Pensées fugitives

Silvia Carlin
With a refined pianism and a deep sensitivity to the intimate meaning of music, Silvia Carlin approaches each work with clarity, depth, and artistic awareness. Her interpretations are guided by a sincere desire to convey the Beauty and Poetry of the works she performs, through an approach that is genuine, honest, and deeply communicative.

Winner of the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship, a prestigious award granted by the Swiss government to outstanding young talents in academic and artistic fields, Silvia Carlin has received numerous prizes at national and international competitions. These include Second Prize at the Marizza Competition (2018) and Third Prize at the Città di Stradella Competition (2018).

In November 2022, she performed at the Steinway Hall Paris as part of the GLocal Piano Festival, organized by the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition. In February 2024, she appeared as soloist with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, performing the Piano Concerto in G major by Maurice Ravel.

She began her musical studies with Nicoletta De Cian at the “Antonio Miari” Municipal School of Music in Belluno and graduated at the age of sixteen with highest honors, distinction, and special mention from the Conservatorio Arrigo Pedrollo, where she studied with Antonio Rigobello. She continued her education at the Musik-Akademie Basel, earning a Master in Music Performance and a Master in Music Pedagogy under the guidance of Filippo Gamba. She later pursued further studies with Alexandar Madzar at the Hochschule für Musik Hamburg. In January 2023, she completed her studies with a final recital with honors at the Laeiszhalle.

Throughout her artistic journey, she has benefited from the guidance of internationally renowned musicians such as András Schiff, Lilya Zilberstein, Benedetto Lupo, Homero Francesch, Ferenc Rados, and Massimiliano Ferrati.

She performs regularly in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, both as a soloist and as a chamber musician, with a particular focus on duo repertoire with cellist Valentina Dubrovina.

In 2024, together with Valentina Dubrovina, she founded the REVISION Project, an initiative dedicated to the research and rediscovery of forgotten composers, with the aim of bringing their works back to today’s concert stages.

Alongside her concert activity, Silvia Carlin is deeply committed to teaching and, since 2019, has been a faculty member at the School of Music of the Musik-Akademie Basel.

Clara Schumann (b Leipzig, 13 Sept 1819; d Frankfurt, 20 May 1896). German pianist, composer and teacher. One of the foremost European pianists of the 19th century and the wife and champion of the music of Robert Schumann, she was also a respected composer and influential teacher.

Moritz Moszkowski: (b Breslau, 23 Aug 1854; d Paris, 4 March 1925). German pianist, composer and conductor of Polish descent. Born into a wealthy Jewish family, he received his first musical tuition at home, showing exceptional talent from an early age. In 1865 the family moved to Dresden, where Moszkowski was accepted at the conservatory. Moving to Berlin in 1869, he studied at the Stern Conservatory with Eduard Frank (piano) and Friedrich Kiel (composition), and subsequently at Theodore Kullak’s Neue Akademie der Tonkunst with Kullak himself (piano) and Richard Wuerst (composition). While still only 17 he accepted Kullak’s invitation to join the staff at his academy, where he taught for over 25 years. In 1873 he made his successful début in Berlin as a pianist, and quickly acquired a reputation not only as a brilliant virtuoso but also as a fine interpreter of the Classical and Romantic repertory. He was also a competent violinist, sometimes playing first violin in the academy orchestra. Among his early compositions were several substantial orchestral works, most of which have been lost. These included a piano concerto, first performed in Berlin in 1875 and admired by Liszt, who subsequently arranged a special concert in which he and Moszkowski performed the work on two pianos.
During the 1880s Moszkowski began to suffer from a nervous disorder which resulted in a premature end to his activities as a travelling virtuoso. Thereafter he appeared only occasionally as a pianist and concentrated more on composition. He also gained some recognition as a conductor, and it was in this capacity that he made his first visit to England in 1885, at the invitation of the Philharmonic Society, which later granted him an honorary life membership. He was elected a member of the Berlin Akademie der Künste in 1893. In 1897, while at the height of his fame, he settled permanently in Paris, having married the sister of Cécile Chaminade. By this time he had become considerably wealthy, mainly due to the immense popularity of his piano music. He was also much in demand as a teacher, and his many piano pupils included Josef Hofmann, Wanda Landowska and Joaquin Turina. At the suggestion of Messager, Thomas Beecham went to Moszkowski for coaching in orchestration in 1904.
From about 1910, however, Moszkowski’s fortunes went into decline. He began to suffer from ill health, lost both his wife and daughter and saw his popularity fade as musical tastes changed. He became a recluse, and his creative output virtually ceased with his loss of ambition and enthusiasm. He invested his wealth in German, Polish and Russian securities, which became worthless after the outbreak of World War I in 1914. His remaining years were spent in poverty, although in 1921 some of his old friends in the USA arranged a testimonial concert for his benefit at the Carnegie Hall. This spectacular event, during which 14 pianos were played simultaneously by some of the leading pianists of the day, raised some $10,000, although the proceeds did not reach Moszkowski until the year of his death.
Moszkowski had some early success with his orchestral works, but he made his reputation with his piano music, ranging from brilliant virtuoso pieces, well suited to both concert hall and recital room (Concert Studies op.24, Caprice Espagnol op.37, Tarantelle op.27 no.2, etc.), to lighter salon music (Serenata op.15 no.1, Valse Mignonne, Guitarre op.45 no.2 etc.) and music for piano duet (particularly the three sets of Spanish Dances op.12, op.21 and op.65), then very much in demand for domestic music-making. Early influences include Chopin, Mendelssohn and, especially, Schumann, but he soon developed his own distinct style, which, if not highly original, confirms his intimate knowledge of the piano and how to write effectively for it, prompting Paderewski to declare that ‘after Chopin, Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano’. His music, although limited in emotional range, is characterized by its glittering brilliance, innocent charm and immediate melodic appeal. For many years Moszkowski’s music was largely forgotten. Renewed interest in his work, however, has seen the revival of the Piano Concerto op.59 and recorded surveys of his output for piano solo and duet.

Samuel Maykapar, also known as Samuil Maikapar (1867-1938), was a pianist, composer, teacher and writer on music. Born in Kherson and raised in Taganrog, he studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory, graduating in 1893, while also completing a university degree in law. His teachers included Beniamino Cesi, Joseph Weiss and Nikolai Solovyov; he later pursued further piano studies with Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna.

He taught at the St Petersburg Conservatory and became known for his piano teaching, writings on musical hearing and performance, and compositions for young pianists. His expressive miniatures combine accessible piano writing with the lyrical and harmonic language of the late Romantic tradition.

Sergey Prokofiev (b Sontsovka, Bakhmutsk region, Yekaterinoslav district, Ukraine, 11/23 April 1891; d Moscow, 5 March 1953). Russian composer and pianist. He began his career as a composer while still a student, and so had a deep investment in Russian Romantic traditions – even if he was pushing those traditions to a point of exacerbation and caricature – before he began to encounter, and contribute to, various kinds of modernism in the second decade of the new century. Like many artists, he left his country directly after the October Revolution; he was the only composer to return, nearly 20 years later. His inner traditionalism, coupled with the neo-classicism he had helped invent, now made it possible for him to play a leading role in Soviet culture, to whose demands for political engagement, utility and simplicity he responded with prodigious creative energy. In his last years, however, official encouragement turned into persecution, and his musical voice understandably faltered.