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Grunfeld, Liszt, & Schubert: Soirees de Vienne

Hungaroton

$26.99 Dec 23, 2022

Entitled Vienna Evenings, this recording contains music linked to the imperial city and the piano, and to the enviable bourgeois musical culture of these time periods. The album features Schubert's piano pieces, the waltzes of Liszt and Schubert, and the waltzes of Johann Strauss re-imagined for the piano. Gábor Farkas received his MA and doctorate at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. Zoltán Kocsis was his master-teacher. After the academy he studied at the International Piano Academy, Lake Como, Italy, with William Grant Naboré. In 2015 he won the Grand Prix of the competition announced by the New York Concert Artist & Associates, as a result of which he could debut in Carnegie Hall in 2016.

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Grunfeld, Liszt, & Schubert: Soirees de Vienne
Hungaroton Dec 2022
CD
$26.99

Rachmaninoff, Liszt & Piazzolla

Antarctica

$14.99 Feb 07, 2025

First recording by a youngest piano duo of sisters, who already won several competition. The recording is a real business card with music by Rachmaninoff, Liszt and Piazzolla. Technically impeccable and full of energy, they convey to the audience the enthralling emotions of Liszt and Rachmaninoff piano duo masterpieces.

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Rachmaninoff, Liszt & Piazzolla
Antarctica Feb 2025
CD
$14.99

Joyful and Sorrowful - Liszt: Lieder / Jonas Kaufmann

Sony Masterworks

$5.99 ~~$11.98~~ Save 50% Sep 17, 2021

Freudvoll und leidvoll (Joyful and sorrowful)

The tenor joins forces with pianist Helmut Deutsch to perform a programme of songs by a largely neglected lieder composer, Franz Liszt.

After their album Selige Stunde, Jonas Kaufmann and Helmut Deutsch used the lockdown necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic, to make a further series of recordings. Their second album of songs is devoted to Franz Liszt, a composer for whom both feel a special affinity and whose music has long featured in their shared concert career.

Together with a group of six other songs including Vergiftet sind meine Lieder, Der König von Thule and Ihr Glocken von Marling, the demanding Petrarch Sonnets have been a part of Jonas Kaufmann’s repertory for many years, while Loreley, O lieb, solang du lieben kannst and Es muss ein Wunderbares sein are among his regular encores. As he himself explains, the process of studying lesser-known “jewels” such as Goethe’s eponymous Freudvoll und leidvoll, two versions of which are heard here, has been a period of intense discovery, during which time he has learnt to value these songs more than ever:

I’m very pleased that our enforced rest made this album possible – under normal circumstances it would probably not have come into existence quite so quickly. As a result we were able to record not only those Liszt songs that we had already tried out in the concert hall but also a number of others that until now have been overshadowed by Liszt’s “great hits”. Among them, pride of place goes to Die stille Wasserrose, which I find more beautiful the more often I hear it. I’m very grateful to Helmut for introducing me to these songs, and I think there will be many listeners who share my delight in these discoveries.

For Helmut Deutsch Liszt was one of the great idols of his youth, alongside Elizabeth Taylor and Herbert von Karajan:

Thanks to these jewels, Liszt deserves to occupy a leading place in the history of the art song, and yet even today he is denied this status. It is a source of tremendous pleasure for me that I have been able to share my enthusiasm with Jonas Kaufmann and persuade him to record an entire album with me.

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Joyful and Sorrowful - Liszt: Lieder / Jonas Kaufmann
Sony Masterworks Sep 2021
CD
~~$11.98~~ $5.99

Mussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition / Barry Douglas

RCA

$17.99 Sep 04, 2008

An impressive performance, spacious, full-bodied, and last but not least, never forgetful of the warm human feeling prompting Mussorgsky's tribute to a recently and prematurely deceased friend.

After Barry Douglas's recent RCA concerto debut in the Tchaikovsky, now a solo recital—with Pictures at an Exhibition, long a cornerstone of his repertory, the principal work. It's an impressive performance, spacious, full-bodied, and last but not least, never forgetful of the warm human feeling prompting Mussorgsky's tribute to a recently and prematurely deceased friend. In view of Ashkenazy's own orchestration of the work, it is perhaps not surprising that he himself draws a wider range of colour from the keyboard, particularly its upper register glints; his characterization is just a shade more vivid, underpinned by a stronger sense of direction (Decca). But Douglas's tone is warmer—and full marks to the RCA engineers for reproduction so faithful.

Both artists use the Urtext edition, notably giving us an ff start to ''Bydlo''. Here I think douglas's slower tempo is a distinct advantage in evoking the ox-wagon's lumbering motion, just as his marginally brisker tempo for the finale is truer to the composer's allegro alla breve marking. But neither his quarrelling children in the Tuileries garden nor his gossiping market-women at Limoges have as much temperament as Ashkenazy's, nor is his witch as ferocious—or sinister in flight. Both players, in their different ways, rightly make the recurrent promenade episode very personal. But on its first reflective return I questioned Douglas's subdivision of each phrase into two, just as I wondered if the ensuing sad song of the troubador (here very much an unrequited lover at the castle gate) really needs his occasional yieldings of pulse. His exceptionally full, rich fortissimo, free of all edginess or clang, is of course a tremendous asset in the majestic finale—as it also is in the big climaxes of the Dante Sonata. Comparison with Brendel (Philips) in this work revealed Douglas less dramatically menacing, less intense. But in its less urgent way (and, incidentally, he allows himself all the time in the world for the middle section's bittersweet reflection), the reading is warmly romantic and expansive—with some ravishing softer sonority en route. You're certainly left in no doubt as to why Liszt included the word 'fantasia' in the title. If yielding phrasing in the Liebestod sometimes relaxes tension in pianissimo, textural strands are clearly defined and the climax itself is sumptuous.

-- Joan Chissell, Gramophone [5/1987]

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Mussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition / Barry Douglas
RCA Sep 2008
CD
$17.99

Liszt: Piano Concertos; Malédiction / Alexandre Kantorow

BIS

SACD

$21.99 Aug 14, 2015

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

As a teenager, Franz Liszt created at least two virtuosic concertos for piano and orchestra, scores which now are lost. The three works gathered here first saw the light of day only a few years later, however, during the 1830's when Liszt’s career as a young, travelling virtuoso was at its height. The two numbered concertos, which Liszt revised extensively before letting them be published some 25 years after their conception, frame the single-movement Malédiction for piano and strings which Liszt composed in 1833 and revised in 1840, but which was never published in his lifetime. Stepping into Liszt's shoes for the present recording is Alexandre Kantorow, another very young man. Born in 1997, Alexandre is here supported by his father Jean-Jacques Kantorow conducting the Tapiola Sinfonietta, a team with a number of highly acclaimed recordings to their credit. The recording is Alexandre’s first for BIS, as well as being his début concerto disc, and represents a remarkable achievement by a hugely promising talent, as well as being a vibrant and exciting account of three impassioned scores.

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Liszt: Piano Concertos; Malédiction / Alexandre Kantorow
BIS Aug 2015
SACD
$21.99

Liszt: Piano Works, Arranged for Organ / Blankensteijn

Brilliant Classics

$16.99 Jan 05, 2024

The organ played a relatively large part in Franz Liszt’s oeuvre, and there are dual organ and piano versions of a number of his works, but some of the pieces specifically intended for piano also translate well to the organ.

This album consists of four organ transcriptions of such piano works. It begins with a wedding (Sposalizio) and ends with a funeral procession (La lugubre gondola), both life moments often associated with church and therefore with the organ, and Liszt employs a church-bell motive in them. In the Sposalizio, as well as in the Adagio (Consolation in D flat) that follows on this programme, there is a typical 19th-century musical religiosity that was also very characteristic of Liszt. His monumental Sonata in B minor is then succeeded by La lugubre gondola, a dark epilogue once again emphasising Liszt’s musical progressiveness and emotional depth.

The heart of this album is the Sonata in B minor in a new transcription. Although it has already been transcribed for organ, the present transcription is specifically intended for the 18th- or 19th-century Dutch metropolitan type of organ, an outstanding example of which is the main organ at the Domkerk (St. Martin’s Cathedral), Utrecht. There is even a historical link between this particular instrument and Liszt’s organ repertoire. In the summer of 1856, Liszt’s student Alexander Winterberger (1834–1914) undertook a tour of the Netherlands, including a performance at the Utrecht Domkerk, which was positively received by the press, with Liszt, too, enthusiastic.

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Liszt: Piano Works, Arranged for Organ / Blankensteijn
Brilliant Classics Jan 2024
CD
$16.99

Liszt, F.: Piano Music
Genuin Jan 2009
CD
$20.99

Liszt: Sonatas & Etudes

Linn Records

$20.99 Feb 10, 2015

Greek pianist George-Emmanuel Lazard's' superb debut release for Linn features two of the most famous works in the solo piano repertoire, both performed in breathtaking style. Originally released in 2006 'Liszt: Sonatas and Etudes' has been re-issued as part of Linn's ECHO series which offers a second chance to enjoy the best of the label's award-winning catalogue. Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor is one of the seminal works of the romantic piano repertoire and one of the most technically challenging pieces any pianist can undertake. Continuing this virtuosic theme, and demonstrating his great ambition as a pianist of the highest calibre, Lazard's also presents Liszt's Grandes Études de Paganini. This six-part composition, based on themes originally composed for violin by Niccolò Paganini, again places huge demands on the technical and interpretive abilities of the performer. As well as receiving a multitude of five star reviews upon it's release 'Liszt: Sonatas and Etudes' was chosen as one of '5 Essential Works by Franz Liszt' in 2012 by BBC Music Magazine. Born in Greece, George-Emmanuel Lazard's has a flourishing international career that has taken him from the United States and Mexico to Europe, Russia, Egypt, and the Middle East. During the past 20 years he has performed in some of the most prestigious venues worldwide including Carnegie Hall, Concertgebouw, St Petersburg Philharmonia Hall, Palais des Beaux Arts, Festspielhaus, Cologne's Philharmonie, Stockholm's Konserthuset, Cite de la Musique in Paris, Vienna's Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Athens Megaron and Palace of the Arts in Budapest to name but a few. His appearances have received great critical acclaim; audiences and critics alike recognize him as one of the finest pianists of his generation. Lazard's has received a plethora of honorary awards and scholarships including being named an ECHO Rising Star.

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Liszt: Sonatas & Etudes
Linn Records Feb 2015
CD
$20.99

Ervin Nyiregyhazi In Performance - 1972-1982

Music and Arts Programs of America

$19.99 Jan 28, 2010

Live recordings, 1972-1882. Ervin Nyiregyházi (1903-87) is largely forgotten today, but he was one of the greatest and most idiosyncratic pianists of the twentieth century, and his eccentric personality and bizarre career have few parallels in the history of music. These late concert recordings, all but four released here for the first time, are representative of Nyiregyházi's art, and should help to rehabilitate a lost genius whose reputation has rarely matched his artistic stature.

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Ervin Nyiregyhazi In Performance - 1972-1982
Music and Arts Programs of America Jan 2010
CD
$19.99

Brahms, Liszt & Schumann: Dedication

Ars Produktion

SACD

$23.99 May 19, 2023

Born in Moscow in the family of musicians, Shorena Tsintsabadze began her musical career in early age with her mother. She graduated the Moscow Conservatory academic music college and Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory in the class of the People's Artist of Russia, professor Z. A. Ignatyeva, who represented the class of outstanding pianist, Professor S. E. Finberg. During this period she became a prize-winner at the International Piano Competitions, such as: the Classical Heritage Association International Competition (Moscow, 1999), the Grand International Piano Competition (Paris, 1999), the Ibla grand Prize (Italy, 2000), where Shorena won the special Jordanian Prize for "Outstanding Musicianship and Talent". In 2000 the American label "Angelok" recorded the works by S. Rachmaninoff as her first CD with the Russian Federal Orchestra lead by Maestro V. Jordania. In 2008 Shorena Tsintsabadze, signed the contract with The World's Leading Classical Music Label "Naxos" and recorded the masterpieces by S. M. Lyapunov with the Russian Philarmonic Orchestra conducted by D. Yablonsky. In 2010 her album with works by S. M. Lyapunov included all his Piano concertos, Rhapsody on Ukrainian Themes, for piano & orchestra, Op. 28. Steven J Haller (American Record Guide, March 2011) stated in it's review of the album that "Moscow-born Shorena Tsintsabadze seems born to play this music; she embraces it like Van Cliburn did the Tchaikovsky, warmly lyrical and impassioned and blessed with a wide-ranging span of the keyboard from full bass register to glittering, yet never clattery top end. ". Also, The Guardian reported "The performances are terrific, with monumental playing from Shorena Tsintsabadze... " "Moscow-born pianist Shorena Tsintsabadze catches the fire and the poetry of the music, meets it's pyrotechnical demands with relative ease and imparts a wonderful sense of imagination to her interpretations. " wrote Robert Cummings (Classical Net, January 2011). Ian Lac (MusicWeb International) mentioned that "... Tsintsabadze brings to bear a light and delicate poetic touch with unbridled passion reserved for the Concerto's climactic passages. " In 2015 HBDirect. Com introduced Tsintsabadze's album in the list of the Best Selling Naxos CDs. In 2013 she made post-graduate studies of the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory with Professor, People's Artist of Russia Sergei L. Dorensky, who has mentioned Shorena as a "Brightly presented pianist with unlimited technical abilities and bright individuality. " During the study in Dorensky's class she had permanent consultancies with such outstanding musicians as Nikolai Lugansky, Andrey Pisarev, Pavel Nersessian and Liza Ginzburg (daughter of outstanding musician and pianist Grigory Ginzburg). She performed at the world's major concert halls and collaborated with renowned conductors and Orchestras. She has appeared in broadcasts on TV and radio of Russia, USA, Canada and Europe, etc. In 2015 Shorena Tsintsabadze has founded "Young Musicians International Association of Georgia. " The primary mission of organization is to help young talented musicians with the motivation, to support in creativity and career advancement, for which the organization is planning various events in the future. In this regard, some of the first and important achievement is the establishment of "Music International Summer Academy" known as "MISA" (misa. #ge) in 2015, Georgian Youth Symphony Orchestra (2017) and "Georgian Orchestra Academy" in 2019. In 2019 Shorena Tsintsabadze has recorded the masterpieces by Schumann, Brahms and Chopin and signed the contract with The Exquisite Classic Label - ARS Produktion.

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Brahms, Liszt & Schumann: Dedication
Ars Produktion May 2023
SACD
$23.99

Horowitz in Moscow - The Legendary 1986 Concert

C Major Entertainment

Blu-Ray

$22.98 ~~$45.99~~ Save 50% Jun 23, 2023

In 1986, the legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz, who left his homeland 61 years ago, announced that he would return to the Soviet Union for the first time since 1925 to give recitals in Moscow and Leningrad. This sensational historic recital from Moscow includes works by Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin, whom Horowitz knew both, Domenico Scarlatti, W.A. Mozart, Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann and Moritz Moszkowski. The disc too contains additional documentary footage with Horowitz. “Horowitz, playing with a clarity and dynamic range that friends said he had not matched in many years“ (New York Times) made an outstanding performance of musical, as well as political, significance.

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Horowitz in Moscow - The Legendary 1986 Concert
C Major Entertainment Jun 2023
Blu-Ray
~~$45.99~~ $22.98

Anton Gerzenberg: Reflections

Prospero Classical

$20.99 Jun 12, 2026

Ravel Reflections not only presents an impressive artistic statement from Anton Gerzenberg, but also a kind of musical self-portrait: the young pianist proves himself to be an interpreter with analytical acumen, playful wit, and a captivating virtuosity that always remains committed to expression. His playing combines clarity and refinement with passion and a fearless willingness to take risks-qualities that made him the winner of the 2021 Géza Anda Competition and which also characterize this album.

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Anton Gerzenberg: Reflections
Prospero Classical Jun 2026
CD
$20.99

Mix & Match

Liszt: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 67

Naxos

$19.99 Nov 07, 2025

Marches and other patriotic music frequently occupied the final place in Liszt's recitals, often emphasising the Hungarian cause, which Liszt supported. They also could have contributed to the previously mentioned mood of Lisztomania. It is therefore unsurprising that marches are to be found in Liszt's compositions and arrangements throughout his lifetime. They are represented here with works from around 1830 to 1879, all arrangements of other composers' music, which, in Liszt's hands, achieve artistic heights only found infrequently elsewhere. Given the common practice of the era for performer-composers to play their own music, Liszt could, through the inclusion of an arrangement of a well-known march, acknowledge others' music, and also pay respect to the culture of wherever the concert was taking place. In an era when recordings were not possible, piano arrangements of orchestral and vocal works were commonplace. Liszt cultivated this medium particularly successfully, creating arrangements of, for example, Beethoven symphonies and paraphrases of stage works by Russian composers such as Glinka. Arrangements heard here of marches by Beethoven, Giuseppe Donizetti, Glinka, Massenet, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Schubert and Szechenyi, indicate the breadth of Liszt's programming for his time.

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Liszt: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 67
Naxos Nov 2025
CD
$19.99

Mix & Match

Liszt: Harmonies poetiques et religieusses / Michael Korstick

CPO

$36.99 Nov 13, 2015

Franz Liszt’s mystical piano cycle, Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses takes its title from a collection of poems by the French romanticist Alphonse de Lamartine and underwent an unusally long period of gestation, written over a period of two decades. Liszt’s religious and abiding preoccupation with poetic themes in his creative works was in part fueled by his passion for the works of and friendship with de Lamartine. Given a splendid interpretation by pianist, Michael Korstick.

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Liszt: Harmonies poetiques et religieusses / Michael Korstick
CPO Nov 2015
CD
$36.99

Liszt: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 68

Naxos

$19.99 Apr 24, 2026

Volume 68 in the Liszt Complete Piano Music series features transcriptions of dance works by illustrious colleagues such as Smetana, Weber and Raff, amongst others. The pianist on this volume, Steinway Artist Wenting Shi, has received numerous prestigious awards and accolades throughout her career.

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Liszt: Complete Piano Music, Vol. 68
Naxos Apr 2026
CD
$19.99

Mix & Match

Liszt: Piano Transcriptions of Schubert & Wagner / Diatkine

Solo Musica

$20.99 May 27, 2022

Some of Jean-Nicolas Diatkine's singer friends have ended their careers, but their magic is irreplaceable in his eyes, or rather in his ears. He misses them, just as he misses the Schubert, Schumann and Brahms songs they sang. Well, there is only one person who can compensate for this loss, and his name is Franz Liszt. The main aim of transcriptions was to make orchestral works known to a wider audience, at a time when there were far fewer orchestras, and public access to symphony concerts was very limited. But Liszt gives transcriptions a new meaning: he puts the orchestra into the piano, since his style is particularly suited to outsized extravagance. Thus he opens up unprecedented pianistic possibilities, where virtuosity is no longer mere exhibitionism but rather transformed into the art of illusion. His arrangements of Wagner are so convincing that they become his own personal creations. Laurent Bessières, piano tuner at the Paris Philharmonic, suggested for this recording a Schiedmayer piano of 1916 made in Stuttgart, which he had completely rebuilt in collaboration with Antoine Letessier-Salmon, director of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, and Stephen Paulello, piano maker and inventor of the strings that bear his name. This instrument has almost never been used in concert, however excellent work by Laurent Bessières convinced us to try it out in this very special repertoire.

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Liszt: Piano Transcriptions of Schubert & Wagner / Diatkine
Solo Musica May 2022
CD
$20.99

Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante, Concerto For Flute & Harp / Rampal
Sony Masterworks Mar 2010
CD
$17.99

Perspectives 7 / Haefliger

BIS

SACD

$10.99 ~~$21.99~~ Save 50% May 11, 2018

BIS takes over from Avie presenting Andreas Haefliger’s ongoing (albeit slowly unfolding) Perspectives releases, a series that encompasses intelligent and often unexpected juxtapositions of mixed repertoire. As with its predecessors, Volume 7 features one Beethoven sonata. Haefliger’s careful phrasing and attention to voice leading makes a case for his muted and reflective way with Op. 101’s first movement, although he undermines the music’s undercurrents of energy and subito dynamics. At first the gnarly march movement seems dynamically constricted, yet the obsessive dotted rhythms gather momentum through Haefliger’s spot-on balances, pointed articulation of trills, and attention to transitional passages; it’s closer to Wilhelm Kempff’s caustic perception than, say, the nervous tension of Ernst Levy or the best of Vladimir Horowitz’s myriad live versions. And the difficult fourth-movement Fugue’s contrapuntal strands take on a woodwind-like character under Haefliger’s agile fingers.

The pianist has obviously lived with and “lived in” Berg’s Sonata for some time. At least that’s the impression he conveys in the exposition, where the primary lines and imitative rejoinders intertwine in relaxed conversation. The thick-textured development section sacrifices headlong urgency for top-to-bottom clarity. Similarly, Haefliger shapes the ebb of lyrical phrases and fluttering birdsong caressingly yet never indulgently in Liszt’s St. Francis Légende No. 1.

Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition abounds with interesting and illuminating interpretive ideas. For example, Haefliger’s rhetorical underlinings in Gnomus reinforce the music’s menacing yet mysterious character. The third Promenade is not loudly declaimed, but deliberate and reticent. Ritards at phrase endings impart an aptly hesitant quality to the Tuileries’ middle section, and there’s a welcome dramatic specificity in the gradual diminuendo at the end of Bydlo. The Unhatched Chicks ballet is lightning-quick and almost deadpan in the way that Haefliger maintains the tempo throughout the central section: most pianists slightly broaden the tempo.

On the other hand, the pianist softens the intended sting of Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle’s repeated-note sequence. But he resists the temptation to speed through the Limoges marketplace, taking a tempo that allows for the climactic broken chords to clearly register and resonate. However, I miss the final two movements’ potential for dynamism and orchestral impact that thrill me in the recordings by Ashkenazy, Berman, Bronfman, and, of course, the sonically grungy yet interpretively amazing live 1958 Sofia performance by Sviatoslav Richter.

In the end, Haefliger’s mastery, intelligence, and stylistic breadth deserve admiration and respect. I also should mention the concert hall realism of BIS’ engineering , together with this SACD’s unusually generous 86-plus minutes of playing time.

– ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

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Perspectives 7 / Haefliger
BIS May 2018
SACD
~~$21.99~~ $10.99

Forgotten Romance - Grieg, Rubinstein / Isserlis, Hough

RCA

$17.99 Mar 28, 2008

An inspired duo creates one of the most enjoyable cello discs in years.

With Steven Isserlis and Stephen Hough an inspired duo, natural recording artists both, this is one of the most enjoyable new cello discs I have heard in years. I should be sorry if the sentimental title, “Forgotten Romance”, taken from the shortest and least ambitious piece in the collection, deterred any serious listener from investigating it. The logic of the grouping is that the five cello pieces of Liszt, all of them brief and all of them adapted from earlier works, are used to frame the high romantic cello sonatas, by Grieg and Rubinstein, that are in danger of neglect. As Isserlis suggests in his engagingly argued note, “The unabashed emotionalism, the thrilling climaxes and memorable melodies of all such works are all too easily sneered at nowadays, and concert programmes are thus deprived of a host of 19th-century treasures.”

His advocacy is well founded, for in these exhilarating performances he and Hough challenge each other in spontaneously imaginative interplay to bring out all the qualities he mentions. The point is that with performances like these, as sharply disciplined as they are passionate, all the emotion is very well founded, with sentimentality firmly kept at bay. Romance oubliee, adapted from an early song, was originally written for viola, with an added arpeggio passage at the end reflecting Berlioz’s Harold in Italy, which Liszt had arranged for viola and piano. As Paul Coletti and Leslie Howard demonstrate on their Hyperion recording (11/93), Romance oubliee is rather better suited to that instrument, but makes a pleasant ‘song without words’ here to introduce the magnificent Grieg Sonata. Written when Grieg was considering composing a second piano concerto, its material and manner very much reflect the A minor Concerto, with Grieg at his most richly distinctive. Compared with, say, Truls Mork and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Isserlis and Hough are lighter and more imaginative, never running the risk of sounding sentimental, choosing speeds that flow easily and naturally. Paradoxically that makes the result more moving than any underlining of expression.

One could say the same about all these performances. The two Elegies – with Isserlis most persuasive in the improvisation-like passages – lead to the Rubinstein First Sonata. It has the lyrical directness and honest four-square construction which make the Mendelssohn cello sonatas so attractive. After a strongly characterized first movement Isserlis and Hough adopt a genuine flowing Allegretto for the siciliano rhythms of the central movement, made charmingly fresh, and the exuberant finale finds Hough at his most brilliant in the shimmering piano writing. The disc is rounded off by two Liszt pieces slightly more substantial than the others – Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth (“The Cell in Nonnenwerth”) – a late adaptation of an early song, spare in texture, and Liszt’s tribute to Wagner after his death, La lugubre gondola, one of many different adaptations. It would be a pity if such inspired playing failed to be appreciated, when, as Hough says, all this music so richly deserves to be better known.

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [4/1996]

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Forgotten Romance - Grieg, Rubinstein / Isserlis, Hough
RCA Mar 2008
CD
$17.99

Schumann: Carnaval; Liszt: Sonata

Danacord

$18.99 Apr 18, 2025

The University of York is very fortunate to own this exquisite 1856 Erard London concert grand piano, lovingly restored by Nigel Scaife and tuned to the Bach-Lehman temperament by Aidan Delacey-Simms. The piano is straight strung allowing greater separation of registers compared to it's more homogenised modern counterpart. The strings are damped from below, rather than above as in a modern piano, a less efficient design that results in pleasing result is a wash of colour and a ring of complex overtones that was surely an aesthetic choice. Pianos were likely not tuned in equal temperament in the mid-19th century and my choice of unequal temperament brings extra resonance to the instrument as well as colour to the music. Daniel Grimwood is best known as a world-leading exponent of 19th century virtuosic piano repertoire. Received with critical acclaim, Grimwood's recordings and performances of the music of Adolph von Henselt ensure his international reputation as a groundbreaking, inspirational musician, making him out as a unique voice amongst his generation of pianists. His recording of Henselt's Complete Etudes garnered "instant classic status" by Gramophone Magazine, which also named it piano release of 2023.

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Schumann: Carnaval; Liszt: Sonata
Danacord Apr 2025
CD
$18.99