A perfectly balanced duo

Albert Storace reviews Michelangelo Carbonara’s and Kyung Mi Lee’s performance on piano and cello in an evening that paid tribute to the Romantics.

Pianist Michelangelo Carbonara scored a great hit again, this time his great talent merging in a full blend with that of his wife cellist Kyung Mi Lee. For the fifth consecutive time, this young pianist offered his services for a very good cause, two causes in fact – the Friends of the Sick and the Elderly in Gozo (chaired by John Pace) and Happy Moments in Kenya (set up in Gozo by Mike Weimar). The latter charity helps the people of a community in Kenya’s remote Makuyu area to improve their lives.

The partnership was ideally balanced and very complementary, and even the interplay between the instruments was pretty equally distributed

Sonja Sinclair Stevenson was the hard-working co-ordinator who made this event possible at the Kempinski Hotel San Lawrenz, even obtaining a lovely piano fit for the occasion from Olimpus Music.

The recital was graced by the collaboration of his petite, talented and often musical firebrand of a wife. In actual fact, this perfectly balanced couple’s relaxed young looks belie the intensive, deeply passionate involvement in their music-making.

This huge reserve of feeling, combined with energy, musicality and well-honed technique stood them well, as it should, especially when the mostly Romantic works from the classical repertoire need exactly those qualities in order to sound convincing and meaningful.

The first of three solo works performed by Carbonara was the Schumann Fantasy in C, Op.17. There are conflicting views as to by whom this was inspired: his beloved Clara, Beethoven or Liszt?

Apparently by all three, and for different reasons, but there is no doubt that the three loose movements in what is a sonata in all but name have all the tempestuous feelings associated with typically Romantic musical outpourings. Contrasting, divergent but all united in one expressive sweep.

The way the pianist handled those devilishly difficult sudden skips in the second movement’s coda, flying simultaneously in opposite directions was just so wondrous.

The message in Chopin’s Ballade N.2 in F, Op. 38 was no less intense, and very compact. This is not my favourite of the four ballads, as I much prefer the first and third; yet it does not mean that it was not performed to satisfaction.

The opening theme, almost like a lullaby with strong folk undertones, was worked into a number of variations of an increasingly languid stamp, until it died away softly. Not so soft was the outburst in the second theme which was gradually blended with the first and glowed with dark warmth.

It came back in an even more exciting mood, and when the work died away softly, the touch was as tender as it had been strong not so much earlier.

In the only strict departure from the Romantic idiom, Carbonara launched into Debussy’s Pour le Piano and that mainly in the Prélude with its completely different sound world, the piano sounding quite “orchestral”; startling, but with brilliant fortissimo chords and weird glissandi. The Sarabande somehow sounded quaintly old-worldly and in properly sedate contrast to the fast-moving Toccata.

All three works or parts thereof, performed as a duo, were Romantic or late Romantic and so very beautiful. The partnership was ideally balanced and very complementary, and even the interplay between the instruments was pretty equally distributed.

Schumann featured again with the Adagio and Allegro Op.70, in which one could for the first time admire the lovely warmth of tone of the cello and the great cantabile quality so pronounced in the Adagio. By contrast, how very fiery was the Allegro for both instruments!

The very accomplished performance of the first movement of Chopin’s G minor Cello Sonata Op. 65 made me miss the remaining three movements. The same feeling prevailed when the Andante and Allegro Mosso, in the second half of Rakhmaninov’s G minor Cello Sonata Op. 19, were performed.

The importance accorded to both instruments is more pronounced in the Russian work and the lush richness of the melodies, especially the increasingly soaring emotions shored up by the piano, which just swept away all in its wake.

Imagine my utter surprise and appreciation when the first encore was conceded. The musicians had somehow got wind it was my birthday and dedicated to me the Largo from the Chopin Cello Sonata. They do not need my plaudits for me to say that they did it superbly. Besides, in the two other encores, they proved their great versatility by performing Gershwin’s I Got Rhythm, followed by Kapustin’s Burlesque.