Prima Facie presents Salon and Stage, the second volume of Kenneth Hamilton's internationally acclaimed Liszt series. In contrast to the first album, Death and Transfiguration, this recording offers a life-enhancing selection of virtuoso transcriptions from song and opera. But it happily shares with its predecessor Hamilton's passion for these pieces. He has sought out Liszt's oft-ignored recommendations on their interpretation and studied the reminiscences and recordings of his students. He has, in effect, tried to think like a Liszt pupil, and to immerse himself in a performance tradition that goes well beyond the printed text.
Liszt, according to the great British pianist John Ogdon, was responsible for ‘breaking the Germanic stranglehold on nineteenth-century composers, and scattering the seeds of modern music almost literally to the four winds. His music shows an avant-garde attitude to the problems of composing which was without parallel in the nineteenth century.’
Warner Classics has issued this splendid three disc boxed set of eight Franz Liszt scores. It fetaures Daniel Barenboim as both piano soloist and conductor… This fine selection could not have a finer advocate than Daniel Barenboim; a true giant in the classical music world today. A brilliant performer at the piano and a conductor of great renown this man lives for music. - Michael Cookson; MusicWeb-International
This second volume of Hyperion’s newest Lieder series features the great dramatic and musical gifts of mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager. Internationally renowned on the opera stage, the concert hall and the recording studio, Kirchschlager is an ideal performer of these most varied, complex and emotionally charged songs. She is accompanied by the multi-Gramophone Award-winning Julius Drake, who curates the series.
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.
The pre-eminent Lisztian of our day returns to Brilliant Classics for a symphonic sequel of transcriptions.