CD

 

Recensione

In her first cd Sandra Landini, besides Chopin’s well-known works, plays quite elegant but less known pieces by Balakirev, Glinka and Rachmaninov. I have to say I turned up my nose at first; anyway, the pianist’s interpretation made me forget her weird approach, actually it enabled me to pick up a logical thread among the pieces I had never considered.
I am talking about the influence Chopin had on Russian culture, and in particular on Rachmaninov’s decadent evolution, which is early noticeable in his juvenile “Morceau de fantasie op.3 n.1”, a piece that can be enjoyed in her cd.
Mrs. Landini aims at the color research above all, revealing such ability in her detail accuracy, and such a wide range of highly refined timbre tones, that Rachmaninov’s peculiar lyricism, foreshadowing his symbolist evolutions, is finally brought to light (evolutions already present in the Romantic poetry as Mario Luzi proved).
In this context Chopin’s “Sonata in Si bemolle op.36 “, with its dream-like atmosphere, its contrasts, its restlessness, mirrors fully that “weird mood”, noticed, not without embarrassment, by Schuman.
Surely we can’t leave out some harsh moments, not to mention the enigmatic finale being not fully worked out or defined clearly.
Anyway, we are talking about limits that, all together, do not ruin Mrs. Landini’s interpretative key feature, alluring sometimes, I dare say.
Claudio Bolzan
Musica (July-August 2016)