Liszt

This CD features music by composer Franz Liszt from the play "Tom & Jerry in the Garden of Earthly Delights." For this performance, pianist Martin Oei commissioned animations and videos to illustrate the life of Franz Liszt. Martin's goal is to introduce a younger audience to classical piano music and the remarkable role Liszt played in the 19th century.

I have always had rather a soft spot for Michele Campanella playing Liszt. This dates back to when he was the pianist on the first LP of Liszt I ever bought – a Pye disc of him playing the two concertos. With the bi-centenary of Liszt’s birth looming in the Autumn this is the first of the year’s celebratory sets that I have encountered. It should be noted however, as with the bulk of Brilliant Classics releases, these are licensed re-releases although in this case the provenance is not totally clear.

Franz Liszt - Faust Symphony (Eine Faus-Symphonie in drei Charakterbildern nach Goethe)
Berliner Philharmoniker / Placido Domingo / Daniel Barenboim
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 311 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Teldec # 3984-22948-2 | Country/Year: Europe 1998
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic

…Daniel Barenboim and the Berlin Philharmonic offer a rich and powerful performance of the symphony, with Placido Domingo a stellar tenor soloist. The Teldec recording is sensational.

‘Samson de la nuit’ was the affectionate epithet given to this pianist who seemed never to sleep and who was almost as famous for spending his early morning hours in Parisian jazz clubs as he was for playing Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit. Like the Biblical Samson, Samson François wore his hair long – it often hung in front of his eyes as he played – and like the character Scarbo in Gaspard, he could be mischievous and evasive. A man of contrasts, he was in many ways the epitome of what one thought a romantic pianist should be – confident, dashing, poetic, moody, passionate, tender and temperamental. Today, more than 40 years after his premature death, a new generation of listeners has come to appreciate the qualities that made him one of the great pianists of the 20th century.

Volume 1 of Liszt's complete symphonic poems augurs well for the releases. Gianandrea Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic remind you at every turn that the days of a lofty critical dismissal of this uneven but pioneering and romantically audacious music are surely over. Coldly objective complaints about Liszt's lack of craftsmanship or melodic distinction have been echoed in other more stylishly phrased complaints: for Clara Schumann there was 'too much of the tinsel and the drum' while Edward Sackville-West could see little beyond 'the expensive glare and theatricality'.

The vast majority of Brazilian-born pianist Arnaldo Cohen's discography is devoted to the music of Franz Liszt. There is good reason for this; his technique and approach to the instrument seem especially suited for the demands Liszt makes of pianists, from extreme subtlety and introspection to the bravura, ostentatious displays of power and virtuosity. Cohen delivers all of this with remarkable clarity.

Anticipating the developments of his maturity, Franz Liszt's Harmonies poétiques et religieuses is an important transitional piece, if not especially coherent or profound. Liszt's sentimentality and chronic showmanship prevent this set of pious reveries from achieving the deepest spiritual dimensions. But there are many reflective moments in this work that indicate a growing seriousness and even presage the dark emotions and austerity of his final period. While the Invocation, Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude, and the Cantique d'amour are predictably ecstatic in their climaxes, each contains sustained passages of calm introspection.