Liszt

Tzimon Barto is recognised as one of the foremost American pianists of his generation. His new double-CD for Ondine features Paganini variations by three composers, Liszt, Brahms and Lutoslawski, and the popular Paganini Rhapsody Rachmaninov, on which Christoph Eschenbach conducts the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra. The Schlewig-Holstein Festival Orchestra was founded by Leonard Bernstein in 1987. This recording is Tzimon Barto’s 5th Ondine release.

When Franz Liszt took over the court orchestra in Weimar in 1848, the memory of Goethe, who had previously directed the court theatre, was still venerated. Liszt was therefore Goethe's direct heir at Weimar - albeit as a musician. With his Faust Symphony, which was premiered on the same day as the inauguration of the Goethe and Schiller monument in front of the theatre, psychology made its way into music; Liszt's ambition was the "renewal of music through its more intimate connection with poetry". His Faust Symphony demonstrates the power of sound, of tone painting, to evoke a fantastical, epic and psychological world.

This is the fourth volume of the BBC Phiharmonic’s five-disc cycle of Liszt’s Symphonic Poems, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. This monumental survey continues to go from strength to strength through Noseda’s passionate conducting and innate Italian romanticism and has made possible a reappraisal of these unjustly neglected works. The Telegraph wrote, “…it is hard to imagine them ever sounding better than here. This is music-making full of rich colouring, refined shaping of melodic line and emotional power.”

Firma Melodiya presents a recording of two-piano transcriptions by Franz Liszt and Camille Saint-Saëns performed by the piano duet of Ludmila Berlinskaya and Arthur Ancelle. Representatives of famous artistic dynasties and alumni of different music performing traditions, they began to jointly perform in 2011 and have won the listeners’ hearts in Russia, France and Switzerland.