Michael Kaykov

American pianist and scholar Michael Kaykov plays an array of Liszt's most powerful piano pieces, including the Sonata in B minor, as well as two of Beethoven's 'Sechs geistliche Lieder von Gellert' in transcriptions by Liszt, on whom Beethoven once bestowed a 'kiss of consecration'. Of these Beethoven songs we hear Liszt's arrangements of the noble, imposing 'Gottes Macht und Vorsehung' ('God's Might and Providence'), and the sombre 'Busslied' or 'Song of Penitence' a perfect fusion of Beethoven's original material with Liszt's enriched pianism.

American pianist and academic Michael Kaykov follows his first Odradek release, Liszt: Unrivalled, with Unrivalled Volume 2, an album devoted to the composer's extraordinary late piano works.