t a fruitless endeavor. The proposed format is defined as a multidimensional cultural journey. The approach to music is not merely technical, but connects music to many other subjects, such as mathematics and the humanities.
This work involves a deep and complex analysis of the score, analyzed with an almost scientific approach, as if proving a complex theorem.
Ingrid Carbone is committed to restoring the cultural value of music by offering a faithful yet original interpretation based on extremely long, slow, and in-depth study. This study includes respecting the composer’s wishes and indications. An appreciation of the historical context, including knowledge of the instruments available at the time and the ways in which music was enjoyed (for example, in the halls of noble villas or churches).
A thorough understanding of the composer, including his life, his struggles, sorrows, joys, and desires. For pianist and mathematician Ingrid Carbone, these elements help us understand a piece, meaning understanding what the composer intended to represent at that moment.
Exploring what lies “behind” the score (stories, poems, poems), treating the performance as a true theatrical performance.
The method has proven to work because it makes classical music accessible to everyone, not just musicians, avoiding the technical issues (harmonies, cadences) typical of conservatories. The effect on the audience is strong engagement, intrigued and captivated. In particular, the approach has succeeded in making classical music understandable to people who previously considered it incomprehensible, transforming the idea that it was a “niche” thing.
In an Italian context where there is a growing concern about the lack of value placed on one’s own culture, the Conversation-Concert works by casting classical composers in a new light and in different environments, in order to intrigue the audience and help them understand their own cultural past. Internationally, the approach allows foreign audiences to familiarize themselves with the Western cultural contexts that give rise to music, acting as an “ambassador” of culture.
In short, the Conversation–Concert re-establishes the cultural value of classical music by transforming a passive event into an educational and deeply emotional experience, where logical analysis and the emotional dimension merge to manifest the essence of the artist and the composer.
