Manuscripts Don’t Burn is a famous line in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita – the retelling of Faust, the 20th-century cult novel of an artist surviving in a Totalitarian regime, the love story, the burlesque with giant, vodka-drinking cats, and vampiric theater administrators.

I first read the book as a kid, growing up in Soviet Odesa. I took it with me when my parents and I immigrated, as Jewish refugees running from antisemitism, through Austria and Italy, to the United States. Crossing the border, I worried that guards would discover my book, and I would be severely punished. Throughout the years, the book played a role in my life. My childhood best friend from Odesa reread the book in adulthood and decided to find me - we are now together for 20 years, with two kids. I read the book to my mother as she was dying from brain cancer.

Bulgakov’s novel weaves through my own newly published memoir, Weight in the Fingertips - A Musical Odyssey from Soviet Ukraine to the World Stage (Backbeat Books, October 2023). I consider this very personal recording to be something of a mirror image to my memoir, as it intertwines the literal images from Master and Margarita with more autobiographical themes and layers.

The five premieres, written for me and recorded here, are vastly different in styles and aesthetic. The understated, elegant Master and Margarita Suite by Veronika Krausas complements the wild, theatrical, brooding and extended techniques-filled “Manuscripts Don’t Burn” by Maya Miro Johnson. Mike Garson’s Psalm to Odesa, an improvisatory ballad, with bits of my own improvisation based on a well-known Odesan song, sets off “Voices” by Ljova, a piece for piano and historical recordings of Jewish cantorial and klezmer music. Both take me back to my home city, currently under vicious attack, like the rest of Ukraine. The poetry I recite, sing and hum while performing the four-movement Godai - the Four Elements - is rounded off by the propulsive bravura whirlwind of Hero. Fasil Say’s Black Earth takes the listener on a journey from Odesa across the Black Sea - a Turkish ballad and jazzy beats alternate with improvisatory melisma of a Turkish lute, played on muted strings of the piano. The rarely heard Notturno of Fanny Mendelssohn connects a gifted female voice to the others on this disc, as well as, perhaps, to the dark, impassioned character of Margarita. In Master and Margarita, “Manuscripts Don’t Burn” is spoken by Satan when he retrieves the manuscript of a novel presumed burnt – and in Clarice Assad’s “Godai”, Steve Schroeder’s poem depicts the loss of a manuscript in a fire.

The lieder of Schubert, transcribed for solo piano by Liszt, riffs on the mythical and the Faustian lore found also in Master and Margarita: Gretchen (Margarita) at the spinning wheel, a mystical love story by the sea, a monstrous Elf King and the death of a child, of innocence, of joy - one’s worst fear.

This collection of music speaks to my love of dialogue between music and words. As in my Music/Words series, where I pair poets with musical programs in the form of a recital/reading, the connections between text and sound here are not just literal but emotional, based on memory, intuition, dreams, and hopes.

- Inna Faliks

The Transcendental Études form a cycle of twelve pieces whose composition began in 1826 and was completed in 1851. Starting from the idea of an encyclopædic collection which, in the manner of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Liszt’s Transcendental Études became something of a seismograph of his compositional aesthetic, first strongly under the influence of Paganini, later more in the style of character pieces. These études are among the most difficult works ever written for the piano. Together with Chopin’s Études, they serve as a basis for piano technique, some of them already prefiguring musical impressionism, and they had a significant influence on subsequent piano music, most notably that of Debussy, Rachmaninov, Bartók, and Ligeti.

In 2009, Haochen Zhang was the youngest pianist ever to receive the Gold Medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Since then, he has captivated audiences worldwide with a unique combination of deep musical sensitivity, fearless imagination and spectacular virtuosity. After two releases devoted to concertos (Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky, BIS-2381 and Beethoven, BIS-2581), Zhang returns to the solo recital with this disc devoted to some of the most important works in the repertoire of modern pianists.

REVIEW:

Haochen Zhang’s Liszt Transcendental Etudes are bound to attract intense scrutiny, in light of these works’ recent proliferation in the catalog and Zhang’s growing prominence on the international piano scene. The brief opening Prelude’s individual touches are totally borne out by the score: such as the accented ascending left-hand lines, or how the marcatissimo chords take on a slashing ferocity when played strictly in tempo, as opposed to the broadening one hears from most pianists.

Some may find the second etude too compulsively detailed where inner voices sometimes stick out to a fault, while the upward leggermente triplets are on the careful, studio-bound side. It takes a while for Paysage’s long lines to truly resonate and soar. Mazeppa’s thickets of notes hold no difficulties for Zhang’s technique, yet his clattery, undifferentiated textural layering pales next to the extraordinary three-dimensional perspectives revealed in Yunchan Lim’s 2022 Van Cliburn Competition semi-finals performance.

Happily, Zhang’s fusion of breathtaking speed and felicitous poetry make for a Feux Follets worthy to mention alongside those of Sviatoslav Richter and Minoru Nojima. The pianist builds Vision in steadily moving blocks, and wisely starts out less loudly than Liszt indicates in order for the fortes and fortissimos to make a stronger impact. He takes more than usual dramatic advantage of Eroica’s fermatas, while his muted deliberation in the main section transforms the music into more of a funeral than military march.

To my ears, Zhang’s swiftness and clipped articulation in Wilde Jagd’s broken octaves and rapid-fire chords evokes not so much a royal hunt as a Road Runner cartoon. However, the lyrical Ricordanza features some of Zhang’s most direct, and stingingly proportioned pianism in the cycle. His forthright pacing and wide dynamic scope in Harmonies du Soir convey a similar impression. While it’s impressive how Zhang shapes and controls No. 10 to the extent that he does with little help from the sustain pedal, the effects draw more attention to themselves rather than to the music’s underlying agitato subtext. By contrast, the pianist’s variety of touch and timbre minimizes the tremolo texture’s potential for fatigue and monotony.

In sum, you may not agree with all of Zhang’s interpretive decisions, yet he clearly is a thinking and often stimulating virtuoso who leaves a strong imprint on these oft-recorded works. With that in mind, I prefer the conceptual consistency and more settled musicality of an earlier BIS Liszt Etudes from pianist Laszlo Simon (a/k/a Joyce Hatto, for those who remember the scandal we helped to uncover back in 2007). I also should mention that Yunchan Lim’s stunning Liszt cycle from the Cliburn is imminent from Steinway & Sons, hence its inclusion among the reference versions.

-- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Greatest ever Danish pianist in concert - His activities as a soloist and his increasingly comprehensive work as a teacher were central to his ?nal years from about 1950 until his death in 1967. Here I am thinking not only of his teaching as a professor at the conservatoire, but even more of his efforts to stimulate and encourage interest in classical music. One of his tools was television. TV was completely new. Many people were interested in it, and in Denmark only one channel was available. This was Danmarks Radio, which only transmitted a few hours daily. It opened up a unique opportunity for Schiøler to gain access to “the general public” in this way. There were many broadcasts which had the title “About the Piano” in common. In this series the sound track of Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy has already been included in Vol 4. Besides the music, viewers could also hear Schiøler’s eloquent, inspiring and appealing introductions. Volume 6 also includes an example from these broadcasts. Schiøler introduces and talks about Saint-Saëns’ Variations for two pianos on a theme of Beethoven. The theme is the trio from the minuet in the Sonata in E?at, op. 31 no. 3. The variations make considerable demands on the two pianists, who constantly cast little bits of the theme to each other which they then have to grab in such a way that it never affects the pulse and continuity of the music. It demands perfect synchronization between the two players, here Schiøler and his pupil Peter Westenholz (1937 – 2008). And it is a joy to listen to them playing together! The recording was made in Schiøler’s own home on his two Hornung og Møller concert grands.

The German radio broadcaster Deutschlandfunk Kultur, the German Music Council, and GENUIN once again jointly present the debut CD of a promising young musician: organist Aurel Dawidiuk is the winner of the 2022 German Music Competition in the organ category. His stellar career, however, goes far beyond that, as Dawidiuk is also celebrating his first international successes as a pianist and conductor. Exploring the theme of B-A-C-H in his organ debut, the major organ works assembled here span three centuries and include music by Johann Sebastian Bach himself, Johann Krebs, Franz Liszt, Zsigmond Szathmáry, and Max Reger – a rich diversity of music covering a wide range of styles!

The piano is perhaps better suited than any other instrument to evoke the sound of bells – evening bells, bells of farewell and of joy, funereal bells, bells with spiritual overtones – and late-Romantic and twentieth-century French and Russian composers in particular have responded to the challenge of capturing those sonorities at the keyboard. This recital explores three centuries of pianistic tintinnabulation, and its ability to capture atmosphere and emotion. In her work, Irmela Roelcke combines concerts with teaching, practicing with reflecting and communicating music. She develops innovative concepts and dramaturgically profiled programs.

A spectacular tribute to Hungarian-born composers, from the brilliant, award-winning performers — Grammy-nominated violinist ELMIRA DARVAROVA (first and only woman-concertmaster of The Metropolitan Opera) and pianist THOMAS WEAVER (professor at Curtis Institute of Music), the album “FROM LISZT TO LIGETI” brings an exceptionally vivid narrative linking historic milestones in the legacies of a number of superb Hungarian-born musicians — composers and performers, who have so enormously contributed to enriching the world’s cultural treasure-trove.

Liszt, Joachim, Bartók, Kodály, Hubay, Goldmark, Ligeti — they have all bequeathed us masterpieces to behold and cherish, throughout several centuries of showcasing, shaping, preserving, and amalgamating national traditions and global influences through the prism of their own personal creative gifts.

This album is a charismatically kaleidoscopic retrospective that traces the historic perspective of how uniquely innovative artists such as Bartók and Kodály built the cornerstones of their oeuvre by exploring, embracing, critically analyzing, and then reshaping Liszt’s ideals. It also explores how Ligeti followed on the heels of Bartók and Kodály with his own ethnomusicological research, creating, still in his student days, a little-known Duo that he kept editing and crystallizing throughout his life and various periods of transforming and modernizing, but then later returning to conventionally established expressive means. Additionally, it delves into how Joachim — as a muse to numerous music giants, such as Brahms, Liszt, Dvorák, Bruch, Robert and Clara Schumann — influenced and caused cataclysmic events without which the history of music would not have been the same.

In addition to the best-known Hungarian-born composers Liszt, Bartók, Kodály, and Ligeti, the inclusion of Joachim in this album as a co-author (not just dedicatee) of Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12” (in its version for violin and piano) makes sense historically not only because Joachim in his transcription radically transformed Liszt’s composition but also because Joachim famously contributed to the creation of numerous gems by some of the greatest-ever composers, such as the violin concertos by Dvorák and Bruch (who published these works after Joachim helped in creating them) and Brahms’ First Piano Concerto (bearing Joachim’s handwritten corrections which elicited “thank-you” letters from Brahms, during the 4 years Brahms took to write that concerto).

The inclusion in this album of the Hungarian-born composers Hubay and Goldmark is also well-justified, bringing up yet other interesting dimensions to the album’s narrative. The album’s deeply-considered collection explores the affecting lyrical gift of Goldmark, who, as the largely self-taught son of a synagogue cantor, followed his ingrained melodic instincts from growing up without riches among 20 siblings, to becoming Vienna’s leading composer (after the deaths of Brahms and Bruckner), teaching Sibelius, and writing a mind-blowing violin concerto, a symphony championed by Sir Thomas Beecham and by Leonard Bernstein, and several operas, one of which was produced at The Metropolitan Opera in 1885, and three of which were presented in Vienna during Mahler’s leadership of the Court Theatre.

Hubay’s unparalleled contribution as a historical “cross-roads” figure is also well-defined in this album, not only because of who he was — the son of an elite musician (who conducted the Budapest premiere of Wagner’s “Lohengrin”), a student of Joachim, a department head at Brussels’ Royal Conservatory (succeeding Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski), a chamber music partner of Liszt and of Brahms (performing with Brahms the world-premiere of Brahms’ D Minor Violin Sonata, and the world-premiere of Brahms’ Third Piano Trio), composer of numerous concertos, symphonies, and operas (one of which was embroiled in a scandal reported 100 years ago by The New York Times), and the teacher of many illustrious star-violinists who became muses to Bartók, Kodály, Ravel, Holst, Vaughan Williams, Rebecca Clarke (among these violin prodigies were Bartók’s girlfriend Stefi Geyer, Eugene Ormandy of The Philadelphia Orchestra fame, and Joachim’s great-nieces Jelly d’Arányi and Adila Fachiri, who not only inspired Bartók and many others but also spear-headed the search for Schumann’s long-suppressed violin concerto, “cancelled” and hidden by its dedicatee — their great-uncle Joachim).

The choice of Hubay’s well-known czardas “Hejre Kati” for inclusion in this album reflects the evolution and role of that genre in the history of Hungarian musical traditions — from the early roots of czardas stemming from verbunkos (used even by Haydn), to its controversial misappropriation by dilettante performers whose inflectional performing style was confused and misinterpreted by Liszt as original Hungarian folk melodies, to more tasteful artistically expressed concert-stage compositions (like Hubay’s “Hejre Kati”), to the eventual dethroning and demythologizing of the czardas by Bartók and Kodály, who discovered, revealed, and incorporated the true authenticity of their home country’s original folk music.

The album selections follow Bartók’s evolving from the student-composer of a traditionally-profiled, Romantically-influenced Andante and the mature creator of “15 Hungarian Peasant Songs” and “Rhapsody for Violin and Piano No.1” (embodying his scientific and artistic mission to reveal the exquisitely-uncontroverted authentic beauty of ancient folk melodies) to the transfigured innovator who elevated and transformed old rustic traditions, fusing them into new and progressive forms and rhythms, reaching out to impressionism and jazz (as depicted in Bartók’s “Dance in Bulgarian Rhythm No. 6”), and paving the way for Ligeti’s experimentalism, which, through multiple “back and forth” constructing and de-constructing, reflected Ligeti’s never-ending search for artistic inspiration (this album presents the, recorded here only for the second time, recently-discovered Duo for Violin and Piano, which Ligeti never submitted for publication but continued returning to, and working on).

The unusually meticulous album notes cover the multi-dimensional, serendipitous, and cross-pollinating nature of essential events and legacies, which endure and continue to fascinate us.

Franz Liszt, musical genius and piano titan. When he first came to Prague in 1840, he heard and remembered Josef Theodor Krov's melody "Tešme se blahou nadejí", which was then misinterpreted as an old Hussite song. Franz Liszt, inspired by this song, has written the "Hussiten-Lied". Another Liszt’s composition you will find on this CD that is inspired by Czech/Slavic culture is "Slavimo slavno slaveni!". Naturally, Liszt left an indelible mark among Czech musicians, so you will also find Czech composers on this album.

For her second album with naïve, Zlata Chochieva has chosen a magnificent, audacious program, associating Schumann, Ravel, Liszt and Bartók with the lesser known Draeseke and Schulz-Evler. Sensitive to nature and to the emotions it inspires, the Russian pianist Zlata Chochieva has conceived this very personal album as a patchwork, sometimes inward-looking, landscape with changing skies. “A recorded program is not a concert program, but I also wanted to tell a story, propose a whole tapestry of emotions, open different perspectives,” she confides.

A pair of great Danish pianists and celebrated violinists contribute to a wide-ranging program, which demonstrates Thomas Jensen’s versatility and command of his orchestras in both pillars of the repertoire by Grieg and Tchaikovsky, and a stirring but unfamiliar piano-concerto movement by the Dane August Winding. Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegelis new to the Jensen discography: a stunning live performance from 1952, newly remastered from the original tapes. This collection brings together live DRSO broadcasts from the 1950s and the 1960swith earlier gramophone recordings, made before Jensen’s DRSO tenure when he was principal conductor of the Aarhus Civic Orchestra (documented on Volume 8 of the series.)

Review:

It’s fortunate – and generous – of Danacord to offer their twofers ‘as for one’ as of late they have been engaged in wholesale reshuffling of their packs.

The only previously unissued item in CD1 is August Winding’s Concert Allegro, preformed by Boris Linderud (1915-95) in 1960. This fluid rhapsodic piece is cast in a Schumannesque mould with plenty of right-hand filigree. The only non-studio live performance on CD2 is Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel, in a very competent 1952 reading in the characteristic acoustic of Denmark’s Radio Concert Hall. The remainder of the programme is largely given over to the violin repertoire on the Tono label, played by the country’s then leading player, Emil Telmányi, between 1947 and 1951. He plays Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen with plenty of slides but also a sure awareness of style. You will find the Introduction and Rondo capriccioso on DACOCD851 where you’ll also find recordings made by Telmányi’s great teacher, Hubay – the recording Telmányi made of Hubay’s Hejre Kati in that disc is a later one than the 1947 Tono here, which features his Chamber Orchestra and offers a less successful accompaniment.

Svendsen’s Romance is in the secure hands of Carlo Andersen in his famous 1939 HMV recording which must have sold by the bucketload as it always turns up on record lists to this day. It’s a valuable snapshot of Andersen’s playing as he only ever recorded a couple of pieces by Lumbye so far as I’m aware. Finally, there’s Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812’, spread across four 78 sides, recorded a few days after the Introduction and Rondo capriccioso. Nothing unduly odd happens in the ‘1812’ – strong, decisive conducting and well recorded. Till is newly remastered, and everything comes up sounding good.

--MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)

While Liszt’s version of 12 songs from Winterreise is the crowning glory of his Schubert transcriptions, there are surprisingly few recordings of the complete set. Only two are presently available (one on fortepiano), making this new recording by Leonardo Pierdomenico a notable event, and coupled uniquely with two versions of Liszt’s own music.

Leonardo Pierdomenico brings Lisztian virtues to the songs from Winterreise which Liszt selected and arranged according to his own ordering, beginning like the original with ‘Gute Nacht’ but ending with the grim tavern scene of ‘Im Dorfe’. Along the journey, Liszt exercises all his powers of pianistic invention not merely to incorporate the song line within the piano part but to enrich Schubert’s music with his own sympathetic interpretation. In Der Lindenbaum, Liszt he deploys all manner of flourishes to conjure up the tree’s rustling leaves. In a surprising twist, he follows it with the cycle’s otherwordly song evoking Der Leiermann, the hurdy-gurdy man.

The recital’s still central point of reflection is supplied by Liszt’s transcription of Gretchen from his Faust Symphony: a loving but complex portrait of the object of Faust’s affections, a cantabile meditation magnificently sustained over almost 20 minutes. By contrast, Totentanz in its solo-piano version is a feat of pianistic imagination, based on the Dies Irae plainchant, to test the most technically assured performers. Authoritative notes by the pianist and scholar Mark Viner complete a set sure to draw the interest of all Lisztians.

The young Italian pianist has already established himself as a Lisztian of renown and distinction through the Piano Classics album (PCL10151) including the Ballades, Legendes, and Csardas macabre. The album won widespread critical admiration: ‘Would that half the seasoned Lisztians I know had Pierdomenico’s keen ear for stylistic differentiation within this half-century of repertory. His highly developed technique and cultivated sound, both adaptable to a variety of affects, are wedded to those twin essentials for artistic Liszt-playing: imagination combined with thoroughgoing, scrupulous musicality.’ (Gramophone, September 2018).