Reviewing previous issues of Schumann’s piano music played by Constantino Catena, critics in Fanfare have noted the Italian pianist’s affinity for the composer’s unique sound world, its peculiar subtleties and idiosyncrasies. ‘Catena’s playing is a precise balance of fluidity and markedness’ (Davidsbündlertänze); ‘he plays with wonderful tone and fine sensibility’ (Fantaisie).

For this new recording, made on a Yamaha CFX instrument in May 2024, he turns to a pair of cycles comparatively neglected within Schumann’s pianistic output. While his fellow Italian Dino Ciani made a famous recording of the Novelettes, op.21, back in the 60s, the sequence of eight works has never attracted the attention of works like the Fantaisie or Kreisleriana, yet they embody the composer’s inspiration in full spate.

Schumann wrote to Clara early in 1838: ‘In the last three weeks I have composed an extraordinary amount of music: hilarious things, Egmont stories, family scenes with fathers, a wedding.’ True to their title, each Novellette tells a story in miniature, abundant in the poetic division between the heroic Florestan and dreamy Eusebius by which Schumann crystallised his own creative temperament. They also make a satisfyingly progressive sequence which culminates in the longest and most complex work in the cycle, alternately dancing and surging towards a grand apotheosis.

By complement, the quartet of Nachtstücke, op.23, is a more introspective cycle, marked by a spirit of obsession which finds expression in piano writing of greater severity, less floridity and exuberance. The cycle was probably conceived in the wake of his brother Eduard’s death; no.1 describes a cortège passing and receding from view.

On Brilliant Classics, Catena has made premiere recordings of the piano music by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, rediscovered at the Staatsbibliothek in Munich and edited by him, for Edizioni Curci, as well as all the chamber music with piano by the same composer. Also for Brilliant Classics, he recorded Franco Margola's Double Concerto for violin, piano and orchestra. ‘Catena's technical facility is astounding. The overall range of dynamics, colour and expression is excellent, and you can hear that he is always in control of the direction of the piece. He is a formidable artist’ (Philip Borg-Wheeler, Fanfare).