A Musical Picture - up to 25% off some great labels

Zig-Zag Territoires begins its collaboration with the pianist François-Frédéric Guy, ‘an exceptional artist’ (Le Figaro, 2008), with two prestigious projects: the complete Beethoven piano sonatas recorded live at the Arsenal in Metz between December 2010 and December 2012, and a Liszt double album featuring two of that composer’s key works: the Sonata in B minor and the complete cycle of Harmonies poétiques et religieuses.

Zig-Zag Territoires wishes to accompany the development of this artist who first attracted attention with a ‘titanic “Hammerklavier” . . . [in which] we are in heaven’ (Le Monde, 1998), and has since marked his territory by ‘tackling the Everests of the repertoire’ (Libération, 2004): Brahms’s Second Concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Paavo Berglund (Naïve, 2004), followed by the complete Beethoven piano concertos with Philippe Jordan and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (Naïve, 2008-10).

François-Frédéric Guy regularly performs the cycle of Harmonies poétiques et religieuses in concert, either as a solo recital or alongside the actress Marie-Christine Barrault who recites the Lamartine poems that inspired the composer.

We decided to record these masterpieces in the studio of La Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland), renowned for its exceptional acoustics. With the aim of reproducing the spontaneity of concert conditions, François-Frédéric Guy recorded the entire double album in just four days.

‘Recording the Harmonies Poétiques et religieuses represents a important moment in my artistic and discographic career, since Liszt is one of my favourite composers. It is certainly one of the finest cycles in the piano literature, made up of musical settings of the poems of Lamartine that combine grandiose inspiration and intimate meditation. As for the Sonata in B minor, in my view it constitutes the peak of the composer’s output and is still the only piano work that can follow on from Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier”.’ François-Frédéric Guy

The Russian pianist Yury Martynov presents here the second volume of the complete recording he has undertaken of the cycle of the Beethoven symphonies as transcribed for the piano by Franz Liszt. For both the pianist and his listeners, this recording constitutes a genuine adventure, combining the creative genius of Beethoven, the inspired vision of these works of the composer and pianist Franz Liszt, and a piano with the same sonic resources as were available to Liszt.

Here is what Liszt had to say about the piano as a medium of transcription: ‘In the compass of its seven octaves, it can produce, with only a few exceptions, all the characteristics, all the combinations, all the most learned compositional figures, and leaves the orchestra no other advantages than those . . . of diversity of timbre and massed effects.’ For these two symphonies, Yury Martynov has chosen the same Érard piano of 1837 on which he recorded the first volume of this series.

That CD – Symphonies nos.6 and 2 / ZZT301 – received a particularly warm welcome from the press (‘Choc’ de Classica, May 2012).

Patrick Scheyder takes a fresh look at the tradition of Liszt interpretations to reveal the long lost link between instrument and its specific technique. This recording, played on a Pleyel built in 1846, aims to turn this CD into a manifesto, as was the case with the poem Mazeppa, published by Victor Hugo in 1828.The last track is an improvisation, a personal and musical conclusion to the programme. The disc is illustrated by Horace Vernet's, Mazeppa and the wolves (1826).