MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


Buy through MusicWeb for £12.00 postage paid World-wide.

Musicweb Purchase button

 

Teresa CARREÑO (1853-1917)
Le printemps Op.25 [5:35]
Plainte (Queja). Elegia No.1, Op.17 [3:54]
Ballade (Balada) Op.15 [7:22]
Intermezzo Op.34 [1:50]
La corbeille de fleurs (La cesta de flores), Valse Op.9 [7:53]
Mazurka de Salon Op.30 [3:06]
Un bal en rêve (Un baile en sueños) [5:10]
Partie (Partida) Elegia No. 2, Op.18 [4:33]
La fausse note (La nota falsa) Op. 39 [4:13]
Un rêve en mer (Un sueño en el mar) Op.28 [5:28]
Kleiner Waltzer (Mi Terasita) [3:28]
Le sommeil de l’enfant (El sueño del niño) Op.35 [3:41]
Vals gaya [4:44]
Venise (Venecia) Op.33 [2:45]
Une revue à Prague (Una revista en Praga) [4:51]
Clara Rodriguez (piano)
rec. Complejo Teresa Carreño, Sala José Félix Ribas, Caracas. 2002
NIMBUS ALLIANCE NI 6103 [65:13]

Experience Classicsonline




Teresa Carreño was born in Caracas. She went on to make an important and successful musical career in North America and Europe as (primarily) a pianist of considerable reputation. She was also a singer and an occasional conductor, as well as a composer. Carreño was the granddaughter of Cayetano Carreño (1774-1836), composer, organist and choirmaster who played an important role in the musical life of Venezuela. Her own father, Antonio Carreño (1812-1874) was, by profession a banker and a diplomat, but also had a sound musical background and gave his daughter her early music lessons. Her mother, Clorinda Garcià de Sena y Toro was a niece of Simon Bolivar’s wife. Teresa was something of a keyboard prodigy. At the age of 8 she was taken to New York, where she studied with Gottschalk and gave public performances which attracted large audiences. One writer who attended her concerts wrote that “Little Miss Teresa Carreno is indeed a wonder … A child of nine years, with fine head and face full of intelligence, rather Spanish-looking (she is from Caracas) runs upon the stage of the great Music Hall, has a funny deal of difficulty in getting herself upon the seat before the Grand Piano, runs her fingers over the keyboard like a virtuoso, and then plays you a difficult Nocturne by Doehler, with octave passages and all, not only clearly and correctly, but with true expression … she plays Thalberg’s fantasia on Norma, full of all kinds of difficulties … with brilliancy, with nice shading, with expressions, her chords struck square and clean, like a master”.

There followed further studies in Paris, with George Mathias and, later with Anton Rubinstein. In her earlier years she seems to have been a somewhat impetuous and fiery player she seems later - after a break from public performance, a break bound up with her complex marital history - she gained a reputation as a meditative player, whose work was characterised by genuine profundity. Evidence of her own playing exists only in the form of piano rolls.

The excellent Clara Rodriguez here gives us a delightful sampling of Carreño’s own compositions most of which were apparently composed during her teenage years in Paris. The music will surely interest - and give pleasure - to anyone with a fondness for the nineteenth-century piano repertoire. There isn’t perhaps much of startling originality here, nor very much that betrays the composer’s South-American origins. The partial exceptions are Un bal en rêve, which incorporates the dance rhythms of the Venezuelan merengue and the Latin-tinged Vals gayo. Everything is very accomplished and each piece makes clear not only the considerable technique that the young Carreño must have had at her disposal, but also her sophisticated rootedness in the music of her age. Her Ballade has a dramatic poetry of a sort which no nineteenth-century composer would have been remotely ashamed. Le Printemps has a fine declamatory opening, an elegant waltz momentum, and a pleasing willingness to disrupt that momentum to subtle and expressive effect. Chopin would not, surely have been embarrassed to acknowledge either the Mazurka de salon or Un rêve de mer. The lovely Venise is pure delight, an exquisite barcarolle - this is a piece that deserves a place in the extensive canon of compositions inspired by Venice. Something positive can - and should - be said about every piece on the disc.

Clara Rodriquez plays with abundant vitality and a matching tenderness. Her performances carry a persuasive air of authority - this is clearly music which means a lot to her. Little of this music achieves any great emotional profundity unless it be Plainte, an elegy for the composer’s mother. It never fails to engage as it explores a variety of moods and tempi and is always full of character.

Glyn Pursglove 

see also review by Jonathan Woolf

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.