Liszt

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.

Franz Liszt and Olivier Messiaen don't usually spring to mind as similar figures, let alone as an expected pairing for an album, since the former was the arch-Romantic virtuoso pianist and tone poet, while the latter was an influential modernist composer and organist. Yet both men were devout Roman Catholic musicians with mystical ideas that found expression in their works. To be sure, this disc by pianist Fredrik Ullén illustrates the differences between them by presenting their solo piano pieces in alternation, so the listener is never lulled by one style or the other but stays attentive throughout the program.

"Liszt is a composer who has been closely associated with Mr. Wild throughout his long career. In New York City in 1961, he gave a monumental recital celebrating the 150th anniversary of Liszt's birth. In 1986, honoring the 100th year of Liszt's death, he gave three recitals entitled "Liszt The Poet", "Liszt The Transcriber" and "Liszt The Virtuoso", in NY's Carnegie Hall. Championing composers such as Liszt long before they were fashionable, is part of the foundation on which Mr. Wild has built his long and successful career."

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.

From the notes: "Liszt is a composer who has been closely associated with Mr. Wild throughout his long career. In New York City in 1961, he gave a monumental recital celebrating the 150th anniversary of Liszt's birth. In 1986, honoring the 100th year of Liszt's death, he gave three recitals entitled "Liszt The Poet", "Liszt The Transcriber" and "Liszt The Virtuoso", in NY's Carnegie Hall. Championing composers such as Liszt long before they were fashionable, is part of the foundation on which Mr. Wild has built his long and successful career."

World-renowned pianist Lang Lang continues his celebration of composer Franz Liszt’s 200th Birthday with Liszt Now. The new video features Live at The Roundhouse, a 60-minute live concert from the 2011 iTunes Festival in London and The Art of Being a Virtuoso, a 71-minute documentary following Lang Lang’s global celebrations of Franz Liszt’s anniversary. Also included is A Visual Journey with Franz Liszt, 55 minutes of bonus content featuring video projections used at the Roundhouse concert set to select studio recordings from Lang Lang’s latest album, Liszt: My Piano Hero.