Leif Ove Andsnes is a leading pianist of his time, known for his exceptional musicianship and subtil touch, his considerable technical flair being unfailingly put at the service of his interpretations. He was a pioneer for being the first home-trained superstar pianist to have emerged from Norway. This box is the story of a 20-year partnership that has yielded a rich seam of recorded treasures, first for Virgin and then for EMI. Running through this cornucopia of 34 albums (36 CDs), we find recurring themes: Grieg (Andsnes even recorded some Lyric Pieces on the composer's own piano at Troldhaugen), Nordic music in general, Schumann, Rachmaninov, Schubert.

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.

Few things are as much fun as big orchestral favorites performed by the Boston Pops Orchestra under the direction of the legendary Arthur Fiedler. This program, part of the RCA Living Stereo series, features splashy orchestral showpieces by Prokofiev, Liszt and Chopin.
Prokofiev's suite from his opera 'Love for Three Oranges' gets things off to a rousing start. Fiedler and his orchestra revel in the color and grotesque wit of Prokofiev's colorful score. Special note should be paid to the orchestra's sensitive playing in "Le prince et la princesse." Chopin's 'Les sylphides' is one of the most popular scores in the classical dance repertoire. On this recording, the delicate orchestrations of Leroy Anderson and Peter Bodge give the orchestra an opportunity to shine. Each dance is skillfully rendered and Fiedler gives the music ample room to breath. Two grand tone poems by Franz Liszt, 'Les préludes' and 'Mazeppa' round out the program. Fiedler and company are brilliant in 'Les préludes,' grasping the work's heroic soul without resorting to bombast. The RCA engineers provide startlingly vivid sound that is still of audiophile quality nearly forty years later.

LISZT: PIANO CONCERTOS NOS 1 &

The second Mephisto Waltz dates from the years 1878/9 to 1881. In it's orchestral version it was heard in Budapest in the latter year. The piano version was dedicated to Camille Saint-Sa�ns. The dance starts tentatively with the notes that suggest the diabolus in musica, the devil in music, the awkward interval of a tritone, and it is with the same allusive interval that the piece ends, after moods that swing from diabolic energy to more relaxed passages, still suggesting, after so many years, the literary inspiration that was it's original source. The third and fourth Mephisto Waltzes are also the product of Liszt's later years. The third piece was written in 1883. It was dedicated to Marie Ja�ll, now living in Paris, a former pupil of Liszt, who described her as 'artiste �minente qui est hors ligne au-dessus de la r�putation qu'elle a acquise'. From the outset the third Mephisto Waltz makes use of ambiguous intervals of a fourth that, in outline, make up the tentative opening, and remain a continuing feature, suggesting at times an inversion of the tuning of a violin. There are lyrical passages in a dance that largely lacks the diabolical fury that had impelled it's predecessor. The fourth Mephisto Waltz, dated March 1885, remained unpublished and apparently unfinished, since it's seems that Liszt intended to incorporate a contrasting Andantino section, for which he left sketches. As with other compositions of this last period of his life, the harmony is ambiguous, dominated by the scale motif of the opening. The first of the two Elegies was written in 1874 in memory of Madame Moukhanoff-Kalergis, n�e Countess Marie Nesselrode, a gifted pianist and pupil of Chopin, a leading member of Liszt's circle, commemorated in a concert in Weimar. The deep-felt mourning is expressed in a descending interval, heard at the outset and remaining a feature of the whole piece. The second Elegy, composed in 1878, was dedicated to Lina Ramann, Liszt's biographer, initially in a collusion with the Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein that later proved troublesome, and editor of his writings. She had a piano school in Nuremberg and had made a name for herself as a teacher, notably with her Grundriss der Technik des Klavierspiels (Ground Plan of the Technique of Piano Playing), adopted, on Liszt's recommendation, by the Royal Hungarian Music Academy in Budapest. A work of tender melancholy, the Elegy includes a gently lyrical passage marked dolcissimo amoroso, which leads to a passionate climax, resolving into final evocative simplicity. Liszt's Grosses Konzertsolo was written in 1849-50 for a competition at the Paris Conservatoire and was dedicated to the pianist Adolph von Henselt. Whether it was played then is unknown, but it presented daunting technical difficulties. Clara Schumann, to whom Liszt had sent a copy, refused to play it, privately criticizing what she regarded as empty virtuosity, while suggesting to Liszt that it was beyond the grasp of a mere woman, a work to which only Liszt himself could do justice. The first performance was apparently given by Carl Tausig. Liszt also arranged the work for piano and orchestra as Grand Solo de Concert, a version that remained unpublished, and for two pianos as Concerto Path�tique. The work represents a development of the now traditional sonata, including in a single movement contrasting elements of other movements, united by a single theme, from which others are derived. The principal theme of the Grosses Konzertsolo is heard at the start, the first part of the work moving to a chordal G major passage marked Grandioso, followed by a lyrical Andante sostenuto, opening in D flat major. A cadenza is followed by a continuation of this quasi-slow movement, now in more majestic and ornate form. The principal theme returns in something approaching it's original form, followed by the secondary theme, now in E minor and marked Andante, quasi marcia funebre, it's progress accompanied by a simulated muffled drumbeat, melting into the E major of the earlier Andante sostenuto and capped by a triumphant conclusion.

Precision, finesse, tonal and dynamic colouring and much else too add up to virtuosity of the Michelangeli or Pollini class here.

In case after fifteen months or so anyone may have forgotten, let me start by reminding readers that Emanuel Ax (flow in his twentyseventh year) won the first Artur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Israel in September 1974. Of Polish extraction, he Went with his family to live in Canada in 1959, and did the vital part of his studying with Mieczyslaw Munz, a Polish pianist on the staff of the Juilhard School in New York. The sleeve-note tells us that he began to attract attention at contests in Warsaw in 1970, Lisbon in 1971 and Belgium in 1972. But it was not till Tel Aviv in 1974 that he finally emerged triumphant.

When I first started to play Chopin's B minor Sonata I must confess I was a little surprised that it did not spring off the record with more vitality and intensity. But with repeated hearings, the more I began to appreciate Ax's refusal to play for effect, his total rejection of all self-conscious searchings for new points of emphasis. In the first movement he neither over-drives the first subject nor swoons over the second (but could his cantilena be a little more luminous and magical here?). The whole movement has spaciousness and flexibility emphasising Chopin's romantic, fantasia-like approach to sonata form. For the Scherzo Ax has the right delicacy of touch; there is no trace of steeliness in his brilliance. The Largo is maturely reflective. Ax plays it as if he were "recollecting emotion in tranquillity" rather than making an on-the-spot avowal. The last two chords, incidentally, are very beautifully balanced. I was disappointed at his quiet start to the finale's arresting introduction. Sometimes, too, I wondered if his rhythm was taut enough as the argument unfolds. But the semiquaver episodes are delightfully fleet, and the main theme itself returns each time with cumulative might. The ending is a real victory. I don't think the performance is helped by the rather close, boxy recording. I can also imagine that on the concert platform, as opposed, to in the studio, Ax's whole approach to the Sonata might be more spontaneous, more tingling, with the music's nerve-ends more exposed. But for its mellowness and poise, its balanced musicianship, the performance is still most impressive.

The second side of the disc is designed to show him off as a pianist pure and simple. Since Liszt wrote such a vast amount of original music, I can't imagine what prompted Ax to include four un-Schubertian Schubert transcriptions, though his sonority in all of them is a joy. So is his scintillating fingerwork in Gnomenreigen. The outstanding performance of the whole record for me is nevertheless the A minor Paganini Etude. Precision, finesse, tonal and dynamic colouring and much else too add up to virtuosity of the Michelangeli or Pollini class here.

-- Gramophone [12/1975, reviewing the original LP release]

Famous Classics, Volume 3

Works For Cello And Piano

BERNSTEIN FAVORITES- ORCHESTRA

LISZT GREAT HITS

BARENBOIM PLAYS/CONDUCTS LISZT

Classical Music

Naxos’ ongoing complete Liszt piano music cycle reaches Volume 37 with the rarely heard first versions of three Petrarca Sonnets and Venezia e Napoli. The latter’s original incarnation included four rather than three movements. The opening movement features material that Liszt later recycled for his symphonic poem Tasso, with a middle section packed with scintillating arpeggios and rapid unison passages. It is followed by a brief declamatory movement, and then an Andante placido that would grow more elaborate, decorative, fluid, and imaginative as Gondoliera in the revised suite. Similarly, the later Tarantella is tighter and more dramatically cogent than its more diffuse yet no less demanding earlier counterpart. Among the three earlier Petrarca pieces, Sonetto No. 104’s differences particularly stand out from its later, more familiar revision, notably in a long, brooding introduction that Liszt replaced with the terser, agitated short phrases we know today.

Making his Naxos label debut, pianist Jue Wang plays best when his hands are fully occupied, as in the Tarantella’s bravura climaxes and long stretches of repeated notes, although Leslie Howard shapes the slower, rhetorical passagework with a stronger sense of the music’s declamatory nature and dynamic contrasts. While Wang captures the unquiet undercurrents of Schlaflos Frage und Antwort, his relatively heavy touch and general loudness take a back seat to Alfred Brendel’s faster and texturally clearer account on his Philips recording.

However, Wang’s light and supple Toccata points up the work’s foreshadowing similar textures and harmonic ambiguities of Debussy and Bartók. He tosses off the brief, flashy Galop de bal and the more substantial A minor Galop with tremendous character and technical finish, and serves up an ebullient Grand Galop chromatique that takes Liszt’s tempos and accentuations more seriously than the deliciously wacky Cziffra, whose galloping horse is closer to a souped-up bumper car. Keith Anderson’s annotations are up to his usual high standards.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Liszt Complete Piano Music, Vol. 19: Beethoven Symphonies No

Classical Music

Liszt: Schubert Song Transcriptions

A decade or so ago, a recital of Franck and Liszt from Murray Perahia might have caused some surprise. But one of the most refreshing things about this artist is his growing refusal to be typecast. The Franck (like all but two of the Liszt pieces) was recorded at The Maltings in Snape, a venue he knows and likes so well. This I enjoyed for its stylish reminders of the composer's long devotion to the Church—i.e. for a strain of simple devoutness, free from all heart-on-sleeve emotionalism, with which he invests the first two movements. The central choral is allowed an easy flow, and I liked his dynamic restraint in the first two statements of the chorale theme itself so as to leave plenty in reserve for the characteristically Franckian emergence from darkness into light as the work progresses. Discreet pedalling ensures that texture never clots in the fugue, and the homecoming is truly joyous.

The rest of the 60 minutes go to Liszt, and here my only slight (but only very slight) disappointment came in the Mephisto Waltz, recorded in UCLA's Royce Hall in Los Angeles. Needless to say it is played with all Perahia's customary command, finesse and what I can only describe as aristocratic musical discernment. Yet I still felt that just that last touch of devilry was missing on the dance-floor (even more piquant accentuation might perhaps have helped), and likewise the ultimate in lingering sensuous seduction in Liszt's "lascivious, caressing dreams of love". For the rest I have nothing but praise—starting with the cutting intensity Perahia brings to the melodic line in Petrarch's tale of unrequited love ("Sonetto 104"). By comparison, Louis Lortie on Chandos (in a less forward and less sharp-cut sounding recent Maltings recording) seems to shrink from this sonnet's acutest disquiet and pain—such as in the passage marked agitato, and then crescendo and rinforzando from about 3'46"-4'17" in track 5 of Perahia's disc. Perahia's liquidity in "Au bard d'une source" and shimmering whispers in the first Concert Study, "Waldesrauschen" (as spacious as Arrau's—now part of the Philips Arrau Edition) are wholly ravishing as sound per se, while "Gnomenreigen" in its turn brings reminders of that delicately scintillating brilliance that always gave him a place apart when gambol ling with Mendelssohn in concerto finales. His range of keyboard colour in the concluding Rhapsodic espagnole (the second and finer of Liszt's pair) is as ear-catching as are his rhythmic spring, his teasing caprice and his exuberant climaxes.

Full marks to his engineers for so faithfully capturing so wide a dynamic range—and, incidentally, to Sony for including so generously spacious a booklet (with full quotations from Lenau, Petrarch and Schiller).

-- Joan Chissell, Gramophone [10/1991]

Erika Haase continues her ambitious project of recording the most significant etudes of piano literature. This time she has tackled the etudes by Franz Liszt. The daredevil difficulties for the pianist playing these works are legend. She masters them with bravura and enriches them with her own highly sensitive musical note.

A marvellously convincing performance that in its uninhibited way blows any cobwebs off one's impressions of this romantic masterpiece. Under Bernstein there is never boredom: only freshness and much excitement.

Slick, you may say from our side of the Atlantic, in a tone of old-world smugness, but what a lot there is to be said in a highpowered and quirky romantic symphony for the Bernstein touch and unlimited rehearsal time. After all Bernstein has something of the musical Byron about him, and Liszt himself was hardly a paragon of refinement.

Bernstein's is a marvellously convincing performance that in its uninhibited way blows any cobwebs off one's impressions of this romantic masterpiece. Under Bernstein there is never boredom: only freshness and much excitement. But that said one does have to tackle the inevitable question: how does Bernstein compare with Beecham ? Most of my detailed comparisons reveal exactly the contrast one would expect. In the grand enunciations of Faust's martial theme in the first movement Beecham has more swagger and panache : by comparison Bernstein seems to be driving too hard. In the delicate little passage near the beginning of the second movement where Gretchen counts the petals ("He loves me, he loves me not"), Bernstein sounds perfect until you hear Beecham. Beecham with his daring but controlled rubato conveys so much more the tentativeness, the expectancy of joy, and it is the same through much of that slow movement. The second subject, marked dolce amoroso, is so very tender in Beecham's hands, that Bernstein's idea of amoroso sounds comparatively extrovert afterwards. The latter's account of the Mephistophelian finale opens with more diabolical drive, but Beecham conveys more clearly that the first bars are a mere introduction (he comes closer to observing the instruction ironico) and when the gallumphing scherzando distortions of the Faust themes appear the Beecham panache again triumphs.

All of which suggests a clear preference in Beecham's favour, and there is no doubt that anyone who has grown to love the Beecham performance should remain with him. But Bernstein's freshness and directness have a cumulative effect whatever the detailed comparisons, and the choral ending is more expansive than with Beecham. Particularly if one does not trouble too much about what Bernstein did at a particular bar, it is a hair-raising experience he provides, and the recording, very reverberant but brilliant as well, is recognizably more modern than the Beecham. The coupling too may have an influence on choice, though for my money I find Orpheus more interesting than Les Preludes every time. Although listed I have left the DGG issue out of the comparisons: neither playing nor recording come anywhere near the other two.

One final comparison between Beecham and Bernstein: at the very opening when violas and 'cellos enunciate Faust's mystic theme (ranging over all twelve notes of the scale as Stuckenschmidt has pointed out) Beecham conveys a sense of reverie. This is Faust the philosopher, where Bernstein's reading conveys less of mysticism and magic than a confident magician after the manner of Dukas. But to go to the same theme when it returns after the development: there curiously the contrast is quite different. After the frenzy of the development Beecham somehow fails to relax completely, where Bernstein's extra tautness in the preceding argument allows a deeper sense of calm in the return to the home idea. But then when in the finale that same theme is hinted at, pizzicato over mysterious muted horns, it is Beecham who again shows a clear supremacy. It is a marvellous work whichever version you choose.

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [reviewing the original LP release]

[André Watts] meets [the Liszt Sonata's] super-human demands heroically, and keeps faith with the introspective and contemplative facets of the work. The second version of Liszt’s Paganini Études finds Watts in audacious mood, and his bravura playing is masterful. Reminiscences de Don Juan, Liszt’s Mozartian fantasy, and the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 10 are effectively played by Charles Rosen, and remastered sound is pleasing.

-- Michael Jameson, BBC Music Magazine

All these pieces date from Liszt's austerer, later years when he had abandoned the life of a lionized itinerant virtuoso. Yet apart from To Petofi's Memory and Mosonyi's Funeral Procession—written to commemorate two cherished, late-lamented compatriots—Jeffrey Swann's chosen programme makes formidable enough technical demands for the disc to sell under the title of "The Virtuoso Liszt"... In so far as sheer prestidigitation is concerned, I would say that Swann's fingerwork is even swifter and sharper-cut than that of the mellower Katsaris (Teldec/ASV) or Howard (Hyperion). In much of the love music in the Waltzes he also shows himself capable of phrasing as poetic as it is intense... [I]n his own highly-strung, darting way, Swann certainly brings home [Liszt's] exploratory daring. As for the two valedictory Hungarian portraits (incidentally listed in the wrong order on the box) I would have preferred a slower tempo for both—and tauter, more inexorable rhythm in the main theme of To Petofi's Memory. Nevertheless, both bring reminders of the searching musician in Swann that won him first prize in Milan's Dino Ciani Competition in the early 1970s.

-- Gramophone [8/1989]

Famous Rhapsodies

LISZT: PIANO CONCERTOS 1 & 2,

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]

In the Romantic period, the connections between love and death were an obsession of artists. Composers were naturally drawn to explore the great themes that entered literature in the works of Dante, Petrarch and Goethe: good and evil, love and death. Liszt was no exception. The powerful, evocative works presented here range from moments of repose and contemplation to nearly unbearable contrasts of dynamics, pitch registers and tempi, dramatized by bold juxtapositions. “A fearless, flawless knight of the piano” is how Vienna’s Die Presse characterized pianist Carlo Grante.