Venezuela-born Carreño
was one of the most formidable and picturesque
figures in piano history – not a field
by any stretch of the imagination lacking
in such personalities. Yet when one
remembers that she married, successively,
Emile Sauret, baritone Giovanni Tagliapietra,
Eugen d’Albert, then Tagliapietra’s
brother it gives one an indication of
her combustible personality. Her rows
with d’Albert were famous but the breach
of decorum in marrying the brother of
her second husband even worse for polite
society. Pianist, yes, but singer too.
The stories of her agreeing to replace
an indisposed artist at short notice
are too many for mere apocrypha. She
certainly made her singing debut professionally
in 1872 in Edinburgh and was a noted
Mozartian. But beyond such matters it
was as a pianist that she made he most
indelible mark. She was a pupil of Gottschalk
and later took lessons from Anton Rubinstein.
After early training she toured widely
as an increasing celebrity and was notably
successful in Berlin and in Philadelphia
amongst other highly discriminating
centres. Arrau heard her in Berlin in
1916 and pronounced her marvellous;
others, Grieg for example, tussled with
her when she began to rewrite passages
in his Concerto.
She never recorded
though there were plenty of opportunities
for her to have done so, given that
she lived until 1917. What we have instead
is a collection of piano rolls, some
of them collated here by the ever-investigative
Pierian in their Caswell Collection.
They’ve released a number of composer-roll
recordings and I was especially impressed
by their Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler release;
she, like Carreño was
a pioneering woman pianist who never
made commercial disc recordings.
Given the complexities
surrounding the Welte Mignon and other
roll systems, exhaustively detailed
in previous reviews of Pierian and Naxos
releases, one can only offer tentative
analysis of her performances and how
they may relate to her playing. Her
Smetana – an unusual offering – does
go some way to bear out Arrau’s remark
that she was a goddess when he
heard her in Berlin. The attack is glittering
and there’s powerful Lisztian animation
in this virtuoso playing. When we get
to her Chopin however things take on
a more problematic hue. The First Ballade
is so choppily phrased that it’s impossible
to believe that the roll mechanism hasn’t
reduced her playing to mere caricature.
The same is true of the G minor Nocturne,
which tends to be paragraphal and to
sport its fair share of idiosyncratic
voicings. As with most rolls there are
severe limitations of colour, nuance
and dynamic inflexions; of dynamic variance
there’s precious little here. The Third
Ballade has a very intriguing slow and
portentous introduction and has some
idiosyncratic phrasing. The biggest
work here is the Waldstein Sonata.
There are some "cloudy" bass
sonorities as transferred, though the
playing has requisite energy and propulsion
when required. There’s a certain literalness
in the first movement, which contrasts
strongly with the clipped chords of
the slow movement. Implacable or mechanical?
The lack of dynamics renders this rather
one dimensional and some very odd phrasing
leads one to wonder about the playing
as a whole – or its rendering in this
medium.
Nicely laid out the
booklet goes into detail concerning
Welte Mignon rolls. The transfers were
effected via a 1923 Feurich Welte piano
and recorded in stereo. They can give
at best a very partial insight into
her playing – but Carreño was
a musician of major importance and we
should savour the opportunity to listen
to her, even in this imperfect form.
Jonathan Woolf
Carreño was
a musician of major importance and we
should savour the opportunity to listen
to her, even in this imperfect form.
... see Full Review
Teresa Carreño (piano) 
