Liszt

Philips 50 is a unique collection of classic recordings celebrating many of the finest performances from one of the world's great music catalogues.
Philips Classics' distinguished legacy stretches from the early 1950s to the present day and features many of the finest artists of our time. This new series captures their inspired musicianship and incomparable artistry with greater fidelity than ever before. The famous Philips sound has been further enhanced by the use of the latest 96kHz, 24-bit technology to enable new generations to appreciate once more these critically acclaimed, award-winning recordings.
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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."

World-renowned pianist Lang Lang continues his celebration of composer Franz Liszt’s 200th Birthday with Liszt Now. The new video features Live at The Roundhouse, a 60-minute live concert from the 2011 iTunes Festival in London and The Art of Being a Virtuoso, a 71-minute documentary following Lang Lang’s global celebrations of Franz Liszt’s anniversary. Also included is A Visual Journey with Franz Liszt, 55 minutes of bonus content featuring video projections used at the Roundhouse concert set to select studio recordings from Lang Lang’s latest album, Liszt: My Piano Hero.

This year, April is Hamelin month at Hyperion; not content with giving us another blockbuster addition to the Romantic Piano Concerto series, the pianist gives us his contribution to the Liszt bicentenary. The Liszt Sonata is undoubtedly one of the peaks of the repertoire, and recordings are suitably copious, but when an artist of Hamelin’s virtuoso pedigree wishes to tackle it no excuse need be made for an additional version. The recital opens with a lesser-known masterwork, the Fantasy and Fugue on B-A-C-H, and for light relief there is Liszt’s scintillating supplement to his Italian Année de Pèlerinage, the three pieces of Venezia e Napoli, but perhaps the emotional core of the recital is Liszt’s intensely spiritual Bénédiction du Dieu dans la solitude.

Leslie Howard's recordings of Liszt s complete piano music, on 99 CDs, is one of the monumental achievements in the history of recorded music. Remarkable as much for its musicological research and scholarly rigour as for Howard's Herculean piano playing, this survey remains invaluable to serious lovers of Liszt. Every known note of Liszt's piano music has been recorded and is included here: Leslie Howard's 57 original volumes plus the further 3 supplements. GUINNESS WORLD RECORD for the world s largest recording series by a solo artist.