Liszt

As a student, Liebrecht Vanbeckevoort won several piano prizes and was a laureate of the International Steinway Competition. He has performed internationally and can often be heard on radio and television both home and abroad.

Following his recordings dedicated to Beethoven's piano concertos (BIS-2281) and Franz Liszt's Transcendental etudes (BIS-2681), the gold medal winner at the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009, Haochen Zhang, now brings these two composers together on this new recording with two summits of 19th-century piano literature: Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' Sonata and Liszt's Sonata in B minor.

Khatia Buniatishvili's debut album is devoted to Franz Liszt in whose music she seeks and finds her idea of musical completeness and pianistic perfection. The repertoire places a focus on the Faust theme: Liszt's third Liebestraum was inspired by Goethe's Faust and the Mephisto Waltz was inspired by Nikolaus Lenau's Faust poem. The centerpiece of the recording, the Sonata in B Minor, is technically one of the most demanding works ever written for piano and is followed by Liszt's first Mephisto Waltz (The Dance in the Village Inn). La lugubre gondola ends with a whole-tone scale and the note G sharp, leading into the key of the last piece on the recording, Liszt's arrangement of Bach's transfiguring Prelude and Fugue in A Minor.

On his latest album “Liszt: Via Crucis & Solo Piano Works”, releasing on Aprill 11 2025 for Sony Classical, Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes unveils the often forgotten side of the famed virtuoso Franz Liszt - the sacred music that offers a more intimate picture of the man and his deeply held faith.

Miyuji Kaneko was born in 1989 to a Japanese father and a Hungarian mother. At the age of six, he moved to Hungary alone to study under Zsuzsa Cs. Nagy at the Bartok Elementary School of Music. In 2001 at the age of eleven, he was accepted into the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, skipping grades and studying with professors Gabor Eckhardt, Gyongyi Kevehazi, and Rita Wagner. He has won first prizes in many international music competitions, including the 2008 Bartok International Piano Competition.

For his new recital published on the Decca label, Benjamin Grosvenor has chosen Franz Liszt, whose music has followed him since his childhood thanks to his grandfather's initiation.