Schumann / Rachmaninov: Piano Music – Macha Kanza

Macha Kanza, a young French pianist here on his recording debut, chooses two operas and two composers that hardly leave indifferent: Schumann and Rachmaninoff. As well as she chooses to try her hand at two of their most complex and introspective compositions such as Gesänge der Frühe Op. 133, among the last compositions by Robert Schumann already suffering from the mental illness that would then lead to his premature death and the mammoth Etudes-Tableaux Op 39 by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Two apparently very distant compositions but which can easily be united by one aspect: introspection. In fact, if in Schumann he makes himself manifest from the very first pages and hides many of the technical difficulties, Rachmaninoff also runs on the razor’s edge, not lending himself to a tightrope walk as an end in itself but at the same time requiring extraordinary technical skills from the interpreter, almost a sort of two faces of the same coin. Macha Kanza masterfully solves both compositions and completes a difficult path that is undertaken first in the mind of the performer, even before reaching the arms, wrists and finally the fingers that produce the sound. At the same time, a freshly felt interpretation that, however, fits into the great tradition of interpreting these works.