Liszt - Symphonic Poems Volume 3

July 2007

****

“Mazeppa is the most familiar of these works, and Noseda gives it a rousing performance… Noseda deals well with the often episodic nature of this music… He does this by an acute sense of pacing, so that each section seems to inhabit its natural tempo, and move smoothly into the next one.”

2010

“No one could accuse Liszt of a lack of largesse.
Here, once more, is one dramatic gesture after another to startle and provoke Liszt's contemporaries who, indifferent to such generosity, quibbled over the length of the massive Héroïdefunèbre and dismissed Mazeppa as vulgar and meretricious. Again, it is possible to see in all these works Liszt's lifelong preoccupation with the triumph of good over evil and, more personally, the recognition due to him long after his death. True, there are times when his reliance on sequence and chromaticism to intensify his themes can seem like so much padding and it says much for the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda that they once more temper drama with discretion.
They achieve a special sense of exultance rather than bombast in Festklänge, written to celebrate Liszt's planned marriage to the Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein. And they are no less successful in the vast spans of the Héroïdefunèbre, a still desolating tribute to those who suffered 'throughout the whole spectrum of human carnage' (Liszt). Fluent and eloquent as ever, Noseda and his orchestra have once more been superbly recorded.”

July 2007

“Here, once more, is one dramatic gesture after another to startle and provoke Liszt's contemporaries who, indifferent to such generosity, quibbled over the length of the massive Héroïde funèbre and dismissed Mazeppa as vulgar and meretricious. …the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda... achieve a special sense of exultance rather than bombast in Festklänge, written to celebrate Liszt's planned marriage to the Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein. And they are no less successful in the vast spans of the Héroïde funèbre, a still desolating tribute to those who suffered "throughout the whole spectrum of human carnage" (Liszt). Fluent and eloquent as ever, Noseda and his orchestra have once more been superbly recorded.”

2011 edition

“The highlight here is Mazeppa...Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra give it plenty of life and vividly re-create the evocation of the horse galloping across the countryside with the eponymous hero strapped to its back.”