Classical Music

After the solo album with works by Beethoven, Bulgarian pianist Donka Angatschewa plays works of Franz Liszt. She dedicates the recording to her friend and supporter Heinz Aeschlimann who gave her the initial idea to play Liszt’s B minor sonata and supported her over the years. A whirlwind at the piano, a sensitive musician with excellent technical skills and phenomenal pianistic expression — this is how the young pianist is celebrated both by critics of the Wiener Zeitung and Luzerner Zeitung as well as by renowned musicians such as the Artemis Quartet. Born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, Donka Angatcheva Maraszto made her debut as a soloist with the Plovdiv Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of ten. A pupil of Maria and Diana Slavova as well as Milena Mollova (a student of Emil Gilels), Angatcheva won numerous awards at international piano competitions from an early age. She completed her studies with Heinz Medjimorec, a member of the Haydn Trio, at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Angatcheva’s artistic development was heavily influenced by master classes with musicians such as Ludmil Angelov, Boris Romanov, Catherine Vickers, Peter Efler, Tiny Wirtz and Oxana Yablonskaya.

The mediation of text achieves the immediate effect that an opera aria or, in particular, a song can evoke. The chamber-musical concentration that a piano song, for example, can evoke, i.e. the arrangement of a song by a singer and a pianist, can hardly be surpassed - this in a concert genre that only became established late, in the second half of the 19th century, and has nowadays often receded into the background. It is no longer just about entertainment, or even just diversion: song composition demands truthfulness, inwardness and the ability to transmit these prerequisites as a performer and to receive them as an audience. In the 150 years since 1750, a song culture has developed in European, and especially German-language, vocal music that is unique in its music-historical significance and that has reached unsurpassed heights in the song oeuvre of Franz Schubert (1797-1828) and Robert Schumann (1810-1856). The present CD brings together piano songs to which one can attach rhapsodic, folkloristic or historicising subjects. They tell of "legends and heroes" and lead the listener into a sonorous dream world.

Deep emotions and sombre laments, the torments of Hell and the radiance of Paradise, and the sounds of celebration: the Staatskapelle Weimar and Kirill Karabits are continuing their partnership on the Audite label with Franz Liszt's symphonic poem Tasso: Lamento e Trionfo, his Symphony to Dante's 'Divina Commedia' and - a world-premiere recording - his K�nstlerfestzug zur Schillerfeier. Their three previous releases have all been acclaimed by the press. The works that Liszt wrote for the Weimar Hofkapelle in the 1850s are the very embodiment of a Romantic ideal, combining literature, philosophy and the visual arts to create emotionally intense music that is turned both towards tradition and to the future. As a bonus download (15 tracks) Audite presents Liszt's melodrama Vor hundert Jahren, for which his K�nstlerfestzug was initially meant as a prelude.

Classical Music

Sardanapalo, who prefers wine and concubines to politics and warfare, and Mazeppa, who dies with glory, having endured pain and humiliation: dramatic literary models, impressively set to music by Franz Liszt. Written at the same time, these works represent Liszt's ideas striving to unite literature and music, on the one hand modernising Italian opera and on the other advancing towards the symphonic poem in his orchestral writing. The Sardanapalo manuscript comprises the first act. For 170 years the material lay dormant in the Goethe and Schiller archive in Weimar: it was only in 2017 that David Trippett deciphered, edited and orchestrated the manuscript at the University of Cambridge. Kirill Karabits conducts the Weimar Staatskapelle: Liszt's orchestra in the city in which he composed the opera. Audite continues its series of the great Weimar Kapellmeister-composers.

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

Liszt wrote his A Faust Symphony; Three Character Pictures, Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles, after Goethe, in 1854, adding a choral finale three years later, when it was first performed in Weimar. Further revisions took place, with changes introduced even as late as 1880. He transcribed the second Gretchen movement for solo piano, completing it eventually in 1874, and in 1862 published his version of the work for two pianos, revising it in 1870. The subject of Faust, the scholar who sold his soul to the Devil in return for youth and power, had a particular attraction to artists in the nineteenth century, when Faust might appear as a human hero, an opponent of ancient tyrannies, political and religious, and the Devil himself might seem to have similar attractions. Where the Elizabethan version of the story by Christopher Marlowe brought Faust to a medieval Hell, Goethe's monumental and influential poetic treatment of the subject ended in the final redemption of Faust through the power of love and of the woman he had wronged, Gretchen. Liszt based his symphony on the literary work of his great predecessor in Weimar, Goethe, and returned to the subject of Faust in later compositions based on Lenau's Faust, including the Mephisto Waltzes. The second movement, Gretchen, generally lightly scored, starts with a gentle passage, scored originally for flutes and clarinets, followed by the main theme, played by oboe accompanied by solo viola, the two piano version marked Innocente. There is a short passage that represents the scene in the garden when Gretchen plucks the petals of a flower, seeking to know whether Faust loves her or not. A second Gretchen theme is heard, and in the central section of the movement Faust's theme of love appears, and a descending melody associated with Faust's yearning. The agitated theme of Faust's struggle re-appears, now mollified in a gentler mood. This leads to a re-appearance of the Gretchen themes, with the theme of Faust's heroism utterly transformed in conclusion, as the sound dies away. The third part of the Faust Symphony is devoted to the devil, Mephistopheles. Marked Allegro vivace, ironico, it transforms the thematic material of the earlier pictures, in a remarkable scherzo of great power, twisting the material associated with Faust, but allowing Gretchen to overcome the power of evil, when her theme appears in all it's simple purity, after the violence of a fugue, based on a version of the theme associated with the emotions of Faust. The complexities of the movement and the transformation of earlier thematic material defy succinct explanation in a picture that includes only one extraneous thematic element, the 'pride' theme from Liszt's Mal�diction for piano and orchestra.

Solo piano transcriptions of music from the operas of composer Giacomo Meyerbeer form the focus of Vol. 40 in the Naxos Complete Piano Music of Franz Liszt project. Sergio Gallo takes on the herculean task of playing the three-part Illustrations du Prophète, S414/R223, a work lasting nearly three-quarters of an hour, in addition to the 20-minute plus Illustrations de L’Africaine, S415/R224 and two briefer examples of Lisztian transcription fireworks embedded between these two knuckle busters. Mr. Gallo currently teaches at two US institutions, one being Georgia State University in Atlanta.

Franz Liszt wrote relatively little chamber music in his long and illustrious career. The DuoSonata is a tribute to Chopin, drawing on one of his famous Mazurkas as well as other Polishthemes. The gracefully charming Epithalamium was Liszt’s wedding present to the greatviolinist Eduard Reményi, for whom the gipsy style of Die drei Zigeuner was also intended. Thetwo lyrical Elegies commemorate the passing of members of Liszt’s circle, while the demandinglyvirtuoso variations of the Grand Duo concertant make no concessions to either player.

A central element in Liszt's life was his religious conviction. Harmonies poetiques et religieuses, one of his most famous religious works, was inspired by the poetry of Alphonse de Lamartine. Excerpts featured on Vol. 3 of this series were critically acclaimed. Vol. 53 presents the 1847 cycle in it's first version; one that follows the poetic works that inspired it more closely than the more frequently performed and recorded later version. Wojciech Waleczek is recognized internationally as a pianist with uncompromisingly high standards in performance. The artist, born in 1980, has been pursuing a robust concert career playing as soloist with symphonic orchestras, solo piano recitals and chamber music concerts in the 27 countries of Europe as well as in Kazachstan, Jordan, Tunesia, Palestina, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Guyana, Suriname, Canada and the USA.

Liszt Complete Piano Music, Vol. 18: Beethoven Symphonies No

LISZT: Organ Works, Vol. 2

Liszt: Années de pèlerinage, Suisse

Piano Music (Fantasies) - CHOPIN, F. / MOZART, W.A. / SCHUMA