Why do Carl Maria von Weber’s four piano sonatas resist coming back into fashion? One reason may be that they occupy a kind of no-man’s-land between the Classical and Romantic eras, making them hard to program with Mozart or Beethoven on one side and Chopin or Liszt on the other. Another reason is practical: Weber’s sonatas are not easy to play. One can understand a young pianist not wanting to waste valuable practice hours slaving over Weber’s extended octave passages, relentless double notes, darting unison runs, and rapid skips when there’s Beethoven’s “Appassionata”, the Chopin Etudes, or Liszt’s B minor Sonata to consider. In any event, Weber’s sonatas have never lacked champions on disc (Cortot, Arrau, Mewton-Wood, Richter, Gilels, and Fleisher, just to name a few), yet only a handful of pianists have recorded all four, including Michelangelo Carbonara.
There’s much to admire in his solid technique and firmly focused sonority, as the pianist’s headstrong and decisive accounts of the Third and Fourth sonatas’ opening movements prove. And the dry, biting articulation with which Carbonara articulates the detached chords of the Second sonata’s slow movement attractively offsets the pianist’s suave legato melodic lines. However, back-to-back listening reveals that Carbonara often falls short of the litheness, nuance, and flexibility distinguishing Michael Endres’ more imaginative Weber interpretations.
Compare, for example, Endres’ bracing rhythmic inflection in the First sonata’s Menuetto alongside Carbonara’s relatively earthbound pianism, or notice how Carbonara’s precise yet uneven articulation in the Third sonata’s Rondo finale yields to the unambiguous solidity and effortless double thirds that both Endres and Richter serve up. Carbonara’s Fourth sonata Tarantella Finale is unquestionably crisp and bouncy, yet hardly a real Prestissimo: Leon Fleisher still outshines the competition. Capable, workmanlike readings of the Rondo brilliante in E-flat and the Invitation to the Dance fill out Carbonara’s cycle. My preferred edition of the Weber sonatas remains that of Michael Endres, with CRD’s Hamish Milne running a close second.
