Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1, Etc

To celebrate Franz Liszt’s bicentenary, Lang Lang has selected some of the most famous, virtuosic and poetic solo pieces ever written for the piano, concluding with a fabulous new recording of the Piano Concerto No. 1 – accompanied by the Vienna Philharmonic and Valery Gergiev.

Alternating the lyrical Liszt with the bravura, Lang Lang’s tribute to his ‘piano hero’ mixes old favourites with some lesser-known pieces, transcriptions with original works – and rounds off with the high octane First Piano Concerto.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Franz Liszt's birth, virtuoso pianist Lang Lang has selected some of the composer's most characteristic pieces for his 2011 Sony release, Liszt: My Piano Hero. Prominent on this album is the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major, which features Lang Lang in a high-energy performance with Valery Gergiev and the Vienna Philharmonic. Without a doubt, most of Lang Lang's fans will savor this Romantic showpiece, and for technical brilliance and drama, the performance doesn't disappoint. 

He is especially lively and vivid in this work, and his interactions with the orchestra seem spontaneous and playful, as one might well imagine Liszt would have been. But Lang Lang seems more introspective and personally involved with the solo keyboard pieces that make up the greater part of the album. Here also is the flashy side of Liszt, but there is a greater emphasis on the poetic and rhapsodic, so Lang Lang indulges in reflective pieces as much as the flashy encores. Highlights include La Campanella, the Grand Galop chromatique, Liebestraum No. 3, the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6, and the arrangement of Schubert's Ave Maria.

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Liszt at the Opera

“…recommended. Superbly readable annotations by Jonathan Summers are a significant addition.” --Fanfare, March/April 2014

“… I don’t know another recording of Liszt operatic fantasies quite as pleasurably satisfying as this one…” --International Record Review, November 2013

"...Lortie’s sparkling and swarthy playing is impressively glamorous..." --BBC Music magazine, December 2013

In this new release, the exclusive Chandos artist and award-winning pianist Louis Lortie continues his exploration of piano works by Franz Liszt. His previous Liszt releases have been critically acclaimed, Gramophone describing his performance of the complete Années de Pèlerinage as ‘spellbinding’. Here Lortie turns his hand to the composer’s opera transcriptions and paraphrases, works that revolutionised composition for the piano with their unheralded technical innovation.

The original works by Liszt based on Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Verdi’s Rigoletto, and Gounod’s Faust not only demonstrate the dazzling technical possibilities of the piano but reveal the unique and fascinating musical imagination with which Liszt transformed some of the best-known music in the operatic repertoire. Completing the disc are several more or less straightforward transcriptions based on operas by Richard Wagner who, despite a rocky start to their relationship, forged a close musical bond with Liszt. Among them is the popular transcription of the ‘Liebestod’ from Tristan und Isolde. Liszt never completed a transcription of its natural musical companion, the Prelude to the opera, so here Louis Lortie has recorded his own arrangement of it.

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Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1

“[Trifonov] makes the instrument sing and allows the music to breathe … The six Liszt song transcriptions show him at his best, triumphantly capturing all the despair of ‘Erlkonig’ … A pianist, then, with a great international career in front of him (no doubt about that).” --Gramophone Magazine, November 2012

“His special blend of attributes is on display here, not least his technical ease, exquisite control and rich resource of colour. In the Tchaikovsky [Concerto], Trifonov's playing ignites when it has to, but is generally notable for its dynamic phrasing and variety of articulation. For such an overworked piece it sounds remarkably fresh.” --BBC Music Magazine, December 2012 ****

“Trifonov's combination of delicacy and fire leaves an indelible impression in this debut recording with the Mariinsky. The Tchaikovsky, scorching and heart-rending but never bombastic, is paired with solo Liszt transcriptions” --The Observer, 12th August 2012

“Trifonov has won every top piano competition, and this shows why. His performance of the Tchaikovsky warhorse...is nuanced but not mannered, virtuosic without being showy, and powerful yet not hammered, as many young Russian pianists do...He has the world at his feet.” --The Times, 11th August 2012 ****

“Last year’s winner [International Tchaikovsky Competition] 21-year old Daniil Trifonov is truly exceptional. Trifonov … the orchestral support is first-rate … Even more impressive are the solo works included here which display all the variety of Trifonov’s tonal range … Seemingly there is nothing that Trifonov cannot do. Trifonov may be at the start of his career but he is already a mature artist. His youth brings an overwhelming energy which seems to blow the cobwebs off everything he performs: he forces one to listen to these works anew, the sure sign of greatness.” --International Record Review, October 2012

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Music for Cello & Piano

“This blissfully unhackneyed and brilliantly executed recital takes memory in all its facets as its theme...the recording throughout gives the players all the space and atmosphere they need to characterise the varied moods and textures of an unusually rewarding programme.” --Gramophone, Awards Issue 2012

“Match [Ades's playing] with the mellow sound and manner of Steven Isserlis's cello, and you have something very special. Their choice of repertory here - devised as an extended upbeat to Ades's Lieux retrouves at the end of the programme - is unusual, memorable, and wonderfully performed from start to finish.” --BBC Music Magazine, December 2012 *****

A cello recital with a difference from two maverick geniuses, displaying the fecundity of their collaboration. The world-famous cellist Steven Isserlis, one of the best-loved instrumentalists of today, joins forces with composer and pianist Thomas Adès, described by the New York Times as one of the most imposing figures in contemporary music.

This recording opens with three of Liszt’s arrangements for cello and piano—the dark plangency of Isserlis’s tone emphasizing their elegiac power. Janácek’s Pohádka (‘A Tale’) is based on a story with many magical elements, and it is this particular quality which Isserlis and Adès bring out in their aerial performance. The passionate ecstasy of Fauré’s Cello Sonata No 2 is deeply felt, and the elemental mysterious sadness of Kurtág’s miniatures leads the listener into the 21st century and to the ‘title track’ of this disc which Adès wrote for Isserlis himself. Lieux retrouvés is a characteristically thrilling tour de force, displaying influences from all the composers previously featured and many more. The writing for the cello reaches uncharted levels of difficulty. Isserlis in his thoughtful booklet notes describes it in pictorial terms of rivers and mountains—here’s Anthony Tommasini, again in the New York Times: ‘The rippling figures for piano and cello spin out in crazed, cyclic riffs; the crystalline piano harmonies sound as if the wind were rustling the chimes in the pagoda; the feisty, industrialized propulsive bursts in the finale.’

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