Restless Genius

Dejan Lazic; on this, his first album for ONYX, pays tribute to a composer and his legacy as a piano virtuoso, organist, improviser, arranger, conductor, teacher, author, philanthropist and traveller. Liszt lived life to the full, and this recital captures that love of life, his genius as a pianist and composer, a traveller with a restless and curious mind. Liszt’s respect for the music of other composers is to be found in his arrangements for piano of orchestral, operatic and other vocal works. From Wagner’s operas to Schubert Lieder via Beethoven Symphonies, his deep love for the music is apparent and such arrangements gave this music a wider audience in both the salons and domestic settings that lives on today.

Firma Melodiya presents recordings of the outstanding St. Petersburg pianist Grigory Sokolov. This musicians performance is notable for particular concentration and complete immersion in the musical element. His manner amazes with perfection of technique in the absence of external effects of any kind. Grigory Sokolov is one of the few contemporary pianists who always include intellectual piano masterpieces in their programmes, which requires a special mood from both the performer and the audience Beethovens sonatas of the latter period, J.S. Bachs The Art of Fugue, Brahmss last pieces.

Dussek led a restless life, travelling Europe as a keyboard virtuoso and settling in several European capitals, notably Paris and London, where he became a fashionable pianist and teacher. His close connection to piano manufacturer Broadwood resulted in important innovations, notably the extension of the keyboard to 6 octaves. Dussek’s style is rich, harmonically expressive and pianistically challenging, Classicism on the brink of Early Romanticism. Carl Friedrich Cramer writes in the “Magazin der Musik” in 1783: "These sonatas are the only ones of their kind. Rich in new thoughts and traces of the author's great musical genius. Very brilliant, and appropriate to the instrument. The accompaniment of the violin is so artificially combined with the piano part that both instruments are kept in constant attention; so that these sonatas require a violin player who is just as skilled as a piano player".

Alastair Sooke celebrates the protean genius of one of America's most prolific and original artists, Robert Rauschenberg. Fearless and influential, he blazed a trail for artists in the second half of the 20th century, and yet his work is rarely seen here in the UK. That is about to change with a major retrospective at Tate Modern in December 2016.