Momentary sketches, moments of eternity: The works that pianist Minsoo Hong has selected for his new GENUIN CD make up a compelling and diverse program and present a portrait of the composers on this recording. The young, upcoming musician, who has already won various international prizes – including the Busoni Piano Competition and the Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Utrecht – has recorded Franz Liszt's "Legends", Karol Szymanowski's "Masks" and Robert Schumann's "Carnaval". On this album, he not only demonstrates his highly virtuosic pianistic skills but also offers the listener a poetic reflection on identity and facade, art and that which defines our lives!

In this third volume of Liszt's Schubert song transcriptions, which includes some rare versions, the composer’s prodigious capacity for colouration, shifting textures and use of myriad pianistic devices brings refinement and beauty to each song. Follows Volume 1 (8.553062, Volume 5 in the Complete Liszt edition) and Volume 2 (8.554729, Volume 17 in the Complete Liszt edition) of the Schubert Song Transcriptions series. Goran Filipec also contributed to Volumes 42 (8.573458), 49 (8.573705) and 55 (8.573794) of the Liszt Complete Piano Music series.

A stunning debut by 24 years old Chinese pianist Yang Yang Cai. For her first disc she carefully selected six very diversified works by Liszt, in order to convey all her pianistic qualities: prowess and virtuosity, but also philosophical insight and colouristic finesse. Her craftsmanship, musicality and fine taste are perfectly in balance.

For Anastassiya Dranchuk's debut album 'Rites de Passage', the choice of pieces by Tchaikovsky, Say, Schubert and Liszt was no coincidence. The pieces had and have special emotional significance in Anastasiya's life. For her, the individual compositions represent rites of passage (rites de passage, a concept from ethnology): they tell of the transition from childhood to adulthood, peace to war, birth to death … In general, it is an emotionally and tonally very colourful, technically demanding programme that deals with the most diverse dualities.

“And all, all was well again! / […] Love and pain / and world and dream!” So ends the fourth of Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, settings of texts the composer had partly taken from the collection “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” (the lad’s magic horn), recompiling and extending them. Inspired by Franz Schubert’s Wilhelm Müller song cycles, the brief cycle depicts the sorrowful tale of a lover who as a “journeyman” is no less than the Romantic “wanderer”. As with Schubert, Mahler’s protagonist transcends his crisis, the conclusion pointing “in the sense of an eternity that is to be expected” (Christian Gerhaher) to his redemption. But first he passes through various relay-stations that are part dreamlike vision, part earthbound reality. Konstantin Ingenpaß´debut album with works by Wolf, Liszt, Ullmann and Mahler in chamber-musical arrangements - under the headline: World and Dream.

Being a concert pianist in the 21st century is a strange profession. Going out on another big stage I often feel like this crazy guy from the next street, who’s going around, wide-eyed, yelling about love and death, gods and devils, and the inevitable end of it all, being all alone and ridiculous. But for many years this has actually been the most interesting challenge of it for me – to make the listener realize that behind all the big romantic gestures and the language that may seem a little too dramatic in the era of internet messaging there is a story that is still totally about you and me. For my first record, I’m going through the staples of a romantic piano repertoire that played a huge role on different stages of my life as a pianist, looking at the little story that appears between them. The two main pieces in the tracklist – Schumann’s Humoreske and Schubert’s Wanderer-Fantasy – always fascinated me with the way in which they balance the ironic and the serious in a brilliant and poetic way, so that one cannot exist without the other. Those pieces set the tone for the whole project which is basically a self-portrait of a guy who is presumptuous enough to be a classical pianist in 2022. (Sergei Redkin)

Liszt was a constant musical seeker and researcher, and many formal as well as harmonic innovations in the Romantic period can be traced back to him. The three main works of his organ compositions contributed significantly to a re-evaluation of organ music in the 19th century. Liszt wrestled with its possible manifestation, and also arranged numerous works from his own pen and those of other composers for the organ, which for him represented the logical link between piano and orchestra. The work-in-progress nature of his organ music is taken up by organist Anna-Victoria Baltrusch with this album, combining Liszt's three major organ works with her own highly virtuosic adaptation of his Dance of Death (Danse macabre) - originally for piano and orchestra, two pianos or piano alone.

A native of Ukraine, pianist Sophia Agranovich continues her superb series of recordings for Centaur Records. Internationally acclaimed soloist, chamber musician, recording artist and educator, Sophia Agranovich is “a bold, daring pianist in the tradition of the Golden Age Romantics…A tigress of the keyboard” – Fanfare. Her performances are captivating audiences by the “orison of uncommon beauty” – Audiophile, “interpretation that dares to be different”, “magnificent shading and superior musicianship” – American Record Guide. A Steinway Artist, Ms. Agranovich has performed in USA, Europe, Israel, and Canada. Recently she played solo recitals at the Pennautier Festival and Juan-les-Pins in France and was invited to China and Brazil. A six-time Grammy® balloted artist, Sophia Agranovich has released ten solo albums from 2010 through 2022, including seven on Centaur label.

Includes work(s) by Franz Liszt.

Though Hungarian by birth, and having studied at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, Louis Kentner, like so many others of Jewish origin, immigrated to London in the mid 1930s, aware that central Europe was not the best place to be at that time for someone of his race. He was to remain in London for the rest of his life, becoming very much part of British musical life both as pianist and, later, as teacher.

His somewhat sensational London debut took place in the Aeolian Hall in October 1936 where he gave an all Liszt recital. As a direct result he was signed up by HMV and over the next fifteen years, in addition to much other repertoire, he made a large number of Liszt recordings which featured not only the often recorded etudes and Hungarian Rhapsodies but also premiere recordings of many of Liszt's more important, but then less well known, larger works. Our first APR title (APR5514) featured such unusual works as the Scherzo & March, the Berceuse and the first Polonaise; on the current disc, in addition to a number of the well known aforementioned etudes, we find a group of late pieces, including the bizarre Czárdás Macabre, which was only published in the year of its recording, and the Meyerbeer/Liszt 'Les Patineurs' scherzo. This later piece is one of Liszt's most brilliant operatic transcriptions, but is strangely little known. It is perhaps Kentner's most stunning recording and a fitting way to end this fascinating recital.

- APR Recordings

Classical Music

Classical Music

Leonardo Pierdomenico was a finalist at the Van Cliburn International Competition held in May 2017 in Fort Worth, Texas. Six months later he made this, his debut studio album, which is sure to be listened to eagerly by pianophiles across the world. Pierdomenico played the Second Concerto of Liszt in the Van Cliburn competition final, and his performance won him the Raymond E. Buck Jury Discretionary Award; his semifinal performance of Chopin’s First Ballade was included on the internationally released album of highlights from the competition. Born in Pescara, he has performed across Italy having graduated from his local conservatoire, as well as giving recitals in major venues in Berlin and Brussels. Liszt is a natural choice for his debut recital. However, Pierdomenico has largely chosen the path less well trodden in his selection from Liszt’s vast oeuvre. He has concentrated on the brooding, melancholic and introverted sides of the composer’s multifaceted personality. The Csardas macabre is one of Liszt’s most radical conceptions, with sequences that push at the boundaries of tonality. The two are Legendes based on the miracles of two of the composer’s namesake Saints, St. Francis of Assisi, who allegedly preached a sermon to an attentive flock of birds, and St. Francis of Paola who, legend has it, crossed the Strait of Messina fashioning a vessel from his cloak and staff after a ferryman refused him passage. As well as the justly ubiquitous Second Ballade, Pierdomenico gives a rare outing to the ‘crusader’s song’ of the First; another rarity is the single-movement Scherzo und Marsch which finds the composer in heroic vein, replete with demanding fugato sections and rapier-like arpeggios.

-----

REVIEW:

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

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

This is a great live recital performed by Antonio Pompa-Baldi. Pompa Baldi has more piano recordings for Centaur than any other pianist. This is an exceptional recital.