Howard, catching the authentic tinge of hysteria, mounts swiftly upwards in an ecstasy that burns away awareness of mere notes.
Tchaikovsky only wrote one "official" piano sonata, the Grande Sonate in G major, Op. 37, but when he was a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, he began an Allegro in F minor and completed a full sonata in C sharp minor, published posthumously as Op. 80. Leslie Howard, in the midst of his enormous Franz Liszt project, recorded all three works for Hyperion. Howard fleshed out the Allegro into a complete sonata allegro movement. The result is a movement that is solid, structurally and musically, much meatier than the Tchaikovsky character pieces that are more often heard, but still an immature work for the composer.
Whilst Liszt’s piano music derived from music for plays is a much smaller body of work than his catalogue of operatic pieces, the approach in his methods of composition, elaboration and transcription remains broadly the same. As far as present Liszt scholarship permits one ever to be categorical, this recording contains all of Liszt’s works in this genre.
Niu Niu is the nickname of Chinese pianist Zhang Shengliang, a prodigy who began studying music at age 3. He made his first public appearance at 6, playing a Mozart sonata and a Chopin etude. After moving to Shanghai at 8, he was invited to attend the Shanghai Conservatory, where he became the youngest student ever enrolled there. While his first teacher was his father, Niu Niu became a student of Hung-Kuan Chen at the New England Conservatory in Boston. In 2006, he made a significant career move by performing at Wigmore Hall, and the following year he played Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 1 in London, under the direction of Leslie Howard. In 2007, at age 9, he signed a contract with EMI, and recorded his debut album, Niu Niu plays Mozart, which was released in 2008. After touring China and Japan, Niu Niu released a recording of Chopin's etudes, and in 2010, he won the Prix Montblanc for most talented young artist. In 2012, he recorded an album of Liszt transcriptions for EMI.
The Transcendental Études (French: Études d'exécution transcendante), S.139, are a set of twelve compositions for piano by Franz Liszt. They were published in 1852 as a revision of an 1837 set (which had not borne the title "d'exécution transcendante"), which in turn were – for the most part – an elaboration of a set of studies written in 1826.
This is as complete a representation as humanly possible of all the music scored for violin and piano that Franz Liszt composed, arranged, or had some creative hand in. The 17 works span Liszt's entire career, from the young composer's elegant Zwei Walzer to his experimental late period (the two Elegies and the stark, foreboding La lugubre gondola).