V1: SCHUMANN

WORKS FOR CLARINET & PIANO

SONATAS FOR 2 PIANOS

The maverick pianist Cyprien Katsaris has unleashed a torrent of recordings on his Piano 21 label and the first volume in his Liszt series is no different from the others in presenting archive performances alongside much more recent fare.
 
There are thus a lot of different locations and dates, which are noted in gruesome detail in the head note.
 
The first eight tracks on CD1, the Hungarian Rhapsodies, the two Elegies and Liebesträume and the Klavierstücke No.2 are all very recent, dating from 2011, as is Sospiri. The Rhapsodies are galvanizing, intrepid, outsize, brilliantly engaging and sometimes very textually suspect. Whether these emendations persuade one that the music is being caricatured is a decision for you. Maybe the octave cadential passage in No.2 - he plays four of the twelve, by the way - is a clincher for the nay-sayer; but, then, maybe not. This is edge of the seat playing, and the highly personalised emendations and interpolations part of his posthumous relationship with Liszt. With the other works he has less need to drape his own colours, rather to rely on acute phrasing and warmth of tone. That said, though, Liebesträume is quite direct. The third of the Klavierstücke is played with touching simplicity. The first four Klavierstücke were recorded live in June 1975, at Fête Romantiques de Nohant and are private recordings. The first disc ends with the Second Piano Concerto played by the German Symphony Orchestra, Berlin directed by Arild Remmereit at the Philharmonie in Berlin in 2007. This is a Katsaris speciality, with dramatic accelerandi, vast reserves of energy and excitement, and a devil take the hindmost feel throughout. Remarkable.
 
The second disc presents the darker side of Liszt’s imagination with a sequence of lugubrious, and death-fixated pieces. Again, textual fidelity is certainly not always a given but the drum roll evocations in the Trauer-Vorspiel und Trauermarsch are viscerally arresting, Unstern! is profoundly sepulchral whilst heroic pianism infuses RW - Venezia . It would be easy, and tempting, to cite Horowitz as a stylistic model for the live 1974 performance, given somewhere in France, of the Sonata in B minor. It gives an indication of the kind of passion that emanates from Katsaris’s performance, but the correspondence is only partial. The drama here is intense, even coruscating, and it’s a performance that should be heard by all Lisztians, even if they part company from it.
 
Recording quality varies from location to location, from 1974 (basic, decent) to 2011 (excellent) and points in-between.
 
These two discs are clearly not without their contentious textual moments. Some will reject the performances on those grounds alone. Katsaris is never frivolous, though he is flamboyant, and he is always passionate, declamatory, and exciting. It’s hard to reject so compelling a performer.
 
-- Jonathan Woolf , MusicWeb International

SCHUMANN Piano Concerto 1. Albumblätter 2. Variations on a Theme by Clara Wieck 3 • Cyprien Katsaris (pn); Cristian Mandeal, cond; Japan PO • PIANO 21 036-A (64:06) Live: 1 Tokyo 10/21/94, 2 Munich, 11/9/80, 3 Liège 9/9/77


About 10 years ago noted pianist Cyprien Katsaris decided to start his own recording label—as so many others have done, to the betterment of the industry—and this release, the second dedicated to the music of Schumann, is the 16th in his archival series. These are some rather rare and unique recordings that I am sure would never have surfaced otherwise, all live recordings done in very serviceable sound—even better than that actually, though the Clara Wieck variations surprised me with their AAD designation, something I have not seen in a while (a 1977 recording).


Katsaris, being the pro that he is, of course has a sizeable repertoire, and a significant one. I suppose the main item here is the Piano Concerto, given at a concert in Japan in 1994. It contains nothing quirky or illuminating, just a down-to-earth reading of beauty and excitement, but nothing not found on the best recordings available, and with sound that is a little blurred in places, the strings especially lacking the requisite clarity in some of the softer passages.


The Variations on a Theme by Clara Wieck, excised from the Concert without Orchestra, which was also essentially a publisher’s decision to offer the Sonata in F Minor, op. 14, sans the two scherzos, is often performed alone as it is here, and is given a very fine rendering. But the best thing on this disc in my opinion is the disparate and character-laden collection of pieces called the Albumblätter , 20 small pieces that Schuman wrote between 1832 and 1845, a sort of compositional grab bag of things that could not find another home. Though there is no associated “theme” in this work, each miniature displays the composer’s mastery of the form, exquisitely nuanced and highly colorful according to the given title. The work deserves wider concert play, and at about 26 minutes is a significant effort despite the patch-quilt origins. Katsaris is quite the stylist here, giving us a performance that to my ears is the equal of any I have heard. I understand the duplication problem if you don’t want to deal with yet another A Minor, but this might be the best Albumblätter currently available—your call.


FANFARE: Steven E. Ritter

V3: PIANO RARITIES TRANSCRIPTI

V2: KATSARIS ARCHIVES

V20: KATSARIS ARCHIVES

Volume 4 recorded live in the Grosser Saal of the Mozarteum in Salzburg by Cyprien Katsaris with the Salzburger Kammerphilharmonie conducted by Yoon K. Lee is part of the complete Mozart piano concertos performed in Salzburg and Vienna. It features the celebrated Concerto no. 21, K. 467 and the flamboyant no. 16, K. 451. In this recording, Katsaris has included his own cadenzas, compositions in themselves, for the first and third movements of Concerto no. 21: Cadenzas “A” affecting something close to Mozartian style and Cadenzas “B” following a freer pattern.

This double CD features both studio and concert recordings made in the 70s. This is the inaugural volume of the “Cyprien Katsaris Archives”, including among other 19th and 20th century masterpieces, two landmark concertos: Rachmaninov’s Third and Tchaikovsky’s First. These were recorded respectively with the Leipzig Grosses Rundfunkorchester conducted by Horst Neumann and the Orchestre Radio-Symphonique de Lille under Maurice Suzan. Cyprien Katsaris gives expression to his clear affinity with the Slav soul in three of Rachmaninov’s Preludes, a Scriabin Etude and Tchaikovsky’s Song of Autumn. Revel in the scathing humour of Rodion Shchedrine’s Humoresque and the soaring grace of Prokofiev’s Prelude op. 12, no. 7 before abandoning yourself to the giddy whirlwind of Cziffra’s unbelievable transcription of The Flight of the Bumble Bee by Rimsky-Korsakov. Here, as again in the Toccata op. 11 and Precipitato of Prokofiev’s 7th Sonata and the finale to Rachmaninov’s 3rd Piano Concerto, Cyprien Katsaris’ phenomenal virtuosity finds its highest expression. This issue displays the at once personal and audacious nature of his playing, the hallmark of a unique performer. Sometimes – as consistently throughput his career – taking politically incorrect decisions, Cyprien Katsaris remains as exciting a musician as ever.

CONCERTO FOR PIANO

TRANSKRIPTIONEN

V7: PIANO CONCERTOS

V1: LATIN-AMERICAN RECITAL MEX

111 is the number of popular pieces that Cyprien Katsaris has assembled in the service of his one thousand and one fingers to lead us on a tour of the world illumined by his manual pyrotechnics. Over six hours of music embracing every age and every genre: the originality of this feast is that it is not confined to classical orthodoxy but rather opens windows on to territory that the ayatollahs of strict classicism would prefer to anathematise. Thus, to a Bach Prelude will respond a dance from West Side Story or an aria from Carmen! Why? Because music belongs to everyone, because music is made for everyone, because music should be able to bring pleasure to everyone.

These five CDs invite us to discover the various facets of the talents of Cyprien Katsaris: he is, of course, a virtuoso exponent of dexterity (just listen to The Flight of the Bumble Bee by Rimsky-Korsakov, supercharged by Cziffra. The Fire Dance by Manuel de Falla or the Finale of Rachmaninov’s Third Concerto); he is also a virtuoso exponent of repertoire (ranging from Bach, the “Master”, with whom he begins, of course, to Chopin, Liszt, Mozart, but also Bernstein, Gottschalk and Mancini and his Pink Panther, or indeed from a waltz by Strauss to a tango by Piazzola or a Hungarian Dance by Brahms!) Moreover, he is a virtuoso exponent of style (from the tenderness of a Schumann Träumerei to the fireworks of the Khachaturian Sabre Dance; from the limpidity of Debussy’s Clair de Lune to the flamboyance of a Rachmaninov Prelude; from the sound of the guitar that he conjures up for Tárrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra to the pure singing of the violin in the Méditation from Thaïs by Massenet or the choral mightiness of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana.)

With this breathtaking musical garden of delights, one could be forgiven for thinking that Cyprien Katsaris’ intent was to produce a beguiling digest of all these pianistic peaks he has scaled, all the flashes that have marked his success, all the byways he has explored and vaulted in expressing his poetic personality.

Partial Track Listing
W.A. MOZART: Rondo all Turca • Concerto No. 21 “Elvira Madigan” • Butterbrot • BEETHOVEN: Für Elise • Ode to Joy • Moonlight Sonata • ORFF: Carmina Burana • GOUNOD: Ave Maria • MANCINI: The Pink Panter • LISZT: Love Dream • Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 • BERNSTEIN: West Side Story • CHOPIN: Polonaise Héroïque • Revolutionary Etude • J.S. BACH: Badinerie • Toccata and Fugue • Goldberg Aria • DEBUSSY: Clair de Lune • SCHUMANN: Träumerei • RODRIGO: Concierto de Aranjuez • ELGAR: Pomp and Circumstance • SCHUBERT: Ave Maria • Moment Musical No. 3 • SHOSTAKOVICH: Waltz No. 2 • KHACHATURIAN: Sabre March • Spring Song • TCHAIKOVSKY: Flower Waltz • HANDEL: Hallelujah • Sarabande • PIAZZOLA: La Misma Pena • RACHMANINOV: Concerto No. 3 • ADDINSELL: Warsaw Concerto • ALBINONI: Adagio • PACHELBEL: Canon • RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: The Flight of the Bumble Bee, arr. Cziffra • GERSHWIN: Liza • STRAUSS II: Tales from the Vienna Woods • HILL: Happy Birthday to you • GRUBER: Silent Night • MASSENET: Méditation (Thaïs) • DELIBES: Coppélia • MARCELLO: Adagio • SAINT-SAËNS: The Swan • VIVALDI: The Four Seasons • WEILL: Die Dreigroschenoper • WAGNER: Walkürenritt