piano La Dolce Volta Archive

SCHUMANN: Fantasie; Kreislerinana – Collard, p. – La Dolce Volta

by Audiophile Audition | Apr 2, 2017 | Classical CD Reviews

Jean-Philippe Collard celebrates his long commitment to the passionate and fanciful works of Robert Schumann.  SCHUMANN: Fantasie in C Major, Op. 17; Kreisleriana, Op. 16 – Jean-Philippe Collard, p. – La Dolce Volta LDV 30, 63:57 (1/27/17) [Distr. by Harmonia mundi/PIAS] ****: French pianist Jean-Philippe Collard (b. 1948) prefaces his recording (4-6 April 2016) with a motto from Schumann: “Sometimes bizarre things happen in the heart of man: thus joy and sorrow mingle there in a strange and motley nature.” The world of Robert Schumann conforms to this admission of duality in the nature of man, given his division of his psyche into the personae Florestan and Eusebius. Coincidentally, the Fantasie first came to me via a French pianist, Robert Casadesus, who combined its powerful emotional content with an equally adept sense of its structural power. For many years, the Kreisleriana suite “belonged” Vladimir Horowitz, whose own demons seemed to drive deeply into the labyrinths that the 1838 response to E.T.A. had elicited in Schumann. And since Collard had studied with Horowitz, this recording bears the mantle of tradition. The Fantasie emerges at once passionate and sturdy, lyrically evocative of storms and intimate stresses in its leaps, swirling trills, and […]