Alicia de Larrocha’s magisterial, sonorous, even coruscating performance of Liszt’s B minor Sonata is here preceded by altogether more genteel repertoire from the 19th century – pairs of pieces by Grieg and Mendelssohn. A rarity – making its first appearance on CD internationally – is Grieg’s only solo piano sonata which was written in eleven days […]
One of Kiri Te Kanawa’s rare recorded excursions into song repertoire, this consummate recital is once more restored to the Decca catalogue. Including such popular favourites as Rachmaninov’s ‘Vocalise’ and Granados’ ‘La maja y el ruiseñor’, Obradors’ wonderful ‘Cinco canciones clasicas espanolas’ and a quartet of beautiful songs by Liszt.
Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony bring a fantastic array of colour as well as subtlety to these marvellous Rhapsodies. With an array of countries represented – the Rhapsodies largely paying tribute to indigenous music – the cover illustration highlights these associations.
It is commonplace to observe how little separates the cradle from the grave. For some, the words ‘womb’, ‘room’, ‘doom’ and ‘tomb’ have sufficed to encapsulate the human experience. When infant mortality rates in the developed countries were higher than they are today, families could hardly help being reminded that last night’s lullaby might be […]
A collection of some of Liszt’s most symphonic piano works, this recording by Lilya Zilberstein includes the Ballade in B minor, which openly acknowledge Liszt’s debt to Chopin and the two Légendes of 1863, which bear witness to a period in which Liszt (then 52) became almost obsessed with the religious life. The six Consolations, published […]
With technique to burn but poetry at the fore, Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s recordings of the two Liszt concertos have always held a special affection in many a music-lover’s heart. They are reissued as per the original CD couplings – with the demonic ‘Totentanz’ and the multi-coloured ‘Hungarian Fantasy’.
The recorded legacy of Albert Wolff is one of the most sought-after by collectors. Of Dutch parentage, but born in Paris, Wolff was something of a polymath: pianist, organist, conductor, composer, and had a long career in recording studios beginning in 1920. His first recordings for Decca, starting in the summer of 1951, were a […]
Sylvia Sass was born near Budapest, Hungary, on 12 July 1951 to a very musical family. Her mother was a coloratura soprano and her father was a high school music teacher. She made her stage debut at age fourteen in Adam’s operetta Die Nürnberger Puppe and then commenced study at the celebrated Franz Liszt Academy […]
Having made revolutionary changes during the 1830s and 40s, in both piano performance and composition, Liszt was hardly less innovative in his relationship with the orchestra. He is generally credited with having created the genre of the symphonic poem, in which a narrative or extra-musical idea is depicted within a structural framework usually associated with […]
Two pupils of the great Julius Katchen are featured in the piano music of Liszt on this 2CD set. Pascal Rogé was eighteen years old when he recorded the Liszt Piano Sonata, ‘Mazeppa’, ‘Vallée d’Obermann’ and the third ‘Liebestraum’ in London in December, 1969. It was during the 1967 International Competition Georges Enesco that Rogé was […]
In 1819, the Viennese publisher Anton Diabelli asked ‘the most excellent composers and virtuosi of Vienna and the Austrian Empire’, to write a variation on a waltz theme he had composed. Beethoven was also asked and although he at first refused, he did finally deliver a cycle of 33 variations as his own contribution to […]
‘When he is at his best he plays more beautifully than any of us’ wrote Alfred Brendel on the pianism of Wilhelm Kempff. Eloquence is proud to announce a mini-edition devoted to some of the rarer recordings of Wilhelm Kempff, born in 1895 at Jüterbog, the son of a church organist. By 1916, Kempff was […]
