Decca Classics releases Maurizio Baglini’s 4th album devoted to Schumann’s piano music recorded on Fazioli, awarded 5 stars by the Italian music magazine “MUSICA”.
SCHUMANN: ARABESKE
Maurizio Baglini
Decca
Decca Classics releases Maurizio Baglini’s 4th album devoted to Schumann’s piano music recorded on Fazioli.
The recording features Arabeske Op. 18, the Fantasiestücke Op. 12 and the Romances Op. 28, written by the composer in a period of great creative élan. Those works are flanked by the Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of dawn) op. 133, mysterious musical testament of an older Schumann on the brink of madness who, after testing many compositional forms, went back to his first love: the piano. The programme closes with a treat: “Ahnung”, an undated manuscript rediscovered in 2009 at the Leopold-Sophie-Bibliothek in Überlingen.
In these interpretations, Baglini’s piano often sings like a human voice. “I have been inspired not by Bellini’s Bel Canto, that influenced Chopin, but the German Lieder, since Schumann’s melody always stems from the prosody of his mother tongue. For instance, regarding the suggestive long melody of the Arabeske… I decided to make it breathe as a singer would do.”
His interpretation of these masterpieces has pushed Baglini to adopt, in some cases, a slower pace than foreseen by the traditional performance practice of these pieces. “I weighed this up a lot – he concludes – choosing not to follow the metronomes noted on the score, which might have been modified on second thoughts, even by Clara Schumann. This allowed me to unravel the dramatic or even tragic depths of this music, in some ways so close to the poetic world of Giacomo Leopardi.»
The album was awarded 5 stars by the Italian music magazine “MUSICA”.