Liszt Berman

Internationally renowned soloist Lucille Chung performs a programme of virtuosic and beguiling works by Franz Liszt. One of the first female students of the iconic Russian pianist Lazar Berman at the Accademia Pianistica in Imola, Italy, Chung has won numerous awards for her performances of Liszt’s music, including the B minor Sonata that features on this programme – although Lucille describes in her introduction to the programme how Berman “… for a time doubted that a diminutive lady with hands spanning a 9th (although I can now stretch a 10th on a good day) would ever succeed in playing Liszt well … Mr Berman came around.”

This 10 CD set offers 11 live recitals given by 10 famous pianists in Switzerland from 1953 to 1993. Each pianist is credited by a single CD. Only Backhaus CD contains fragments from two different programs (1953 and 1960), all the other pianists are represented by a single program.

In 1976, when the cold war was cold indeed, wrote the New York Times, Lazar Berman appeared virtually unannounced from behind the Iron Curtain and provided the West with an exotic glimpse of a secretive Soviet musical life. On his first United States tour, Mr. Berman made an overwhelming impression as a performer who did more than just overcome technical problems; he seemed to crush them into insignificance. Bermans recordings, though relatively few in number, confirmed that impression.

Liszt brought new meaning to the term “virtuoso.” His works for piano are some of the most difficult ever written. This album presents not only the dazzling technical side of Liszt but also his beautiful piano melodies including Liebestraum, La Campanella and Un Sospiro, played by some of the greatest pianists including Daniil Trifonov, Martha Argerich, Vladimir Horowitz and Daniel Barenboim.

"You can freely paraphrase Louis XIV and say: I am the orchestra! I am the cho¬rus! I am also the conductor!” With these words Hector Berlioz paid homage to a man who was indeed all of these things put together: Franz Liszt.
This eulogy, however, was not only for Liszt, the man; it was also for his instrument and the compositions he wrote for it, an instrument which, also in part thanks to Liszt, became the dominant instrument of bourgeois musical culture in the 19th century: the piano. The reason for this dominance? Liszt himself gave the answer by ascribing to the piano and to the ten fingers of the pianist the ability to reproduce the sonorities and harmonies of an entire orchestra. The improvements made to the piano at that time (around 1825), e.g. the new Erard repetition action and the exponsion of the instrument's range to seven octaves, support these claims.

This is playing in the grand manner… Ozawa and the orchestra are behind the soloist in all this and the deciso element is fully realized. But don't let me imply a lack of finesse; not only do lyrical sections sing with subtlety, the big passages also are shapely… In the gorgeously grisly Totentanz, both music and playing should make your hair stand on end. - C.H.; Gramophone

Arrau still dominates modern recordings - Jed Distler