Liszt: Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (10), S. 173

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This is a fine recital, with a recording to match — BBC Music Magazine More…

Release Date: 5th Jan 2004
Catalogue No: CDA67445
Label: Hyperion
Length: 83 minutes

Gramophone Magazine

April 2004

Editor's Choice

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Liszt: Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (10), S. 173

Work length1:23:45

Album only

Steven Osborne (piano)

I. Invocation

Track length7:30

$1.50

$1.85

$2.30

II. Ave Maria

Track length5:58

$1.00

$1.25

$1.55

III. Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude

Track length17:14

Album only

IV. Pensée des morts

Track length13:51

$2.05

$2.50

$3.05

V. Pater noster

Track length2:46

$1.00

$1.25

$1.55

VI. Hymne de l'Enfant à son réveil

Track length7:17

$1.50

$1.85

$2.30

VII. Funérailles

Track length12:04

$2.05

$2.50

$3.05

VIII. Miserere d'après Palestrina

Track length3:05

$1.00

$1.25

$1.55

IX. [Andante lagrimoso]

Track length7:53

$1.50

$1.85

$2.30

X. Cantique d'amour

Track length6:07

$1.00

$1.25

$1.55

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One of Liszts most personal and confessional piano cycles, the Harmonies poetiques et religieuses (composed between 1846 and 1851) contains two of his best-loved masterpieces the serenely contemplative Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude and the heroic elegy Funerailles. This outstanding recording makes a much-needed case for the collection as a whole, setting these well-known works in their wider spiritual context. Important works such as Pensee des morts (an extraordinarily dark meditation on the oft-visited subject of death) and Cantique damour (one of Liszts most beautifully expressive reveries) are revealed, as are rarely heard transcriptions of Liszts own sacred choral works. Steven Osborne captures the musics spiritual essence to perfection, further demonstrating his affinity with music of mystical contemplation, a quality so widely acclaimed in his superb recording of Messiaens Vingt Regards.

(two CDs for the price of one)

Reviews

This is a fine recital, with a recording to match

2010

Steven Osborne follows his superlative Hyperion recording of Messiaen's Vingt Regards surl'Enfant-Jésus with Liszt's Harmonies poétiques etreligieuses, surely a precursor of Messiaen's masterpiece.
Attuned to the mystic heart at the centre of Liszt's Catholicism, Osborne once more shows the sort of stylistic ease and tonal magic that come to very few young pianists. Sacred and profane love blend with a wholly Lisztian alchemy.
In 'Invocation', the magnificent gateway to the cycle, Osborne offers up its quasi-orchestral rhetoric with immense power but without bombast.
The 'Bénédiction' is daringly understated in pages that can all too easily topple into lavish, tear-laden emotionalism. 'Pensées des morts' is a triumph of alternating anguish and exultation. If all conventional pomp and circumstance are erased by the brisk tempo in the opening of 'Funérailles', Osborne's performance is still a marvel of concentrated musicianship and indiv- iduality. In the Andante lagrimoso he conjures an uncanny stillness in music whose painful climbing looks ahead to the dark, attenuated utterances of Fauré's final years, while the final 'Cantique d'Amour' resolves all past torment in a paean of praise for the union of two traditionally opposed ideas of love.
Few more radiant or deeply considered Liszt recordings have ever been made. Hyperion's sound is immaculate.

Liszt: Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (10), S. 173

2 CDs

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