Maria Fotino Performs Mozart, Scarlatti, Chopin, Schumann, Enescu

• Main performer: Maria Fotino
• Booklet languages: English
• Time: 71:28

Review

A student of Florica Musicescu at the Bucharest Conservatory, a colleague of Dinu Lipatti, and perhaps most significant, a frequent performer with composer and violinist George Enescu, Maria Fotino established her reputation in Romania as one of the finest pianists and teachers in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Although Fotino's historic recordings on this Pearl release give a clear idea of her interpretive style and skill, the lack of documentation leaves only a vague idea of when she recorded these pieces. From the fact that Fotino made many recordings for the Romanian Broadcasting Corporation after 1949, and from the monaural reproduction, one may deduce that these performances were made in the early '50s. The crisp and dry readings of Mozart's Sonata in B flat major and Scarlatti's Sonata in F minor convey the light touch and precision that Fotino brought to early music, but her performances of Chopin's Etude in A flat and Schumann's Kinderszenen are fully Romantic in approach and lavished with rich tones and a fair amount of rubato. Possibly Fotino's most interesting performance is of Enescu's Suite for piano, which may offer insights into her unrecorded but acclaimed performances with the composer. Pearl's mastering is fine, though some tape hiss is retained to preserve the fullest audio range. ~ Blair Sanderson, Rovi

Performances

Composer	Title	Time
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart	Piano Sonata No. 16 in B flat major, K. 570	18:50
Domenico Scarlatti	Sonata for keyboard in F minor, K. 519 (L. 475)	3:21
Frédéric Chopin	Etude for piano No. 13 in A flat major, Op. 25/1, CT. 26	2:29
Robert Schumann	Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) for piano, Op. 15	18:17
Robert Schumann	Arabeske for piano in C major, Op. 18	6:08
George Enescu	Suite for piano No. 2 in D major, Op. 10	22:23

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