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]

On October 22, 2011, the musical world will celebrate the 200th birthday of Franz Liszt. Garrick Ohlsson, one of the great piano virtuosi of the current era, contributes to the celebration with recordings of two of Liszt's towering achievements: the infrequently recorded Busoni transcription of Liszt's organ piece, 'Fantasie und Fuge über den choral Ad nos, ad Salutarem Undam", (To us, to the healing waters, come again) S. 259 and, the most beloved of all of Liszt's piano compositions, the Sonata in B Minor, S. 178. Those who revel in great pianism need look no further than this spectacular program.

Reviews of some of the original recordings that make up this set.

Fantasia on a Theme from Beethoven's Ruins of Athens, Grande Fantasie symphonique on Themes from Berlioz's Lelio
These are exuberant performances, overflowing with arch character and impish brio. Lortie doesn't merely phrase responsively; he deftly teases and articulates, so that even routine passage-work lifts into scintillant repartee, wittily met by Pehiavanian and The Hague Residentie Orchestra. For salient instance, this is the first time I've heard the young Liszt's hilariously slapdash, formally sprawling Lelio Fantasy actually . . . fantasticated. Leslie Howard's fine, sympathetic go at it with Karl Anton Rickenbacher and the Budapest Symphony (Hyperion CDA67401/2, 22:5), to take perhaps the most challenging comparison, seems literal and earnest after this nuance-rife take, couching coruscating roguery in feathery exquisiteness. Nor do Howard's broader tempos—timing in at 29:44 against Lortie's fleet 24:06—help to put this overlong jeu across. Chez Lortie and Pehiavanian, on the other hand, it is no longer a mere curiosity but a grandly empurpled Byronic narrative. Similar comparisons could be drawn piece by piece, but suffice it to say that in brilliant contrast to the workmanlike note-spinning that too often overtakes such ambitious intégrales, these artists approach music-making as a form of merrymaking, animating everything with irresistible verve. Sound is transparently immediate in a spacious aural frame. Enthusiastically recommended.

Adrian Corleonis, Fanfare [9/2000]

Piano Concertos
Volume 3 triumphantly concludes Louis Lortie's Chandos cycle of Liszt's works for piano and orchestra. Once again his mastery is as fluent as it is scintillating. Less heartstopping or intense than his finest rivals in the two concertos (Richter and Zimerman, and Argerich in No 1 only) his occasional distance lends enchantment, and his aristocratic brilliance brings a special distinction to pages inviting heaviness and theatricality. Listen to him unbending winsomely at 1.24" in the First Concerto or tossing aside the Allegro vivace with an almost winged bravura, and at 045" in the cadenza from the Second Concerto he shows a poetry and inwardness rarely achieved in such overt showpieces.

He does all that is humanly possible with the Third Concerto, which received its premiere in 1990, yet even he, alive to moments of authentic Lisztian rhetoric, can do little to erase one's sense of music in urgent need of revision. Likewise the Concerto Pathetique, judiciously arranged from a variety of sources, storms and rants with the sort of self-conscious drama that often came too easily to Liszt; never more so than in the allguns-blazing Allegro trionfante conclusion. But again, the performance is exemplary, the recordings of demonstration quality with a sensible rather than spectacular balance, and George Pehlivanian and The Hague Residentie Orchestra prove themselves admirable partners, even when they are hardly maestoso at the start of the First Concerto. Altogether this has been a most distinguished series.

-- Bryce Morrison, Gramophone [5/2002]

Hans-Joachim Lustig and the chamber choir I Vocalisti present a selection of Franz Liszt’s sacred vocal works that is well aimed to provide a comprehensive view of Liszt’s choral oeuvre. Opulent harmonic sequences countered by sparser passages frequently pervade these compositions, furnishing thee works with captivating sounds and sonorities. The compositions on this recording, all of which date from the second half of Liszt’s life, show the creative power of the religious searching which he experienced in 1853 as “an enduring feeling which controls me”.

Misha Dacic's concerts at the Miami Piano Festival in recent years made a sensational impact, as is evidenced on YouTube. They show that appearances do not deceive: he is as much of a wizard as he appears. A true artist, with limitless technique, he has the ability to conjure up unheard-of tonal effects from the piano, evoking the most amazing timbres and sonorities. Dacic's affinity with Liszt shows in the selection of music on this new recording, which is centered around three masterpieces: The epic B-A-C-H Variations, the seldom heard Grosses Konzertsolo and the Dante Sonata, in which Dacic incorporates elements from all three versions Liszt made (prepare for some surprises). As a suitable conclusion to this tribute, Dacic ends with the late masterpiece La Lugubre Gondola.

"...there's no denying that this performance has only infrequently been matched. Here's display with the brains and heart intact..." -- Raymond Tuttle, www.classical.net

"...the dazzling Liszt E flat Concerto he recorded in 1952 with Eugene Ormandy which [Arrau] told me was done virtually in one take..." -- Robert Layton, Gramophone [8/1991]

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Complete recordings of Liszt’s organ works, containing both original works and organ arrangements, performed by Hungarian organist István Ella, who received the Liszt Award in 1999.

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.

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Liszt: Piano Works

LISZT Années de pèlerinage , Book III: Les Jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este. Harmonies poétiques et religieuses: Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude; Funérailles. Nuages gris. 4 Little Piano Pieces : No. 2 in A?. Mephisto Waltz No. 1. BEETHOVEN-LISZT Adelaide. BACH-LISZT Fantasy and Fugue, S 463 • Garrick Ohlsson (pn) • BRIDGE 9409 (76:27)


A few months back, I was wowed by a blazing new Liszt recital from Valentina Lisitsa (see Fanfare 37:4). Here, on a solidly engineered disc featuring a pianist of an earlier generation, we get something substantially less dazzling, although in its own way even more impressive. Not that Ohlsson lacks technique: whether in the clarity of the voices in the Bach-Liszt Fugue or of the sprays of notes in Jeux d’eaux , Ohlsson strides through this often transcendentally difficult music with supreme and fully justified confidence. Still—and I mean this as a descriptive, rather than an evaluative, claim—there’s a maturity to the playing that we don’t hear in Lisitsa’s more exuberantly youthful and improvisatory performances.


For the most part (the closing Mephisto Waltz is the primary exception), Ohlsson has chosen from Liszt’s more sober works—and for the most part, his moderate tempos and (where appropriate) his bass-centered sonority give the details of the music a chance to sink in. More importantly, I think, he manages to probe beneath the surface of the music and (miraculously) to do so without sacrificing any of its immediate rhetoric. Thus, for instance, there’s no lack of virtuoso sparkle in Jeux d’eaux ; but Ohlsson is also unusually alert to its subtler emotional shadings, capturing the disarming splashes of nostalgic regret, in particular, as well as anyone. Similarly, while he can crush you with the climaxes of Funérailles , he’s unusually tender in the quieter moments, giving the work a nobility it doesn’t always have in the hands of more consistently extroverted pianists like Horowitz and Barere. In his appropriately enthusiastic review of Ohlsson’s previous Bridge Liszt recording (the Sonata and the Ad Nos Fantasy , 35:2), Patrick Rucker referred to Ohlsson’s “profound wisdom and almost excruciating beauty”—and the same overriding qualities certainly characterize this remarkable Funérailles , too.


Ohlsson also has an enviable sense of architecture. This emerges not only in his treatment of the individual works (there’s consistent impetus to Bénédiction , a work that can easily stall but that here provides an engrossing sense of journey), but also in his design of the program as a whole. I particularly enjoyed the way that Jeux d’eaux , which follows the joyful reading of the Bach-Liszt Fugue, serves as to prepare us for beauties of Bénédiction —as well as the way Nuages gris (played with remarkable finesse) and the second of the Four Little Piano Pieces provide a transition between the grimness of Funérailles and the dash of the Mephisto Waltz.


In sum, music-making that deserves to be savored. I hope that Bridge and Ohlsson have plans for continuing the series.


FANFARE: Peter J. Rabinowitz

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Liszt: Piano Works

Italian pianist Sebastian Di Bin provides us here with an intriguingly beautiful performance of Franz Liszt’s complete Transcendental Etudes. Sebastian Di Bin has dedicated this album to the memory of his brother, Francois, who passed away in March 2015. The composition of Liszt’s twelve Transcendental Etudes began when the 15-year-old composer composed a set of much less difficult exercises titled the Etude en douze exercices. These works were elaborated upon to become his Douze Grandes Etudes in 1837, then finally revised and republished in 1852 as the etudes performed here.

LISZT Années de pèlerinage • Louis Lortie (pn) • CHANDOS 10662 (2 CDs: 161:20)


There’s been no dearth of Années de pèlerinage recordings over the past year or so. Predictably, they range from the compelling (Libor Novacek, Années I and II, Landor 290 and 278; André Laplante, Années I, Analekta 29980), to the less good (Michael Korstick, Années I and II, cpo 777478 and 777585), to the deeply disappointing (Jerome Lowenthal, Années complete, Bridge 9307). The new, complete Années de pèlerinage of Louis Lortie, however, is in a class all its own. He approaches this summit of romanticism steeped in the music of Liszt (his recording of all the works for piano and orchestra, Chandos 10371, a collaboration during 1999–2000 with George Pehlivanian and the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague, is one of the finest). Lortie is a richly imaginative musician and a pianist of cultured refinement whose interpretations invariably tend toward understatement. These 26 pieces occupied Liszt for some 46 years and, along with the Sonata, are emblematic of his achievement as a piano composer. You get the sense that Lortie has long lived with the entire cycle, coming to know (and love) each of its components equally well. Add to this his unstinting identification with Liszt’s poetic message, and you have all the elements required for an Années de pèlerinage of tremendous freshness and originality.


Amid the Alpine landscapes of Book I, the Swiss Year, Lortie conjures uncluttered vistas and pristine atmosphere with unhurried tempos that give each phrase plenty of breathing room. The mini-triptych within the cycle, Au lac de Wallenstadt, Pastorale, and Au Bord d’une source, is painted in luminous colors, highlighted here and there with an exquisitely inflected tempo rubato . When the bucolic idyll is shattered by Orage, Lortie lets loose this implacable force of nature with phrasing that is so deftly shaped, pedaling so restrained, and dynamics so infinitely calibrated that each gust and cascading torrent seems audible. Vallée d’Obermann , the centerpiece of the Swiss Year, has been, at least in recent decades, the most frequently excerpted piece from the cycle. Divorced from context, and in spite of its formal interest, the Vallée has come to typify the 19th-century set piece, more creaking and tear-stained with each iteration. Lortie will have none of that. In a performance both masculine and heartfelt, we sense Obermann’s struggle toward spiritual rejuvenation through the majesty of nature. In place of a sob sister, we have a psychological drama, a genuine pilgrimage, at once gripping and imminently credible, that restores the dignity and stature of this wonderful piece.


Book II, the first of the two Italian Years, demonstrates Lortie’s success in both the scintillatingly intimate miniature and the implacable grandeur of the epic. The chaste refinement of color and line in Raphael’s Milan altarpiece are evoked in an ecstatic reading of Sposalizio. The three Sonnetti del Petrarca provide an interesting case of how the over-exposed can be imbued with new luster and meaning. Lortie achieves this with an unambiguous directness and simplicity of utterance. It is as though we hear Petrarch’s poems declaimed. The fioritura cadenzas emerge organically from the text, a piacere, each note beautifully articulated and perfectly suited to context. Moreover, the Sonnetti exemplify Lortie’s characteristic phrasing, always delineated by what can be maintained with human breath. The culmination of Book II, Après une lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata , known as the Dante Sonata , is the longest piece of the entire cycle and far away the most technically challenging. The stentorian introduction draws on an unusually varied dynamic palette to set the stage for the drama that will unfold. In the Presto agitato assai , evoking the whirlwinds of the Inferno, Lortie maintains extraordinarily extended crescendi and decresecendi , drawing on an infinitely calibrated dynamic control and acute rhythmical inflection. Later, in the transition between the second statement of the redemption motif and the return to the infernal maelstrom, he uses the strategy again with stunning results. Over the course of a minute and 20 seconds, and through 22 note-filled measures covering more than two pages in the score, Lortie builds one long, seamless crescendo of overwhelming magnitude. At the return of the tremolando redemption motif in the piano’s upper registers, it sounds like shimmering violins. The final apotheosis seems a blaze of light, though here, as throughout the piece, there is no hint of overplaying or empty bombast. It might be added that in the Dante Sonata, and in pieces like the Chappelle de Guillaume Tell from Book I and Book III’s Sunt lacrymae rerum, where Liszt exploits the piano’s lowest register, it sounds as though the bottom-octave strings of Lortie’s Fazioli grand are a quarter mile long.


But the most remarkable feature of this outstanding recording is the third Année . Its seven pieces represent a distillation of Liszt’s late style and inhabit psychological realms seldom traversed by other 19th-century composers. A number of pianists who recorded the first two books simply don’t venture into the third, and those who have seem confounded sooner or later. Lortie, on the other hand, has plumbed the depths of these strange yet deeply artistic creations, developing interpretations that are remarkable in sharpness of focus and clarity of expression. The best-known of the set, Les Jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este, combines the utmost delicacy and refinement with a disarming simplicity. Phrases are sculpted with unerring proportion and contour. The villa’s hundred fountains sparkle and splash in a virtuoso display of exquisitely understated pianistic finesse. Nor are the implications of Liszt’s Biblical reference to the waters of everlasting life neglected; a sense of ecstatic spirituality pervades the whole as though it were a sacrament in sound. Musically speaking, the Marche funèbre for the Emperor Maximillian, with its dark impasto and difficult transitions, is one of the most challenging pieces in the set. But what has remained a puzzle in many otherwise creditable performances of the third Année is compellingly deciphered by Lortie. Liszt’s idiosyncratic rhetoric is rendered comprehensible, including the problematic fortissimo trionfante in F?-Major that in so many other readings simply falls flat. Book III opens with Angelus , a prayer to the guardian angels, and closes with Sursum corda , “lift up your hearts,” a reference to the preface to the canon of the Mass. The blend of intuition, intellect, and philosophical insight Lortie brings to Sursum corda , with its prismatic harmonies undulating over the fixed anchor of a pedal point on E, creates a mighty culmination of the cycle.


On this recording, Venezia e Napoli , the supplement to Book II, is placed at the end of the recording, following the stylistically distant third Année . It is an interesting choice, which casts Venezia e Napoli as a sort of encore to the entire cycle, bringing us back to earth after the lofty metaphysics of Book III. Incidentally, the Tarantella is fierce. The recording was made during three days last November at Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk, and the Chandos engineers captured the sound of Lortie’s Fazioli grand brilliantly.


This Années de pèlerinage is unquestionably one of the finest releases thus far during the Liszt bicentennial. Time will tell, but it also may be the finest recording of the work to date. Not to be missed.


FANFARE: Patrick Rucker


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Louis Lortie's survey of the complete Années de Pèlerinage adds up to his finest Liszt playing on disc. The interpretations abound with new-found reserves of virtuosic flair and poetic sensitivity. You hear both of these qualities in the opening piece, La chapelle de Guillaume Tell, where Lortie varies the murmuring tremolo chords with subtle nuances yet doesn't hold back in the climactic Allegro vivace. You hear similar textural variety and heightened drama throughout Aux cypres de la Villa d'Este II.

In both Orage and the Dante sonata Lortie's superb technique enables him to articulate the long stretches of octaves in shapely legato lines that are executed with minimum pedal. This similarly applies to the ferocity and momentum Lortie generates in Vallée d'Obermann's peroration. Whereas pianists like Claudio Arrau and Muza Rubackyté take their time to savor Les jeux d'eau à la Villa d'Este's jet-spray arpeggiated figures, Lortie's comparable accuracy and finesse reveals them in a lighter, more playful manifestation. Lortie's well-judged tempo relationships create unity and momentum in Venezia e Napoli's Tarantella, but I prefer Marc-André Hamelin's almost offhanded panache and astounding repeated-note technique. While Chandos' slightly diffuse and distant sonics don't match Rubackyté's Lyrinx release for detail and warmth, they do reflect Lortie's robust sonority as one might experience it in a small concert hall. Strongly recommended.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

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Franz Liszt was 67 when he composed his Via Crucis, yet it did not receive it's first performance until 1929, 43 years after the composer's death. This work of his mature years is in 15 sections, retracing the Stations of the Cross that mark the stages of Christ's Passion, from being condemned to death to being laid in the tomb. Combining Gregorian chant, the Lutheran liturgy and the Latin, German and Aramaic languages, the Via Crucis shows real formal originality. A devout believer, Liszt gives us here his most important sacred work. He composed several versions: for mixed choir, soloists and organ (with the organ part optionally transcribed for piano), for piano solo, organ solo, and two pianos. After an album devoted to Janacek, the Collegium Vocale founded by Philippe Herreweghe is once again conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw in this new Alpha recording.

Hungarian composer and virtuoso Franz Liszt gained renown across Europe in the early 19th century for his unmatched piano skills. By 1940 he was considered by many critics to be the greatest pianist of all time. Liszt was also a diverse composer, and made many contributions to the musical world, most notably the invention of the symphonic poem. He was also one of the most significant representatives of the New German School. The lieder of Franz Liszt are some of his most beloved works. On this recording, American tenor Daniel Weeks performs these compositions with magnificent insight. Pianist Naomi Oliphant beautifully accompanies.

Liszt: Sonata in B minor; Tre Sonetti del Petrarca; Légende

Jean Doyen is perhaps the archetypal French pianist. Taught by Louis Diemer and Marguerite Long, he went on to become the second longest serving piano professor in the Paris Conservatoire’s history and largely dedicated his career to his homeland. In addition, his repertoire centered on the French classics, with Chopin also taking pride of place. His early recordings reveal a spectacular technique coupled with generous musicality and expression – it’s no wonder he was chosen for this premiere recording of Ravel’s ‘Gaspard de la nuit’. His Chopin Op 2 Variations and the complete Book 1 of Debussy’s Images are also recording firsts, but for sheer virtuoso exhilaration, his rare Sonabel album of Chabrier’s Espana is hard to beat. Surprisingly, none of these marvelous performances have previously been reissued.

Franz Liszt was not necessarily known for the composition of sacred music. Piano pieces are what etched his name into history. The piano pieces included on this release, however, are works that were inspired by the Divine. A deeply religious man, particularly in his older age, Liszt composed a great deal of “religious” piano music, including his Ave Maria, Angelus, Miserere, Legendes, Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude, and many more. Performing these works is Italian pianist Irene Russo, who is making her Brilliant Classics debut with this two-disc release. The album also includes extensive liner notes and an artist biography.

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