Franz Liszt

Liszt's position as a composer for the Church has always been controversial. The paradox that the most modern composer of the age, the supporter of the revolutionary ideals of 1789, 1830 and 1848, ended up writing music for an institution regarded as a bastion of everything conservative and reactionary, has led to a questioning of Liszt's motives. With the rapidly advancing secularization of culture, Liszt was seen as disillusioned, and his decision to take minor orders in 1865 was considered a startling about-turn for one so worldly. In fact, Liszt wrote sacred music with reform in mind. The dismal state of church music in the first half of the nineteenth century, when it was common to hear opera cabalettas sung to liturgical words, encouraged him to go back to plainsong and the music of Palestrina for inspiration. Composed in 1865, the year he took minor orders, the Missa Choralis embodies these twin elements. The influence of plainsong pervades the thematic material, albeit refocused through Liszt's boldly original and expressively chromatic harmonic language.

This collection includes The Three Gypsies. Thomas Albertus Irnberger has earned an outstanding reputation as a soloist, as well as receiving excellent review for his chamber music performances.

For while it would be idle to pretend that this 70-year-old virtuoso, struck down at the height of his career with psoriatic arthritis, still commands the velocity and reflex of his earlier years, his later Chopin and Liszt are a tribute to a devotion and commitment gloriously enriched by experience. The First Impromptu is piquantly voiced and phrased while the C sharp minor Etude, Op. 25 No. 7, could hardly be more hauntingly confided, more ‘blue’ or inturned. How you miss the repeat in the C sharp minor Mazurka, Op. 50 No. 3 (not Op. 15, as the jewel-case claims), given such cloudy introspection and if there are moments when you recall how Rubinstein – forever Chopin’s most aristocratic spokesman – can convey a world of feeling in a scarcely perceptible gesture, Janis’s brooding intensity represents a wholly personal, only occasionally overbearing, alternative; an entirely different point of view. Time and again he tells us that there are higher goods than surface polish or slickness and in the valedictory F minor Mazurka, Op. 68 No. 4 he conveys a dark night of the soul indeed, an emotion almost too desolating for public utterance… Janis is no less remarkable in Liszt, whether in the brief but intriguing Sans mesure (a first performance and recording), in a Sonetto 104 del Petrarca as tear-laden as any on record and in a final Liebestod of an exhausting ardour and focus.

"Liszt is a composer who has been closely associated with Mr. Wild throughout his long career. In New York City in 1961, he gave a monumental recital celebrating the 150th anniversary of Liszt's birth. In 1986, honoring the 100th year of Liszt's death, he gave three recitals entitled "Liszt The Poet", "Liszt The Transcriber" and "Liszt The Virtuoso", in NY's Carnegie Hall. Championing composers such as Liszt long before they were fashionable, is part of the foundation on which Mr. Wild has built his long and successful career."

From the notes: "Liszt is a composer who has been closely associated with Mr. Wild throughout his long career. In New York City in 1961, he gave a monumental recital celebrating the 150th anniversary of Liszt's birth. In 1986, honoring the 100th year of Liszt's death, he gave three recitals entitled "Liszt The Poet", "Liszt The Transcriber" and "Liszt The Virtuoso", in NY's Carnegie Hall. Championing composers such as Liszt long before they were fashionable, is part of the foundation on which Mr. Wild has built his long and successful career."