Recently, the Italian celebrity duo comprising pianist Michelangelo Carbonara and his South Korean-born cellist wife Kyung Mi Lee generously gave a recital of works for solo piano at the Kempinski San Lawrenz, Gozo. The concert, which every year is the result of very dedicated hard work by Sonja Sinclair Stevenson, was in aid of two Gozo-based charities – The Friends of the Sick and the Elderly in Gozo and Happy Moments in Kenya.
This is the ninth consecutive year that Carbonara has given such recitals, quite a few of them in duo with his charming wife. They are so well-matched, both being slight in appearance but extremely charged with a boundless musicality, passion and energy.
This gifted couple performed together in the second half of this recital, which Carbonara began with a series of solo works. This time his choice was Beethoven’s so-called Moonlight Sonata, which the composer wrote more as a quasi-fantasia. The very romantic and evocative opening movement gave way to a rather questioning allegretto with a concluding, very different, contrasting and assertively sweeping presto agitato.
For comparatively light relief the pianist chose three of Dvořák’s 16 Slavonic dances. These are very charming pieces and all the composer’s own music, based on different Slavonic folk dance rhythms in ABA form. They provided an interlude before the perhaps deceptively titled Sonatina N. 6 Fanatsia da camera super Carmen by Busoni.
Never an easy composer to perform, Busoni provides pianists with challenging technical difficulties in his works, and these were smoothly swept aside in Carbonara’s performance of a work, which for the very well-known themes used, endears itself to the listener.
This part of the recital ended with Chopin’s Scherzo N. 1 in B minor, Op. 20, which is not the most performed of his four scherzi. This one, of course, had something familiar about it but also something else which sounded a bit strange. During the very brief interval the pianist told me that he had performed a lesser known and more compact version of the work.
The dose of virtuosity increased considerably in the second, duo half of the recital. This began with Chopin’s Introduction and Polonaise Brillante, Op. 3. A piano flourish gave way to the cello’s expansive and very lyrical introduction which takes about a third of the playing time. The rest was a section of brilliant work living up to the piece’s title, which led to an exciting conclusion.
Yet even more high-powered virtuoso work for the cellist reached a breathtaking peak in Tchaikovsky’s Pezzo Capriccioso, Op. 62. A completely different idiom was easily mastered by the duo in Piazzolla’s Le Grand Tango. During many sections of this work there was an equality of roles because of the frequent dialogue and interaction between the two musicians. Their popularity is such that they are never ‘allowed’ to leave the concert hall without conceding a couple of encores. These were a medley arranged by Carbonara with two main elements, namely Autumn Leaves and Fly Me to the Moon. The duo had a final go at Piazziolla with Chiquilín de Bachín, a work of truly great pathos.
The performance was of the highest order, but one must say that the hall is kept too dark and gloomy. One should hope this will be remedied when Michelangelo and Kyung Mi Lee return for the 10th concert on April 7 next year at the same venue and in aid of the same charities.